This started a while ago.

Here are some of the thoughts in my mind as I drive:

• a taxi ride from back in April, in which the driver told me a story of giving a ride to someone who described a “plan” to take the wealth of the country and place it in the hands of a few. I realize it bothers me because when he said it, this wasn’t one of those crazy times, like the driver who held up a picture of a woman and said, Do you know who this is? This is God, but instead it was like he was saying there was a plan also for a new stadium on the West side of Manhattan. He didn’t need me to believe him.
• I am thinking also about my own money, of which there isn’t much, and how, after the event is done, I’ll go to my accountant, because of continuing tax issues I have and because he keeps night hours–I don’t like my wife’s TV shows, he tells me.
• The stories from dinners at the conference, of people in Vermont burning their furniture to heat their houses because they can’t afford oil or gas heat, and of people sleeping in their cars along the roads, without homes. And so driving into the city no longer feels casual after that, and my sturdy ’94 Geo Prizm, which gets 35 miles to the gallon, makes me feel rich.

Because I am thinking of this and more, some things have gone wrong. For example, I made a Facebook event for my reading and then…felt like I was done. Facebook is very easy for making invitations to events, and it was so easy, and so many of my friends are on it, I didn’t send out emails or put it on my blog. When I realize I forgot to do more than this, I have a moment of feeling how I live in a future I don’t know I would have chosen, but that I did manage to choose, all the same. So to recover, I make calls on the drive down, apologizing to perplexed friends who I know are rightly mad at me for this. The student interns, who for some reason I feel like I’ve known for a long time, mock me for this the next night, when I return, and even insist I delete applications from my page in front of them. But for now, I step onto the train, feeling both exhausted and foolish. And on the train down, I fall asleep.

I arrive at the exact time the event begins. The room is standing-room-only full, and my three writers from the issue are there: Catherine Chung, Elaine H. Kim and Jin Young Sohn. The events director of the workshop hands me a cold free Singha beer. A reporter from Korea Daily takes a picture of me with the three writers I chose. Then I read from this essay:

I lived my first three years in Korea, in my grandfather’s house in Seoul, before we moved to Truk, Hawaii, Guam, then Maine. My mother tells me that the first written words I ever read aloud were “Obi Mechu”, the Korean version of, if your American child looked up at you and said, “Schlitz Beer.” I was on her lap, looking over her shoulder at billboards as we drove through Seoul.

My father’s family in Korea keeps traditions they brought with them from China in the 15th Century that the Chinese no longer keep; they use an archaic Chinese script in the keeping of our family’s records. They perform, inside the confines of my family, these rituals of this lost homeland—even as they tell me they fear I’m “not Korean enough,” with no sense of irony whatsoever.

If I were, say, to be as like them as they asked when I was younger—if I were to be “Korean enough,” I still would never be Korean enough for some. I would still go to my grave an alien. I think of them, though, now that I live in America. I wonder if what we do as Korean Americans is so very different from what they do in Korea with the traditions of China. If we are headed towards becoming a performance of the myths of the homeland that would be bizarre and even antiquated to the people who live there now.

Go check out the issue. As you read it, pretend you’re inside the Asian American Writers Workshop, a loft office on West 32nd, near Broadway, full of books and people. There’s a low stage with a stool that’s lit up, and the room is mostly dark. Small origami cranes of different colors cover most of the wall behind the stage. People have turned the fans off to hear the readers.

More tomorrow. If you live in New York, and you would have wanted to come, I’m sorry for not telling you about this event. And, should I even say it? This is probably a bad time. But if you’re on Facebook, add me.

So that this confusion never, ever happens again, here is a guide to these incredible-looking men who are appearing with increasing frequency on our tv and movie screens here in America.

1. Rain

Rain is arguably the most high-profile, internationally.

Think of him as being a Korean Justin Timberlake, maybe, but mixed with a Korean Jake Gyllenhal. You can check out his Donnie-Darko-esque turn in the as yet untranslated I’m A Cyborg. The below still from that was one of last year’s most popular image headers on this blog.

He’s shown an extraordinary range as a performer, able to dance around in angel wings in a Korean rap video, or appear in art-house Korean indie films. He’s most famous to US audiences for his dance battles with Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report. He is an incredible dancer. In this clip, note the Dance Dance Revolution sudden-death round.

2. Karl Yune

Karl Yune, it should be said, looks nothing like Rain. Karl is the younger Korean American brother of another, earlier Korean American celeb, Rick Yune. Karl is familiar to most of you as an Abercrombie model.

That’s what I’m talking about. As you can see, Rain is more puckish, and more changeable. Rain has so many different looks, it’s a little shocking. That doesn’t really excuse what happened.

3. Rick Yune

Rick Yune, Karl’s older brother, is also a stunningly good-looking man. They look even less alike, though, than Karl Yune and Rain.

Rick is familiar to us from his roles as Johnny Tran in The Fast and the Furious, and as Zao, in the James Bond film Die Another Day.

