Say you watch Korean movies. Often, outside the peninsula itself, this means you’ve gotten into the murderous grotesquerie of Chan-wook Park’s “Vengeance Trilogy,” or Joon-ho Bong’s simultaneously goofy and solemn political allegory of a monster mashThe Host, or any amount of Ki-duk Kim’s vast, high-profile (and as some fans admit, uneven) output. But mention the […]
DESPITE EXPORTING FOOD, film, advanced gadgetry, and dance music with unprecedented fervor and pride, South Korea has still produced curiously little in the way of an international literature. As Japan rose from the aftermath of the Second World War, so did vital men of letters like Kobo Abe, Oe Kenzaburo, and Yukio Mishima — names […]
“Taller and more ruggedly built than their counterparts in Tokyo, Manila, or Bangkok, the people of Seoul exude a sense of resiliency and vitality,” writes Peter Hyun in this book’s introduction, “so much so that they make the other Asians look downright indolent.” Ah, perhaps we have here a publication of the Korean History Channel. […]
Los Angeles’ Korean Cultural Center put on a quiz on Korea, and I picked this book up ostensibly as study material. Frankly, though, I’ve wanted to read it for years. The tradition of the traveling English writer — as distinct from the English travel writer — draws me in without fail, although I tend to […]
You see these thin, sepia-toned “Images of America” books for sale everywhere in Los Angeles. Each one covers a different corner of the city: Bel-Air, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Boyle Heights, Palms, Historic Filipinotown, etc. I’ve even flipped through more than one volume on the old Pacific Electric streetcar system that would eventually become an integral […]
Upon moving to Los Angeles, I made it a priority to visit the Korean Cultural Center, a combined museum, screening room, language school, and library of Korea-related materials. I’ll start taking classes there next year, but I didn’t want to wait to get a library card. I first checked out Huh Moonyung’s Hong Sangsoo, the […]