Tag: KOREA

Thank You, Gim Hyung Tae

gordsellar2 Comments

I don’t know whether he’d like or approve of any of my fictional depictions of Korea, but I find Gim Hyung Tae a great inspiration in that area. Whenever I’m writing anything trippy, weird, or odd about this country in my fiction, I turn to his music for inspiration. It’s a strange combination of trance, rock, folk, and 뽕짝 — in proportions that vary from song to song and album to album, but always in proportions that both work, and sound absolutely like Gim Hyung Tae. By the way, if you’re looking for his CDs, you’d be best to ask …

Continue Reading

많이먹어라…

gordsellar2 Comments

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what makes people behave the way they do. When I arrived at the professors’ cafeteria this evening for dinner, I noticed this weird-looking guy staring at me constantly as I made my way up the line, adding food to my tray. When I’d finished, I stopped to get a cup of water, and by then he was staring directly at me. I noticed that he had a face like, well, like a slab of tenderized beef… meaning, I think the man had partaken in more than his fair share of fisticuffs. And, of course, …

Continue Reading

Ajummas Gone Wild

gordsellar2 Comments

Via Justino’s Hep Jive, another of those Youtube videos that reveals something about what it’s like to be in Korea. LJers, check the Youtube video here, and pop over to here and login to see my comments following the video. I’m not complaining, whining, griping, but really, seriously, that’s what plenty of older people (of both sexes, but just more often older women) are like in South Korea. Which is something plenty of Koreans have been around all their lives and sort-of accept as “the way it is”… though it annoys younger South Koreans too, believe me I know. I’ve …

Continue Reading

Kickin’ It in Iksan

gordsellar0 Comments

Okay, this isn’t a song about Iksan, but it does bring back memories of the days when I lived in a small place with, um, limited entertainment facilities, and was surrounded by Westerners mostly just as bewildered about what to do with themselves in their free time. (And for you LJ readers, yeah, I embedded the video below on my site, but you’re missing nothing if you follow the link.)

Continue Reading

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Young Ha Kim (Translated by Chi-Young Kim)

gordsellar0 Comments

Having read and very much enjoyed the Portable Korean Library translation of “The Photo-Shop Murders” and especially “Whatever Happened to the Guy in the Elevator,” I went into this book expecting something dark, funny, and entertainingly disturbing. Kim scores on about half of those expectations: this “novel” (at 120 pages, it’s more of a novella, really) is somewhat disturbing and rather dark. There are entertaining and funny moments, but I was in fact a little bewildered by the book. It certainly didn’t seem to me to be written by the same person who’d written “Whatever Happened to the Guy Stuck …

Continue Reading