{"id":4622,"date":"2019-02-25T23:49:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T07:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4622"},"modified":"2019-02-25T23:50:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T07:50:35","slug":"korea-blog-luc-bessons-leon-the-professional-a-cultural-phenomenon-going-strong-in-korea-for-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4622","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: Luc Besson\u2019s &#8220;L\u00e9on: The Professional,&#8221; a Cultural Phenomenon Going Strong in Korea for 25 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/KB-Leon-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4623\"\/><\/center><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>L\u00e9on: The Professional<\/em>, the film that launched director Luc Besson into an international renown, came out a quarter-century ago this year. And in this case, \u201cinternational renown\u201d means he became known outside his native France not just in America but all over the world, and especially here in South Korea. Or rather, Besson the filmmaker has become less a household name in this country than\u00a0<em>L\u00e9on<\/em>the film has, and its name now seems known to more Korean households than ever. Most cellphone accessory shops stock\u00a0<em>L\u00e9on-<\/em>themed cases, and as soon as I snapped one on my phone, everyone I encountered stopped commenting on its age \u2014 few Koreans today would be caught dead with an iPhone 5S \u2014 and started commenting on how much they love the movie the image on its back came from.<\/p><p>All this over a 25-year-old French hitman picture. The range of L\u00e9on merchandise available on the streets of Seoul \u2014 none officially licensed, naturally \u2014 hardly stops at cellphone cases: shirts emblazoned with drawings of Jean Reno\u2019s rough-edged but ascetic assassin-for-hire and Natalie Portman\u2019s smokingly, swearingly precocious orphan spill out of every other university-proximate clothing store. At the city\u2019s frequent craft fairs young artists have applied their images to an ever-widening array of objects, often accompanied by the words \u201clove or death\u201d from the ultimatum so memorably laid down by Portman\u2019s Mathilda to Reno\u2019s L\u00e9on. Unlike\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.lareviewofbooks.org\/the-korea-blog\/essential-korean-fashion-accessory-2018-london-review-books-tote-bag\/\">London Review of Books tote bags<\/a>, which last year enjoyed a moment in Korea as aesthetic objects more or less disconnected from their referent, L\u00e9on often gets referenced in its content as well, in text as well as on screen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.lareviewofbooks.org\/the-korea-blog\/luc-bessons-leon-professional-cultural-phenomenon-going-strong-korea-25-years\/\">at the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>L\u00e9on: The Professional, the film that launched director Luc Besson into an international renown, came out a quarter-century ago this year. And in this case, \u201cinternational renown\u201d means he became known outside his native France not just in America but all over the world, and especially here in South Korea. Or rather, Besson the filmmaker [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4625,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}