Kim Jong il comedy club

Last night on BBC Four they showed Kim Jong-il Comedy Club. This documentary is about a very tall Danish man called Mads and two Korean adoptees, Jacob and Simon, who travel to North Korea to put on a small comedy sketch. However, the ulterior motive is more to check out North Korea and to play a bit of a joke on them by sending these two very amateur guys to go on stage in North Korea. What makes this documentary so good is that the way they are treated is genuinely pretty frightening.

The highlights are when Mads comes to ‘understand’ the Korean mind and shows this by giving a long rambling speech that in ‘any country would’ve landed him in prison’ to the moment they get pushed into a Anti-US propoganda parade and put on national television with Jacob angrily telling Mads to stop lying and Mads telling him he is sorry but feels they better just do as they are told for now.

The other angle of the story is that Jacob has some physical handicap. He gets pampered like a little child by their guide but is then sidelined in all the activities related to the show. Jacob’s speech can’t be understood by the Koreans so he is free to talk openly and gives some good commentary of how ridiculous things can be in the Workers Paradise such as when he notes that he is being smothered by the guide who is patting him and announces it all to be ‘extremely weird’, which to me, put things pretty aptly.

I only found this by chance as I was looking through the channels to see what, if anything, was worth watching on tv last night. However, the London Korean Links knew all about it – I really should check out their site on a more regular basis.

After this and the likes of ‘Don’t Tell My Mother I’m in North Korea’, I wonder it North Korea is going to wise up to these guys and their documentaries where they do the voice over and subtitles after the footage has been checked.

Yasujiro Ozu

The BFI is doing a series of films by Yasujiro Ozu who is best known for three movies known as the Noriko trilogy. the last in the trilogy is Tokyo Story, which is regarded as Ozu’s masterpiece. Ozu is best known for making films which look into the lives of lower middle class families. He has also done some comedies. I went to see Tokyo Story last night.

(source: www.bfi.org)

This story is of an elderly couple who travel from their rural dwellings to Tokyo to visit their children, who are now grown and married. The Noriko character in this story is the widow of the elderly couple’s son who died (or rather, never returned) after the war. Of all the children she is the one who gives the old parents the most attention. The other children are busy and married and moved on with their lives. The movie reflects on the way Japan has changed so that children now drift away from their parents and develop their own lives. Children become different people from the sons or daughters that they were and their parents can barely recognise them and have less to do with their lives.

The story was slow but it was fascinating to watch these children treat their parents in a way that is very familiar – as a bother who comes to visit and take up their time and sleep in their already crowded and tiny living space when there are so many other things to be getting on with.

The series runs into February so hopefully there will be time to see more of his work.

New Year

A new blog look and female k-blogger list re-visited

For the new year I thought a change of template was in order. This theme is a better colour red than the previous one. So it’ll go faster. I also added a couple new links just for fun.

One of the links I added was Chris in South Korea. I was very interested to see on his blog an update on the list of non-Korean women who live in Korea and blog about Korea in English. This topic was previously discussed by Roboseyo and Brian in Jeollanam-do. I had thought that the list was never actually done, but it was. Who knew?

The list can be found by following a link to an earlier post on Chris’ blog, but its unclear (to me) where this list is now situated. Having a list on an old post is hardly good for promotional purposes. The list needs a home. Also, a couple of the blogs in the list have not been updated for a suspicious length of time. I still think its a big waste of time though. As alluded to in the comments on Chris’ post, these blogs aren’t hidden, they just aren’t popular (comparatively speaking) and for whatever reason that might be, wether its because the issues discussed on certain blogs have a small potential audience or because they aren’t controversial enough or whatever, creating a list isn’t going to address that.

New year resolutions

The good news is that 2010 is the year of the tiger – that’s me!

I have two new year’s resolutions: the first is to get out and about a bit more, join the crowds and be seen. The second is to take up a sport. I have long been thinking of taking up a sport but the ridiculous cold weather always holds me back. But I’m gonna toughen up this year and get involved. Indoor sports could be an option.

I also have two work related resolutions: the first is to do a more work-related readings. This may involve going into work earlier on one day a week to read. Doing more work-related reading should also help with blogging since the regional focus is the same. The second is to get the filing situation under control. The disorder of our files drives me to distraction and it has to end.

Vienna and my new red hat

As the year draws to a close I have been faced with the problem of having to take outstanding annual leave before the year end, or else lose it. After much indecision about where to go, if anywhere and how much money I was willing to spend I was left a frazzled mess. It was agreed to write down the names of some places and to pull the destination for a mini-break out of a hat. I bought a ticket for Vienna, Austria as determined by the hat draw.

