Ian Lancaster Fleming, a former journalist, published a spy novel in 1953. It was titled, “Casino Royale.” The main character was James Bond, known as 007. Fleming wrote about the activities of the spy based on his experience as commander of the British Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II.
The next paragraph says the novel led to a successful film franchise, and the next two sentences list all the actors that played Bond. It turns in the fifth paragraph:
But there’s another character vital to every Bond movie: the “Bond girl.”
And again in the tenth:
The main character, the Bond girl and the car may change, but there is one thing that does not change. He always carries a pistol.
And in the thirteenth as well:
The world’s eyes were on Kim Yu-na, who transformed into a Bond girl at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, leaving flames on the ice to burn her Japanese and Chinese competitors.
The piece concludes its winding journey with some dead Japanese:
Spectators especially held their breath when she fired her “pistol” at the end of the short program. It was as if she had slain the audience - and her Japanese competitors Mao Asada and Miki Ando fell in one shot, too.
In 007, Dr. No lived after being shot in the chest because his heart was on the right side, but Kim Yu-na’s competitors will not be able to get back up. Her pistol, aimed at a gold medal, didn’t miss.
Here's the Korean version if you're interested. I think next time I'll give you the last paragraph and the number of turns, and see if anyone can come close to completing the column.
33 comments:
You've hit on the reason why so few people push through to high-level reading competency in Korean.
As you said in your earlier post: "it makes my head hurt."
As Andrei Lankov put it in his review of Myers outstanding work on North Korea (The Cleanest Race):
"Few people have the training and expertise (and willpower) needed to peruse boring and voluminous North Korean novels, or spend days watching equally dull North Korean movies and serials. Fortunately Mr. Myers, a student of North Korea for 20 years who is fluent in Korean and a professor at a Korean university, has all these qualities."
Hee-hee. Folks are kidding themselves if they think South Korean movies, serials and novels are any less dull.
I thought the article would have been better if it had gone into a multi-paragraph discussion on which actor was the best James Bond, and then maybe a paragraph or two summarizing the whole Post-Bond career of Sean Connery. And then, space permitting, analyze the SNL skits that portray Sean Connery appearing on Jeopardy.
After that, the audience would then be more properly prepared to hear the author's views on Kim Yuna's Olympic performance.
Imno - I can't vouch for the quality of Korean novels because I don't (can't) read them, but I can vouch for Korean cinema, which has been probably the best national cinema in Asia and one of the best national cinemas outside the US since the early 2000's. In fact I've often wondered why Korean dramas are such rubbish given the quality of (many of) their films.
They could do without this sort of awful writing though. Ugh.
Can I write an article about Kim Yuna and Octopussy?
"I can vouch for Korean cinema, which has been probably the best national cinema in Asia..."
Well, there's no accounting for taste. But putting Korean cinema ahead of the Chinese (not to mention Japan and Taiwan if we're just considering East Asian cinema) would go against the view of most critics.
What is this article about?! It's like the author is writing a stream of consciousness explanation of the word "Bond Girl". I thought this was especially telling "In the first film, “Dr. No,” M tells 007 to change his pistol from an Italian Beretta to a German Walther PPK, a 7.65-millimeter caliber seven-shot pistol. It is the same model Kim Jae-kyu used to shoot former President Park Chung Hee."
Kim Yu Na Made a pistol with her hands -> James Bond has a pistol -> Park Chung Hee was shot with a pistol.
Disagree. The golden age of Hong Kong cinema has long since passed and mainland Chinese cinema, aside from a few occasional successes, has faded into relative obscurity since the end of the 90's. Japanese cinema is largely the same - a handful of quality films that appear now and then but mostly dormant. In the meantime, Korean films have put up an excellent showing in prestigious international film festivals. Directors like Hong Sang-soo and Kim Ki-duk are highly regarded on the international circuit and others, like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, are acclaimed both domestically and abroad. The view that Japanese/Chinese cinema is superior is outdated, I think. There's a reason that the biggest regional film festival is held in Busan.
In one of my language classes, the prof. talked about how the Japanese essay style was evaluated by how far away from the subject one could ramble,how many paths they could take before getting to the end.
It sounds like its the same with many of the Korean opinion essays we've read in translation. I was thinking specifically of that essay posted awhile back about foreigner workers posting as tourists to try to get a date.
