For a moment I thought I was hallucinating.

When I saw Oceans 13 in theaters last year I don't know if people were really into it. The movie had star power, but a lot of the jokes didn't seem to stick. People did come alive when the luxury cell phone Al Pacino's character got as a gift was a Samsung. Koreans are often on the look-out for any signs that the world knows of South Korea's existence, and sometimes take it to irritating proportions, such as constant boasting about such-and-such a company, or some athlete or other, or X-thousand years of history, or twice as many seasons as you're probably used to.

I do sort of the same thing, though. Just in a less obnoxious way. I get a kick out seeing references to Korea slipped in to Western media. Generally I feel like my life in Korea has little to do with my life outside of it, but when I see a bit of hangeul on American TV, or drive by a Korean church, or see some ramyeon for sale at Giant Eagle, it's like when Jennifer from 1985 sees Jennifer from 2015 in Back to the Future II.

Case in point I was watching a Britney Spears show on MTV on Sunday---don't ask---and saw her video for "Break the Ice," which was uploaded in March and has over 15 million views. The whole thing's a cartoon, and near the beginning there's some hangeul written on a billboard as the screen pans across a skyline. Nothing unusual, until I did a mental double-take and remembered that the video isn't by a Korean artist, and that not everyone in the world ordinarily reads or uses hangeul. (Hangeul is the most scientific alphabet. Did you know that?)



Another notable example is from an episode of The Sopranos, when Steve Bucemi's character works at a Korean dry cleaners.



It's a particularly notable appearance because of all the similarities between Koreans and Italian-Americans, at least in the stereotypes we've come to know and love get accustomed to. The men share a love of track suits and the women favor big hair and gaudy, colorful pants suits. Both profess a love for family above all else, and will help a family member even if it means hurting strangers. Both love to curse and both have a flair for the melodramatic. And both Koreans and Italian-Americans talk about food 83% of the time.

Quite a few movies set in LA will have some Korean, either spoken or written: Jackie Brown, American History X, Training Day, to name a few. And of course there's that Keanu Reeves movie from earlier in the year, Street Kings. I saw it on the plane over here, and it wasn't that bad, but some Koreans and Korean-Americans took exception to the first few minutes, which portrayed Korean-American gangsters as Korean-American gangsters. My favorite line in the movie, said by "Thug Kim":

Konnichiwa is Japanese. It's insultin' to Koreans.

LOL.

The Korean name in the Britney Spears video isn't news, as like I said the video came out months ago. I was going to look a little more into it but Google kept bringing up bullshit about how the world is falling in love with the beauty of hangeul, the world's most scientific alphabet, that I've decided to just leave you to your own devices there.