The mini-break was to arrive on Thursday and leave on Sunday. When thinking of Vienna a few things come to (my) mind. Opera House, Schnitzel, and the Habsburg family. I also added to the list of things to do while in Vienna to buy a new, red, winter hat. I had been looking around for such a hat and thought Vienna might be a good place to pick up a nice hat. My current everyday winter hat is blue and I thought red was the new colour needed and that hats that seem to be inspired by the twenties (or at least from some episodes from Agatha Christie’s Poirot) would be just the thing.

The Opera House was lovely – I saw Simon Boccanegra by Verdi, the Schnitzel was dry, the Imperial Apartments of the Habsburgs was impressive as was the Imperial Art Collection – my favourite was the works by Peiter Bruegel the Elder, and as my for new red hat, I couldn’t be happier with it.

new red hat

Glorious Summer of Noko Jeans

UPDATE: It looks like this product was a bit too controversial for the Swedish department store. The product has been pulled but we are told it can still be purchased on-line.

Noko Jeans made in North Korea are about to go on sale in Sweden. With seemingly very little experience and not much know-how these guys just decided they were curious about North Korean and sought to set up a jean manufacturing agreement with a mining company. They tell us its not a sweatshop thanks to the 10 days one of them spent in North Korea to oversee that standards were kept. Yeah, right. I imagine the North Korean workers are not going to see a fair share of the profits from these USD215.00 a pair jeans.

Apparently the jeans only come in black because denim blue was a bit too close to American capitalist-pig style to get the go-ahead for manufacture in the Socialist Paradise.

Eccentric Kim Jong-il

The Mirror has an article highlighting some of the more eccentric antics of North Korea’s leader.

North Korea will take its turn for show and tell at the UN in December

(Source: CNN.com)

On 7 December North Korea will take its turn at the front of the UN class to talk about its human rights situation. This session is part of the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a four-year cycle during which time all countries who are State Parties to the UN take a turn to have their human rights record discussed.

The process of the UPR goes beyond the review session in December. The process for North Korea began at the beginning of 2009 when initial submissions from civil society was submitted to the UN. Later in the year North Korea itself submitted a document about its human rights record and the UN submitted a briefing based on the recommendations given to North Korea in the past by various treaty bodies to which North Korea is a State Party.

The format of the December session is not a ‘committee of experts’ criticising North Korea and then handing out a list of recommendations which North Korea has no intention of implementing. Such as you see for sessions related to international law which North Korea has signed up to. Rather, it is a peer review. State Parties sign up in advance that they wish to say something during the session. A selected troika of countries will Chair the session. As a State Party’s name is called out the representative will say something about North Korea’s human rights, ask a question and then probably give a recommendation. For example: “The country of X welcomes that North Korea amended its constitution to include something or other on human rights. We would like to ask how many people are in prison camps in North Korea, which we hear are very bad places. We recommend that North Korea shut down the prison camps.”

After several state parties have a turn, North Korea can respond. For example: “Thanks for noticing our token effort to include human rights in the constitution. We have no prison camps therefore we don’t need to close any of them down. Stop interfering in our country.” And so it will go on for about three hours.

After that the recommendations will be written up. North Korea will respond in writing to say which recommendations it accepts, rejects or will think about. And later on there are chances to see how they are going. And in four years, North Korea will be reviewed again.

For the dedicated, the main UPR session in December will be live webcast.

London Korean Film Festival – A Frozen Flower

Tonight was the final night of movies for the LKFF being shown at the Barbican. The series of Bong Joon-ho’s movies goes on at the BFI until 14 November and some movies will be shown at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham until 18 November. The final movie at the Barbican was A Frozen Flower directed by Yoo Ha. This is an historical drama done with too much melodrama. It was a bit much for the mostly non-Korean audience and got a few laughs during scenes which were probably not supposed to be funny. It was just really too much. The story was predictable and a bit cliché. But it wasn’t all bad, the costumes and scenery were all striking and the fighting scenes were decent except for some parts of the final fight scene, which were not credible.

The LKFF, for me anyway, is over. My top three movies of the LKFF, in no particular order, are

1. Kim’s Daughters
2. Private Eye
3. Scandal Makers

My two least favourite movies of the LKFF were:

1. Dream (I think I’m done with movies by Kim Ki-duk)
2. A Frozen Flower

Notice how I smoothly added a countdown list at the end there – that’s one of the tips for good blogging.

London Korean Film Festival – Private Eye and Scandal Makers

Tonight is the penultimate evening for the LKFF. We stayed for both movies beginning with Park Dae-min’s feature film debut, Private Eye. This is a murder mystery set in early 19th Century Seoul. It includes allusions to other great detective stories (Sherlock Holmes and Poe were the two I spotted but there could have been more) and story unfolds smoothly and at a decent clip.