Can anyone confirm this bit of info? I'll try to find some examples to back it up when I have more time.
It would be an interesting writing exercise to try...
Were there any Dokdo/Liancourt Rocks references? Cuz, that would have pretty much been the trifecta of Korean allegory.
@baekgom84
Hee-hee! Hong Sang-soo and Kim Ki-duk, huh? Like I said no accounting for taste. Here are some of the works from those "masters":
Kim Ki-duk's "Beautiful"
Hong Sang-Soo's "Woman on the Beach"
What is it you find worth watching about this kind of bathos-infused crap?
Next time you think Chinese cinema doesn't have anything to offer take a look at nearly anything by Jia Zhang-ke. I recommend "Xiao Wu" or the more recent "Still Life".
But if you prefer crap like JSA or My Sassy Girl or Shiri or Beautiful there's not much I can tell you. To each his own I guess.
I think the pistol thingy makes most ESL types laugh as we only recognize it as the dungchim, the kookie Korean kid game where the object is to invade a teacher's ass cheeks with your fingers. This somehow makes the kid who is feeling around a smelly ass crack seem like the clever one. Klogic.
But the writing is pretty over the top. She burned her Canadian competitor too, no? But no mention there. Just a mention of Korea's traditional enemies.
Man.
Korea's rapid development has required Korean culture to catch up quickly to standards of behavior western culture has had the leisure of centuries to develop. The Korean press reacting with self righteous indignation when their country men/women WIN leads me to believe Korean culture needs to learn how to be good winners on the international stage, notably when they best nations they view as having bullied them around for a long time (Japan, China, the USA).
Once the older generation of Koreans are replaced by the younger generation, Korea will be a radically different place. I doubt it will ever quite synchronise with Western culture (not necessarily a bad thing) but I suspect - I hope - that many of the issues that us ex-pats have with living here (including the shoddy journalism) will be greatly reduced or even eliminated.
@Imno - My argument was not that Chinese cinema has nothing to offer, but that taken as a whole it lacks the depth and quality of Korean cinema. And I didn't say I liked either Hong Sang-soo or Kim Ki-duk (I'm not particularly big fans of either, although I liked Kim's 'Samaria') but just refuting your point that Japanese or Chinese cinema is more internationally recognised. Interesting that both the directors you called out are not very well-received domestically.
Shiri, JSA and My Sassy Girl are just typical blockbuster fodder. I'll grant you that and raise you Taegukgi and Friend, which I thought were crap. But try any of Memories of Murder, The Chaser, Oldboy, The Foul King, Save the Green Planet, Bloody Tie, Oasis, Crying Fist, A Dirty Carnival... etc. It's not a coincidence that Korea is one of the only countries where local product consistently outperforms Hollywood, or that Hollywood are continually buying the remake rights from them.
I always see Korean nationalism expressed in the form of "we burned China and Japan" as analogous to my fellow Canadians who express patriotism in the form of "we're better than the dirty USA in these ways". It's a kind of attitude copped by Canadians who don't really travel much and think Tim Hortons is the art of coffee.
As I say a lot, sometimes you don't understand your nation's own "we're a good and great people because of x" propaganda until you go abroad and hear Koreans etc saying the exact same thing.
So indeed baekgom84 I think as more Koreans live and work abroad, Korean society is going to get less hung up on the idea the best way to exhibit national pride is phrase it in the form of of "we're smiting Japan, China, the USA this way".
Chickjin, studies in contrastive rhetoric have looked at how different cultures write and what that means for learners of English (it would be interesting to learn if JSL or KSL books talk about it in the opposite direction). I don't have time to dig up some good links now, but I just remember stumbling across it back when I was a student.
It seems, and this is me reaching back 6 years ago to a field in which I was a novice, that it was trendy to dismiss the idea of "circular" writing styles for Asians as ethnocentric and wrong, but I'm really not sure why. Maybe because Asian writers themselves don't see it that way? (Just like how Americans don't call it "Americna football"?) I dunno, but there's clearly a difference when you read a lot of what's on the Joongang Ilbo opinion page.
I don't think this article is about Korean nationalism, but I'll just add to the conversation that I'm sorry to say I didn't notice American ethnocentrism and nationalism until I spent time overseas. It's so firmly entrenched that people don't realize it, don't think about it, and ultimately can't explain it.