4. Joon Park Hyung

Joon Park Hyung from the now defunct Korean boy band g.o.d. is in Speed Racer and it’s worth pointing out, he is not Rain, also. In fact, here is a photo of the two of them together, which was actually one of my favorite header images from 2007. All of the men here except the Yune brothers have appeared in my blog header, as I like to think here at Koreanish we’re a little ahead of the curve on these important, world-changing issues. This shot was taken right after Joon was signed to the film:

That’s the gang sign for “Hot Korean Actors Headed To America.” Rain is on the left. Joon is on the right. Joon is on the rise, and is signed up for the new Dragonball Z film.

4. Daniel Henney

Coming up is Daniel Henney. Daniel is in the new X-Men film featuring Wolverine’s origins, as someone called Agent Zero.

Daniel is, quite simply, stunning to look at, and once the X-Men film is out, People Magazine will likely want to tap him for their Most Beautiful issue.

6. Dennis Oh

The next one we should all be looking for is Dennis Oh, who is sometimes confused for Daniel, though, this is perhaps because they are both half Korean, half white soap star heartbreakers. The “they all look the same” thing extends to us half-breeds, it’s worth noting. They are also set in competition against each other–some even asking, which one is hotter?–which is again, only happening because they’re both half white. No one asks that question about Rain and Karl, for example. Anyway, check out Dennis Oh, the future crush object of America and the world, hot in his own right:

• For the last month, I’ve been saying, “The dollar is the new peso”. But look, it was just the zeitgeist, bubbling up inside my brain: “Pay attention as you watch the catchy new music video from the mega-star rapster Jay-Z, ‘Blue Magic’, and see if you can’t spot the product placement. It is not a fancy car that he is endorsing – although both his rides, a Rolls- Royce and soft-top Bentley, are plenty spiffy – but rather a currency – and it is not the dollar. Like so many in the hip-hop genre, the song is a celebration of ostentatious wealth. But capturing the attention of commentators in this clip, shot in the glimmering, neon-lit canyons of New York City, are the repeated glimpses of flickering wads of €500 notes.” Via Dave Usborne in New York for The Independent Online.
• Andy Parker found this excellent piece about how homeless queer youth are using video to connect to each other, but terrifyingly, the video had been taken down.
• Meredith McGill and I continue to look for possible cures for our internet ‘interest’. Korea has a dramatic solution: Jump Up Internet Rescue School.
• And from my graphic novel collaborator, Teddy: Cirque Du Soleil Sex Crimes Investigations.
  

Thanks to Sue Pierce for sending it to me.

The star of this week’s Google Image-search Custom Header is an anonymous Korean punk rocker found through bROKe In Korea, a message board for Korean punk rockers.

I’m researching Korean speed metal bands for my third novel. If anyone can help or wants to help, leave me a message here or email me at emperor (a) rebeliloveyou dot com.

Me: We could watch this film I rented, a hot new South Korean director.

Anston: Is it really violent Anime or Science Fiction?

Me: No.

Anston: Is it an incredibly dark and depressing—

Me: Yes.

Anston: [laughter]

Me: It’s called The Future of Man is Woman. It’s about a love…

Anston: I think I’m in the mood for Marie Antoinette.

Me: Excellent.

Here’s an excerpt from the post “Sangju”:

My grandmother lived with us for the first few years we lived in the States. I was very young, and my memories from this time are all a sepia blur. Mostly it’s just impressions. She was very old even then — thinning snow-white hair a fright, thickly creased eyes weighted down by flaps of drooping flesh. She wore dull grey peasants’ clothes, sashes over petticoats and a tiny sheathed dagger at her neck, that probably looked anachronistic when she was a girl.

She never learned any English. She refused to look at the TV. She never acknowledged strangers on her morning walks. Her only connection to the outside world were the Korean newspapers my aunt would send to her at the end of every month, when they were weeks out of date and brittle and red with age. For all that I used to feel that my parents lived apart from the world of mainstream American culture my friends’ families all seemed to inhabit, my grandmother lived one step further removed, in a tiny bubble of reality of her own fashioning that had its own time and its own rules.

The neighborhood children were all scared of her. They called her a witch, and I think I believed them, because she was the one who taught me all of the superstitious nonsense my parents didn’t want me to know.

You can read the future in the way cards fall, and in the fight of birds.

Begin things when the moon is new, and never during its wane.

Wear your clothes inside out to confuse evil spirits.

Never cut your nails at night; cast the trimmings into the fire.

And so on.

I don’t believe any of this, you understand. This is the 21st century, and I’m not a superstitious man by nature. There is no place in my life for folk remedies and old wives’ tales.

Tonight I’m searching for images of the Korean War. I don’t really know why, I’m just sort of following a feeling. Last week my friend Shauna sent me this link to an article about North Korea and South Korea allowing rail travel again between the two countries.

For some reason I thought of the comics my cousins showed me on my second trip to Korea, where North Koreans were pictured as demonic. I found this.

This one of Stalin Buddha is amazing.

The title to this one is, “Why Must Your Leaders Bow To Russian Masters?”

This next one was prescient. “North Korean Farmers! Hide Your Rice! Don’t Starve For Communism!” It’s dated 1952.

I keep thinking about who made them, and who saw them, and what happened to them. I try to imagine putting this on a wall and walking home.

All of these images are from this collection over at Kirkwood Community College’s website.