The second movie was Scandal Makers directed by Kang Hyung-chul and starring Cha Tae-hyun. After watching a series of Korean movies that were either violent, depressing or both, it was a great pleasure to watch this movie. Kang plays Nam Hyun-soo a bachelor and b-grade celebrity who finds out he is the father of a teenage woman who herself has become a single mother. Fearing scandal that would end his mediocre career and comfortable lifestyle he tries to keep things under wraps. The movie avoids becoming a soppy ‘young man realises importance of family’ movie in the Disney style. It’s funny and well-made if perhaps a bit culturally specific given that in many countries the revelation of a young man having fathered a child in his younger days would barely raise any eyebrows.

Pusan International Film Festival – a retrospective series 3

Next morning we have a fine Korean breakfast with Mi-youn’s parents. Her father grows his own bean sprouts so we had bean sprout soup which was the best I ever tasted. After breakfast I get ready wearing my hip-hop pants green chord top my hair in a high half pony and a pale make-up look. I am spending the morning and some of the afternoon alone as Mi-youn has to go to a wedding. So I head off alone but there is no trouble finding my way back to the festival. It was easy.

My first movie is “The Goal Club”, a Thai film and it was fantastic. The best movie of the whole weekend and the best I’ve seen in a while. These poor Thai boys get involved in an illegal gambling ring and start cheating the system to make more money for themselves. At the end of the movie there is a short blurb about gambling rings and their cost on society.

The move over, I opt for ice-cream for lunch – a smarties mcflurry from Maccas, not as nice as the oreo’s one.

The next movie ins YongSanGun an old 1960s Korean movie about a King in the Chosun period who tries move the grave of his mother who was poisoned and deposed so he can honor her but the court doesn’t allow it. He eventually finds out the truth of his mother’s death and about those who conspired to have her deposed. He orders hundreds to be killed over the matter. The movie was so long and boring but the story itself was interesting. I rushed out as soon as it was over and met Mi-youn. We go straight to see our next session which is short Korean films.

These ones were more abstract and ‘arty’ then the first lot The first one didn’t even have English subtitles so I really missed its point. But mostly it was some Korean guy in New York with a bird cage on his head. The symbolism of this was completely lost on me.

Another one was called ‘Black and White’ and it was two guys who break into a house, get sprung by the father, who is an ex-army man and they have a sword fight in the dark and all die. The point was it was shot in black and white and every so often someone in the film would turn a light on in the house so the scene would go from being mostly black to stark whites. It was quite clever.

Another odd one was a lady who cooked dinner for two, ate alone. We kept getting shots of pictures of her and her husband and then her crying and in the end he is lying dead on the floor with a pencil in his neck. Huh!?? Very strange.

After these films we didn’t hang around for the discussion. Instead we went to check out the souvenirs. They had more stuff than the previous day. I picked out two book markers. Mi-youn was having a hard time deciding. In the end I bought her a book and she bought me this book and some stickers. The book I bought Mi-youn and her gift to me was equal value so it was a fair deal. The volunteers on the stand were very amused to see us buy each other a gift and swap like that. It was a nice ‘feel-good’ idea.

Then it was time to catch the train. We got to the station, picked up the ticket and even had time for a fast-food all-fat burger at Lotteria. Wasn’t I just there??

I left Mi-youn and boarded the train only to be rudely kicked out of my seat (see sour note at back) but in my new seat I got to meet a very nice fighter pilot in the Korean army. A bit cute too but only 22.

The rest of the trip was uneventful except the new man in the seat next to me kept making odd sucking noises. I don’t how or why.

On arriving in Seoul I had no money for a taxi. I tired a couple of bank tellers but apparently my card is “invalid for this service”. In the end I had to walk home. Thankfully its not far and only took 30-40 minutes. Even more thankfully Seoul is pretty safe so I could actually do that.

So that ends my recollection of my trip to the Pusan International Film Festival 2001.

What Fun!

Sour note: Just as my great (almost) weekend closes I have a rotten encounter with a dumb ajoshi. He changed my ticket with his, I don’t know why. But just as its too far to walk back, my car being the opposite end of the train, I realise his ticket ends before mine. I absolutely totally and definitely refuse to get out of this seat. And I hope from now on not to fall for that stupid trick again. And when I got to my new seat there were two girls too scared to talk to a foreigner even when I spoke in Korean. I hope the rest of the trip is better than the start…off we go!!

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That is the final instalment of the my travel diary from the PIFF 2001.