Tag: KOREA

Education Fever: Society, Politics, and The Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea by Michael J. Seth

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I’ve decided to stop doing the “bookdumps” I’ve been doing, where I briefly review a ton of books, and instead give individual reviews — however brief they might sometimes be — their own individual posts. I’m starting with the Hawai’i Studies on Korea series hardback Education Fever: Society, Politics, and The Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea by Michael J. Seth, an academic text about the history of education, attitudes towards it, and its development in South Korea. This book should, in my opinion, be required reading for anyone who’s coming to work as a teacher of any kind in …

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Seumniette?

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I’m somewhat mystified, but had to share: Lime just informed me that, among Korean fans of the TV series Lost, in online discussions the character Juliette, is (sometimes: see the comment section) referred to as 슴리에트 “슴리엣”, which for those of you who can’t read Hangeul sounds like “Seumniette.” The “n” sound is a liason between the m in “Seum” and the “l” in “-liette,” so the latter half of the name, “-liette” obviously taken from the character’s name, but “seum” requires a little explanation if you don’t speak Korean. It’s the second half of the word “gaseum” (which could …

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Hwansang Teukgeup

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I think I spelled that right. Tonight, Lime and I were riffing on the theme songs of TV shows we watched as kids. She recognized far more of mine than I did of hers, which is only to be expected — English-language media got aired here more than Japanese or Korean shows got aired in Canada (with the notable exception of Astroboy, and, technically, Sailor Moon, though the latter came onto TV — or returned to TV, maybe? — only when I was too cool for cartoons). Anyway, amid us singing the theme songs for the Smurfs, the Flintstones (“They …

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Bananagirl Wins the Prize

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Back in the days when I still played with Dabang Band, we used to joke about hiring telephone girls to dance for one of our shows. You know, the girls in vinyl skirts who get hired to dnace when new phone shops or hardware outlets open. (See here or here for examples. There’s girls with a dancing soju bottle here, too.) I never took the idea seriously, but seeing the video below, I now think Dabang should have permanently hired on a troupe of such young ladies, contracting them always to wear blonde wigs and zebra-print hot pants. (And a …

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삼거리 극장 (The Ghost Theater, aka Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater)?

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UPDATE (17 Feb 2008): I have a copy on its way. Lime ordered it for me. Last time we checked, it wasn’t available anywhere, but now it is. Whee!  Ever since I heard about this film, I’ve wanted to see it, but I’ve never seen it on any shelf, or advertised here, and it’s never available at Yesasia.com. And yeah, it does exist — there’s even a trailer here er, here: And yeah, in one way, it looks like another Fox Family, a film I hated in the theater (though it grew on me later), but even if the ghosts …

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