Category: KOREA

Our Twisted Hero by Yi Munyol, Trans. Kevin O’Rourke

gordsellar0 Comments

I haven’t read a lot of Korean fiction lately. Of course, I haven’t read a lot of fiction lately, so that is part of why. But after a conversation in which this book came up, I decided to pick it up and try again, after having set it down twenty pages in, a year or two ago. I’ve been ill this weekend, and needing a break from grading, so I’ve read two short novels so far, of which this is the second. Our Twisted Hero is quite transparently an allegory of the process of dictatorship — especially the cult-of-personality type …

Continue Reading

Upcoming Korean SF Film: AM 11:00

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 55 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, there have been a few Korean SF film projects going on lately, and the most recent film in process now is a time-travel effort titled AM 11:00. I don’t know when it’s supposed to come out, though I feel like I saw an ad for it already — but that can’t be, as they only started shooting in May, right? Anyway, according to Hancinema, here’s the deal: “AM 11:00” is about a scientist who invented a time machine and went to the next day’s 11:00 AM, but witnesses a mass murder of his colleagues and comes back to the …

Continue Reading

Seoul SF&F Library — Relocated!

gordsellar4 Comments
This entry is part 54 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

So, recently, the Seoul SF & Fantasy Library relocated to Mapo-gu. The new location is near Hong-Ik Dae University, and is a wonderful space: large, bright, and very versatile, as well as above-ground — it is on the third floor of the building in which it is located. I was meaning to take some photos of the wonderful place, but it slipped my mind before I left, so that will have to await an update for this post. I attended a reception there, where many of Seoul’s SF fans, authors, and other personalities were in attendance, and we celebrated the …

Continue Reading

Childish Employers

gordsellar4 Comments

Just to be up-front, I’m not talking about my own current employer in this post. I’m talking about the experiences of those around me, including Miss Jiwaku but also a number of other people I’ve known in Korea over the years. One of the things I will never understand — and this is a cultural difference — is the poor respect that so many Korean employers have for their employees’, and the incredible amounts of respect they seem to think they have the right to demand from them. Take the process of quitting a part-time job. As far as I …

Continue Reading

Note to Brewer Self: CaCl in the Mash/Boil, and a Student Brew

gordsellar0 Comments

So I’ve sampled some of the Mild ale I made for Miss Jiwaku, and my impression is that it’s not bad, but could use more… more of the maltiness, which is supposed to define the character of the beer. I was looking up some mash chemistry info to reply to a query by another homebrewer and realized that I hadn’t done any water treatment in making my Mild, but that adding Calcium Carbonate (CaCl) could help emphasize the maltiness of the brew. I shall have to remember that next time. My use of Windsor yeast certainly helped (the wort stopped …

Continue Reading

Who Thought Dryco Wasn’t Plausible?

gordsellar0 Comments

Well, I just cracked open the novel Heathern, by Jack Womack, which pretty much describes a world on its way from our familiar, 1980s world into the horror of the most dystopian of his Dryco novels. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs: A baby almost killed me as I walked to work one morning. By passing beneath a bus shelter’s roof at the ordained moment I lived to tell my tale. With strangers surrounding me I looked at what remained. Laoughter from heaven made us lift our eyes skyward. The baby’s mother lowered her arms and leaned out her window. …

Continue Reading

Debito Arudou’s “Micro-Aggressions”: What Really Drives the Highly Sensitive Expat Crazy

gordsellar6 Comments

UPDATE: I’ve been thinking about this post, and I think the HSP concept may be just as flaky as the notion of “microaggressions” (at least as Debito Arudou presents it); it seems to me there’s a simpler explanation possible, which is this: many, many of the people whom I’ve known in Korea who were constantly dogged by the drive to understand why certain kinds of behaviour were so common here, were humanities majors. Humanities majors, when they actually are properly trained, tend to be analysis machines, and just as nature only punishes the most extreme of extravangances in phenotype (the Irish …

Continue Reading

Ze Art Off Traduction…

gordsellar2 Comments

Earlier this semester, I noticed a senior student had signed up for an intro-level conversation course. I asked her what she was doing there, and she just kind of shrugged. When I told her that she and I both knew she didn’t need the course, she told me it was a requirement for graduation. Now, a sensible administration would provide a simple test for students to qualify for a waiver on this particular course… which by definition makes it impossible for us to have such a system, because our administration is useless and intractable. So I told her, point blank, …

Continue Reading

Fruitful

gordsellar8 Comments

I have in the past written about negative things in my experience in Korea, and not as much (especially in recent years) about positive experiences. So I thought I’d talk about a positive one, and believe it or not, it was a class discussion of the recent blackface incident on MBC TV. 

Continue Reading

Coming to Seoul: Dance Performance of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival

gordsellar0 Comments

In the first week of May 2012, the New Zealand group Red Leap Theater (a dance company, by the looks of it) will be performing their rendition of Shaun Tan’s award-winning (and wonderful) wordless graphic novel The Arrival. I’m a huge fan of the book, and have tickets booked for Miss Jiwaku, myself, and our friend Sanko. The performance will be at the LG Arts Center, and you can book tickets here. It’s selling out quickly, so if you are in Seoul and like fantasy or SF, this is a special treat unlikely to be repeated. Tickets are 30,000, 50,000, …

Continue Reading