kangmi: learning korean

The Unforgiven | 용서받지 못한 자

Yoon Jong-Bin may be a baby-faced twenty-seven-year-old, but he’s also a young director with a bright future. The Unforgiven, his graduation thesis project at Chung-Ang University, is a powerful story of relationships shaped during compulsory South Korean military service. The film was released at the 2005 Pusan International Film Festival and was screened in the Un Certain Regard category at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

I saw The Unforgiven at The University of Notre Dame last night. Yoon answered audience questions after the screening. That I got to experience two of my favorite things—Korea and film—in the same evening—has but one clear precedent—a 1989 screening of an execrable piece called America, America. Fortunately, The Unforgiven more than makes up for the other.

Some highlights:

-Although I knew better, it was still hard to disregard the apparent gay undertone of the movie (which goes more to show I’ve been away from Korea for a while). That easy same-sex intimacy one finds among Koreans looks very different to Western eyes. Time after time, Seung-Yong appears to be about to tell Tae-Jung what he came to say, and every time I held that in the back of my mind as a possible reason, even though I knew that wasn’t it. Knew it. I wasn’t surprised when an audience member asked the director about it. He said that he’s been asked about it everywhere he’s gone except, of course, in Korea.

Posted by kangmi on October 3, 2006 at 5:18 PM0 comments

The Unforgiven

I don’t know the Korean title, but I have a chance to see Yoon Jong-Bin’s “The Unforgiven” Monday night. As a movie, is it worth my time?

Posted by kangmi on September 28, 2006 at 7:51 PM0 comments

Living in Korea

In the October/November issue, Dwell magazine did a brief article on Pixel House in Heyri Art Valley, a planned community located near the edge of the DMZ. The article is not available online, but an article about the house (conceptual design here) is available at Interior Design.

The blame for this article description in Dwell’s table of contents should fall directly on the shoulders of the editors:

Places like the Heyri Art Valley are boldly changing the face of the demilitarized zone—and are putting the Seoul back in South Korea.

That should win the award for the Worst Seoul Pun. When did Seoul ever leave South Korea? When did Heyri Art Valley move to Seoul?

Posted by kangmi on October 14, 2004 at 9:00 AM0 comments

Workplace learning

Jennifer Salopek, in the October 2004 issue of T+D:

In February 2003, an arsonist set fire to a milk carton filled with gasoline aboard a subway train in Daegu, South Korea. More than 200 people were killed, and hundreds more were injured. In the aftermath, six subway officials were arrested and the head of the subway corporation was fired.

In January 2004, an arsonist kindled a blaze aboard a moving train while it passed through an undersea tunnel in Hong Kong. Subway operations personnel extinguished the fire in less than 10 minutes, and no lives were lost.

Those examples are a testimonial to commitment to staff training and the continuous learning environment at MTR Corporation Limited, the company that operates the privatized underground railway system in Hong Kong. Alongside its systematic approach to identify the root causes of accidents, incidents, and delays, the company establishes special task forces to study major incidents on other railways. The task forces conduct “read-across” exercises to identify preventive and avoidance measures to be instituted in MTR’s system. After Daegu, that task force identified 20 major actions to be taken, and training reinforcement was conducted by the learning unit.

No mention of what the Daegu subway corporation learned from the incident.

Posted by kangmi on October 13, 2004 at 3:00 PM0 comments

This week’s credits

- Thanks to the Marmot for drawing my attention to Korean Historical Dramas. My television watching is limited to 아름다운 유혹 and the occasional episode of Law and Order, so the historical dramas will just have to wait.

Posted by kangmi on May 14, 2004 at 9:41 AM0 comments

아름다운 유혹

Off and on (more off than on) over the years, I’ve watched Korean dramas. First I watched them on Korean television and later on the Internet.

Lately I’ve been deriving increasing satisfaction from watching them. It may be the ridicule-worthy, heavy-handed melodrama or the unusual coincidences. It may be spotting the production mistakes or the big holes in the storyline. It may be that I can now understand small, simple exchanges and bits and pieces of the rest.

The latest drama I’m watching is KBS’ 아름다운 유혹. For some reason, it makes me want to write TWOP-style recaps of each 25-minute episode. Yes, I really am more interested in learning the language, but the snark is dying to get out. Additionally, because I can’t understand everything that’s going on, I’m making up my own storyline. I have no idea which is better, mine or the real one.

But I’m sure enjoying mine.

Posted by kangmi on April 22, 2004 at 2:09 PM0 comments