UPDATE (17 December 2013): Although I am no longer living in Korea, I occasionally get updates on the situation. Apparently for expats in Korea can arrange for a month worth of coverage through AIG/Chartris, though apparently another moronic, restrictive change recently occurred to the laws governing travel insurance policies sold in Korea, and they only can offer a month of coverage to expats. If you still want to buy through AIG/Chartris, a commenter who sent me an email recommends contacting 이인용. Be warned, you will likely be required to claim that your trip is for business, rather than pleasure, to be …
Category: KOREA
Typology, Teleology, and Essentialism: Comparing Cultures Across Time
I don’t know if I’ll actually undertake this or not, but I certainly have it on my mind. In my Pop Cultures of the English-Speaking World course, I usually teach a segment on the Flapper Girl, inviting students to compare this American, 1920s concept of the “New Woman” with the phenomenon that arose in the mid-2000s, where young women’s consumption patterns began to draw criticism and the label “된장녀” (Soybean Paste Girl) came into sudden and widespread use. While the (Korean) term has kind of melted into the background, it’s still very much present in the minds of young people, …
천군 (Heaven’s Soldiers) revisited: Hanmura Ryō’s Sengoku Jieitai (戦国自衛隊), 독재자 (Dictator), and more Korean SF News
Long ago, I posted briefly about the monstrosity that is Heaven’s Soldiers (천군) a while back (and discussed it in an interview, too), but this is a point that is sure to interest those who, like me, have no access to Korean SF except through film and that small cache of English translations online linked in my sidebar (okay, here you go). As you may recall, Heaven’s Soldiers is a South Korean SF film about North and South Korean soldiers cooperating on the construction of nuclear weapons with which to apparently meet the threat of foreign hegemonic domination or invasion or …
At my local Homeplus Express
There’s been a riot of complaint about the trend in Korea of little local mini-marts run by the big chain stores, like Homeplus/TESCO and Emart. These little shops set up in plain-jane neighborhoods that have, well, not much in the way of mini-marts, and because of the name value and a slightly higher diversity of products, they seem to win out among those who either aren’t grocery shopping online, or who happen to need something right away. (As we did this morning.) The complaints are mostly that these shops are hurting the mom’n’pop stores, and, well, they are. Of course, …
Vampires, Confucianism, Christianity’s Latent Monarchism, and the Translation of Sociohorror
(Note: I’m filing this under Korean SF, though it only fits there if we define SF as “speculative fiction”: still, I think this post does appeal to a crucial question at the heart of the reception of SF and other fantastical genres in cultures foreign to the culture of a given work’s original production. So there.) So I’ll admit it now: I’ve been watching True Blood. Yes, yes, it’s trashy. But as someone who is not very plot-minded, I have to say, it does a particular trick with a knife that I, too, am learning to do. I’m close to …