@baekgom84
I admire your enthusiasm. I'm familiar with a few of the titles you mentioned, but have only seen The Foul King (cute enough, but meh) and Old Boy (outstanding film, but considering how heavily it relies on a Japanese story - a la Scorsese's version of Infernal Affairs - how "Korean" is this film?).
I'll give the other films you mention a look. Hey, like most non-Koreans living here, it's not that I want to dislike Korean tv, film and pop culture - on the contrary, I've gone out of my way time and time again to try to find value in it. At a certain point though you've just got to admit that the Emperor has no clothes...
@Imno
Believe me, I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about Korean TV, which reaches levels of shite I had never thought possible. The problem I find with Korean pop culture is that most of the good stuff is buried deep, deep beneath the layers of garbage. But I'm adamant that it is there, especially in the case of cinema.
It's true that the concept of Oldboy was originally taken from a Japanese comic, but my understanding is that only the first 10 or 15 minutes of the film are directly lifted from the comic, and the rest is all original content. I could be mistaken on this though.
IMO the best film among those that I mentioned is Memories of Murder, even better than Oldboy. The Chaser, while very similar to Memories, is also excellent.
Unfortunately the 'golden age' of Korean cinema seems to be winding up, so we get a lot of brainless blockbusters or underground art films but not very much in-between. Hopefully something can kick-start the industry and get the ball rolling again.
@imno there's no accounting for uninformed opinions. in the past 10 years Korean movies have won more international awards (including at Cannes) than Chinese, Japanese or Taiwanese??? films.
Anyone here actually know anything or we just posting random crap since we know we can shout down any native Korean speakers.
Dude, don't know where you're from. Korean movies has a great reputation in the US, not least because of constant pimping from Tarantino, Devin Faracci from CHUD and Harry Knowles from aintitcool. You're coming off as completely ignorant about the international movie scene.
@Brian actually what you weren't prepared for is being a minority in any country.
It's frustrating when your POV isn't in the majority or represented in media isn't it.
That simple adolescent truth is basically the story of this site and 90% of the ppl who post comments here.
Wait till you can save up some scratch and afford to hit up some other places... Russia, Israel and Japan. Then you'll know what nationalism actually is.
arilevi, what the hell are you talking about? This thread isn't about nationalism, or about your dislike of me or my posts, it's about the writing style seen in the Joongang Ilbo.
Thanks for playing.
I did like 거짓말 (Lies) right when it came out just for how bizarre it was and how much it pissed off the public. It wasn't the best film, but I'll admit it was quirky and interesting. Like everyone else, I really wanted (and still want) to like 친구 (Chin-gu) for those fabulous high school fight scenes (really amazing) but it's just not a good film. In fact, if one is honest, it's really bad, especially the cheesy ending. Or the fakey "drug addiction" part.
I guess I'm still looking for something like Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together or In the Mood for Love from a Korean - I always thought that type of romantic angle would work well here. (But Koreans tend to destroy decent romantic material).
Wong's cinematographer Christopher Doyle actually came to Korea to shoot "Motel Cactus" for Park Ki-Yong about the time of Happy Together and I had very high hopes. "Motel Cactus" looks gorgeous but (sadly) it's just a terribly film (as Park himself has admitted)...
I definitely keep my eyes open for good pop culture stuff in Korea but like I said it's getting to the point when I gotta admit there's not much to be had.
I agree with the poster who mentioned "Memories of Murder" twice. Great movie.
"Memories of Murder"? Umm, yeah I've seen that.
I appreciated the portrayal of just how awful police work is in Korea - beating confessions out of people, bumbling around and disturbing crime scenes, etc. But the film was supposed to have had value as a piece of drama not as a documentary, right?
Remember the closing scene? The little girl, it turns out, has seen the murderer the detective has been searching for(!). Pleadingly, the detective, looks into her face: "did you see his face? what did he look like!?"
The girl pauses... (like so many children portrayed in Korean films, there is something disturbingly precocious and studied about her performance; you never see the wonderful artlessness of actual Korean kids in Korean film, it's always stylized, always Shirley Temple-esque).
All is silent. The girl begins, wants to answer, but hesitates... She looks to the left, to the right - the audience is appropriately cued that whatever she will say is highly significant - "he was just plain..." she says, "just ordinary..."
