I understand that people harbor longings for their hometowns, miss old memories, and thirst for a spiritual experience in the countryside. However, do they really all have to flock to the latest famous spot and leave their disorderly footprints all over? These are the sort of people who engrave “I was here” graffiti on rocks. The ecology of the west coast has already been destroyed by so-called “ecological tourism” which is designed to provide a chance for city dwellers to enjoy the experience of catching shellfish. It is not an ecological experience; it is a plundering experience. The mountain girl Lee Young-ja grew exhausted from such visitors. She could barely find a place of comfort.
Why can’t we leave pure and unspoiled places as they are? Why can’t we be satisfied with just enjoying beautiful scenes in films without visiting their location to cut the barks of trees with “I was here” messages? If North Gyeongsang’s plan goes ahead, the villages of Hanul-li in and Bonghwa-gun will suffer irreversible damage.
The last line refers to a plan mentioned a few paragraphs earlier hatched by the local government to turn the village made famous by "Old Partner" into part of a weekend package tour. Last month Gusts of Popular Feeling looked at how invasive the local media has been both to the movie's stars and to the families of the Korean man beheaded in Iraq several years ago. He links to a Joongang Ilbo article that talks about the consequences of the stars' newfound celebrity:
Despite the unexpected popularity of the movie, the elderly couple have complained to the movie crew that their lives have been turned upside down. They say they are inundated with calls and requests from the media and ordinary viewers who want to meet and talk.
“The two are having an unpleasant experience now that the movie has become hugely popular,” said Han Sang-gab, the village headman.
“They are used to living in this tranquil village. With more and more people coming to the village and bugging them, however, they’ve become very sensitive.”
Some television network producers have already visited and filmed the couple’s village without advance permission.
Some even went inside their house although the couple strongly resisted, according to a producer of the movie. The two live in a small hilly village of 40 in Bonghwa county, North Gyeongsang Province.
Since I have you here, it's worth repeating a point ROK Drop made about the film: a few years ago Koreans protested, and urged a boycott of, the James Bond movie "Die Another Day" because it showed North Korean using beasts of burden, yet "Old Partner" has become a surprise sensation. Well, Koreans are of course perceived the foreign movie as an insult. In a post a couple weeks ago I talked about how a Ph.D. candidate at my alma mater complained in her dissertation about a book that used decades-old pictures to illustrate life in present-day South Korea, even though the scenes pictured and described take place all around us. Her commentary, not unusual or uncommon, combined with the popularity of this movie and with fish-out-of-water shows like 패밀리가 떴다 and 맛짱---the latter set in rural Jeollanam-do, the former making occassional trips here---show us how exotic and foreign that lifestyle has been rendered by modern Koreans. Cute enough for a weekend trip or a television show, but too shameful and backwards to be acknowledged otherwise.
5 comments:
But there *is* a legitimate gripe to be had here ~ You're right that the country lifestyle has been exoticized and romanticized by the mostly urban population of Korea, but that's exactly why the images in the Bond film were problematic; they weren't romanticizing a lifestyle the audience knows barely exists anymore (and that's why Old Partner is going gangbusters - using livestock that way for farming is almost completely unheard of anymore, as the film demonstrated.) They were presenting an overall image of the country, created by outsiders and consumed by outsiders with very little or no understanding of the context. I'm not saying it's the crime of the century and the outrage level was justified, but hey, it's really NOT part of the lifestyle anymore. Old dudes on aging machinery, sure, but grampa and his faithful oxen are epic enough for the locals to make a documentary about. It does make the use of that image different.
a few years ago Koreans protested, and urged a boycott of, the James Bond movie "Die Another Day" because it showed North Korean using beasts of burden,
No. Having been involved in some of the press conferences, I can confidently say the media was perturbed because it was thought the movie was depicting South Koreans as using beasts of burden (it wasn't clear which side of the DMZ the cars fell onto).
There were other reasons people were angry about that movie, too. Not that I'm saying the level of response was appropriate.
There's another reason that made Korean moviegoers upset about the cattle scene in Die Another Day. The movie actually showed water buffalo, which is common in Southeast Asia but much harder to find in Korea.
then again, if we start looking to James Bond movies for cinematic representations of daily reality, . . .oy vey!
What? My life is exactly like that.
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