The music swells... The detective stares off and his face does that special Korean-style frozen dramatic twitch thing (one of 송강호 stock expressions) - the music starts to crescendo. The detective's facial expression says it all: "just ordinary! like anyone of us! oh my god, oh my god!" Fade to black.
Sorry again to be overly critical, but is this what passes for good cinema? Or is there like a sliding scale for Koreans?
I'd say that is definitely over-critical. In fact, what exactly is your criticism of the scene? You're saying it's too dramatic? Too cinematic? I don't quite get it, but you can make anything sound bad if you attach a condescending tone to it. I could tear In The Mood For Love to pieces with that sort of approach. Everyone's entitled to their personal taste but it seems to me like you have a bias.
In fact, what exactly is your criticism of the scene? You're saying it's too dramatic? Too cinematic?
It wasn't clear? It's the opposite of dramatic or cinematic - it's constructed. Watch the scene I linked to and see for yourself how absurdly contrived and puerile it is.
The forced parallelism for example. The cop and the killer both paused to look at the very same spot. But wait that's not enough. The little girl has asked them both the same question (!) "that's so weird..." she says and we dutifully nod in agreement ("so weird"!).
The girl's lines and the delivery, as I explained above, suffer from the same faults - contrived, forced, the opposite of artlessness. Both of the actors performances are awkwardly telegraphed to audience. For instance he asks her, "what did he say?"
And "what was it he said," she wonders aloud to herself, then looks left, looks right (she's thinking you see) and - beat - it comes to her: "that's right! A long time ago..."
Ok, fine I like schmaltzy stuff as much as the next guy, but you're fooling yourself if you are finding great cinema in this crap just because it's delivered in foreign language.
It still sounds like you're explicitly hunting for reasons to hate on the film. The criticisms you have of the end scene are unreasonably harsh - I can't imagine many neutral observers watching the film, listening to your criticisms, and saying, "Yeah, that forced parallelism really ruins the whole film." For the record, I do think it is good cinema and - while this might not mean much to you - I think most people who really enjoy cinema would agree with me. If the film rubs you the wrong way, that's fine, but it's hard to believe that an entire national cinema - one that is held in high regard by most esteemed critics of film - does nothing for you, unless you made a specific point of trying to dislike it. Out of curiosity, what are some of the films that would make your list of favourites? Foreign or otherwise.
I've mentioned several films that I think are "good cinema" above. If it's Korean film you are interested in then I could also suggest Im Kwon Taek's 춘향뎐 & 서편제.
The problem with most modern Korean drama (including attempts at film and tv and even music) is the huge kitch factor. Koreans excel in producing tasteless copies of existent forms of art (which are often themselves of dubious quality and taste).
You have already admitted to disliking the serialized television dramas. Their horrendous weepy melodramatic style is a direct copy of a form of Japanese theater called Shinpa which was enormously popular during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Copying even the name, Koreans called it Shingkuk and based the entire Korean modern theater movement on this crap.
Films like your beloved Memories of Murder suffer from the same faults. It's Koreans trying to do an American murder mystery film. Even this premise is undisguised, as the film preview itself announces: "They didn't even know what a serial murder was!" So, we are treated to a construction of that premise. What will it be like if Koreans try to solve a murder mystery? We soon find out it (unsurprisingly) involves a lot more screaming (이 새끼야!), a lot more flying kicks, and a lot less forensic work - as the film explains they need to send the DNA samples to America (in reality it was sent to Japan, but since the film-makers are doing an American remake of a detective film, American fits the construction better.
Even the film itself celebrates and pays tribute to the imitative nature of the Korean detective drama in a shameless scene of pure schtick which has the entire cast sitting around the tv set, wide-eyed, "humorously" bobbing their heads and shoveling food in their mouths as they watch "수사반장" (The Inspector Chief)! What adds another layer to this already nauseating banquet of kitch is the fact that 70s tv program 수사반장 was itself a copy of the American police detective tv drama Hawaii-5-0 which ran for almost exactly the same 20 year period! Koreans loved "하와이 5-0" as they called. In fact, even today there is much excitement among Koreans over the remake of "Hawaii 5-0" because it will star Koreans Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park as the Chinese and Japanese characters Chin Ho and Kono! What joy!
Like I said if you are looking for schmaltz and kitch, maudlin musicals or slapstick comedy, the Koreans will deliver. And it can be fun to watch: "아이고 새끼야!" and quick smack across the head. But spare me the talk about art films.
I mentioned two films by Im Kwon Taek that I think are exceptions. It's no surprise that both of these films come out of the wonderful Korean tradition of pansori, which is as radically distinct from the popular imitative crap as you can get.
Well I'll grant you that you're certainly well-informed.
I wonder, though, if you're mistaking 'artsy' for 'good'. Memories of Murder is not an 'artsy' film in the way that Seopyeonje or a Wong Kar-wai film is, but it wouldn't do for a film like that to take that kind of approach.
In fact, I daresay Memories of Murder in the hands of Wong Kar-wai or Im Kwon-taek would be a poorer film. The Wong version would be over-stylised and the Im version would be languid and lack energy. I enjoy many challenging, artistic films, but god knows how many films have snookered themselves by over-playing the 'art' card.
Ironically, many of the criticisms you have of the film are reasons why I think the film is quite brilliant - the director's wink to the influencing genre elements. The film does borrow the template of a murder-mystery, but subverts that; the bungling cops, the absent antagonist, the use of dark and, yes, "schmaltzy" humour.
Imitative, though? I'm not going to deny that Korea and its people progressed to this point largely through imitation, whether that be in architecture, business, or art. But how exactly is Memories imitating the 'American murder-mystery film'? Influenced, yes. But I can't grant you imitation. Shiri is imitation. Taegukgi is imitation. Memories merely takes the blueprint and adapts it. There isn't a film made where the influences can't easily be traced to some earlier work. Point out the elements of Memories which you think are direct imitations of the 'American Murder Mystery' film, that aren't simply standard genre elements.
As for the TV dramas, it's not strictly the melodrama that I dislike, it's everything - poor production values, atrocious acting, childish writing... etc. There is one drama that I quite enjoyed though - 막대먹은 영애씨. Unfortunately my Korean isn't yet good enough for me to really appreciate it, and I'm not sure if English subtitles exist. Like Memories, it's not 'art' in the elitist sense but it is deceptively subtle if you can appreciate it.
Lets go with one thumb up and one thumb down for Memories of Murder (and The Chaser which as you say is "very similar" - who'd have guessed another non-imitative film about another real life serial killer).
Reasonable people differ on opinions and taste. What you call a sly wink, I see as an obnoxious guffaw. Your cool is my kitch. So be it.
I had a similar disagreement about taste last night with my spouse; she swears Andrew Lloyd Webber is an intuitive genius, I happen to find his work atrocious and would rather have nails pounded into my skull than to have to sit through the Phantom of the Opera. What cha gonna do?
See you at the movies!
Sounds fair. For what it's worth I enjoyed the sparring. It's a shame that Korean cinema (and pop culture in general) doesn't have what you're looking for. But I suspect as Korea continues to develop, Korean artists will use a wider variety of influences in their work, and then maybe you'll find something a little more worthwhile. Peace.
@Brian
"I don't think this article is about Korean nationalism, but I'll just add to the conversation that I'm sorry to say I didn't notice American ethnocentrism and nationalism until I spent time overseas. It's so firmly entrenched that people don't realize it, don't think about it, and ultimately can't explain it."
I think most (all?) cultures contain a certain level of ethnocentrism, and that it's extremely difficult to be aware of the ethnocentrism in your own culture unless you have spent time abroad. For this reason, I've often felt that Westerners in Korea tend to harp on Korean ethnocentrism a bit too much, perhaps showing their own ethnocentrism in the process (I'm sure I've done it myself). Sure, it's fallacious to say we can't criticize Korean culture for something just because it also happens in our own culture ... but on the other hand, it's important to find some perspective, and not hold Korea to higher standards than we hold our own culture.
When people here say "America's the greatest country in the world" they don't say it after exhaustive analysis of all the other countries, or even after considering what life is like in a few, it's simpy a matter of fact, and trying to dispute it by pointing to other examples will just not compute. Trying to really talk about "greatest country in the world" to some people---or, trying to suggest that America's foreign policy had something to do with 9/11---is seen by a good number of people, I'm sorry to say, as equivalent to disputing somebody's "world's gretest dad" coffee mug. You just . . . don't do it, and you look stupid for trying.
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