The group sang the English-language version of their male-baiting single “The Boys,” which was co-written by Teddy Riley, famed for his work with Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown and Usher.  I thought they looked good during the performance and fortunately they left the Nazi uniforms at home.  I am not a fan of pop music, but this song is just as good as anything released by Brittney Spears.  However, I just can’t picture the group making it big in America other than within the Asian-American market due to the fact that pop stardom in the US seems to have as much to do with singular personalities than actual singing ability (ie-Lady Gaga).  As long as their is not a singular personality within Girls Generation driving media attention their way I just don’t think they are going to become big in the US, but if the group does make it big in the US they definitely worked hard to do so.

Girls’ Generation will appear on two U.S. TV talk shows. The leading K-pop girl group will appear on CBS’ “The Late Show with David Letterman” as a guest next Tuesday and give a five-minute performance, their agency SM Entertainment said.

They will present “The Boys,” the title song of their third full length album, which was released globally at the end of last year, the agency added.  [Chosun Ilbo]

While Seung-keun is surviving on the island a young mentally unstable woman, Kim Jung-Yeon (Jung Ryeo-Won) spends her time horded in her room in her Mom’s apartment overlooking the Han River.  She spends her days on the Internet and at night likes to take pictures of the Moon.  One night while looking through her camera lens she notices HELP! written in the sand of Bamseom Island.  From then on Jung-yeon begins to follow Seung-keun’s life on the island from the view of her camera lens.  Eventually Jung-yeon begins to communicate with Seung-keun by throwing wine bottles with simple messages off of the bridge at night.  Seung-keun responds to her messages by writing in the sand for her to see.  Their relationship over the rest of the movie expands to where she eventually has a deliveryman deliver Jajangmyeon to Seung-keun.  This part of the movie was really hilarious.  The rest of the movie continues to develop the strange relationship between the two and you will have to see the movie yourself to determine if Seung-keun is rescued and whether he ever meets Jung-yeon.

Overall the movie is very funny and I was surprised I hadn’t heard of this movie before.  This movie at a glance may seem like a Korean copy of Tom Hanks’ Castaway movie but I can assure you this one is much better and is more than just a castaway movie.  How he makes a life for himself on the island is an important part of the movie but his odd relationship with Jung-yeon is what I think makes this movie much better than Tom Hanks’ Castaway.  Since there is no special effects or fast paced action the entire movie is depended on how engaging the two lonely and troubled characters are to viewers.  Fortunately this movie doesn’t need any special effects to make up for poor acting because Jung Jae-young I think is definitely Tom Hanks’ equal at playing the castaway role and Jung Ryeo-won is very skilled at playing a mentally disturbed person.  These two together is too much for even Tom Hanks to beat out.  So if you are looking for a good movie to watch that the whole family can enjoy then definitely check out Castaway On The Moon.

For those who are interested in seeing more about this film here is the trailer for Castaway On The Moon:

Insooni with her daughter.

An Internet user who gained notoriety by casting doubt on the academic credentials of rapper Tablo and is being sought by police for libel, has now turned his guns on the famous pop diva Insooni.

The user, who uses the ID “Whatbecomes,” is a Korean American surnamed Kim (59) and lives in Chicago. He reopened an online forum in October last year where people accused Tablo of faking his Stanford degree.

Now Kim says Insooni lied about her daughter’s acceptance at Stanford University. In a message posted on Dec. 11, when news came out that the 19-year-old had been accepted by the university, Kim pointed out that American universities announce their list of successful applicants in May, not December, and that it is physically impossible to make such announcements so early.

Kim said Insooni, who is half Korean, has a grudge against Koreans for the prejudice she suffered, and wanted to cover up a tax evasion scandal by faking her daughter’s acceptance at Stanford. [Chosun Ilbo]

The tax evasion charge comes from when Insooni had to pay a fine back in 2008 for not declaring fully how much money she made that year.  Her daughter reportedly received an e-mail last month from Stanford saying she was accepted.  The online agitator I can prove is wrong about the admissions decisions timeline by simply going to the Stanford university admissions page where they have a posting that they released email’s on December 9, 2011 to everyone who applied for early admission to the university:

Admission Decisions to be Released Earlier Than Expected

December 9, 2011

Restrictive Early Action applicants will be sent their admission decisions beginning at 3pm today. Decisions will be sent via email beginning at 3pm (Pacific Time), several days ahead of schedule. The admission committee finalized its selection process earlier than anticipated and in an effort to quell anxiety among applicants, parents, counselors, and alumni, Dean Shaw made the decision to release decisions today, December 9. Please understand that while we will begin to send decisions at 3pm (Pacific Time), it may take some time before your decision reaches you. Decision emails will not reach every applicant immediately at 3pm. It may take several hours before decisions are received. If we encounter any technical glitches or your internet service provider blocks our email, delivery may be interrupted. As a result, we respectfully ask that you do not call or write to the Office of Undergraduate Admission to request your admission decision. We will not begin releasing decisions over the phone until Wednesday of next week.

We understand and empathize with your anxiety right now and we will do everything in our power to ensure that your admission decision reaches you as soon as possible. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

December 10th is when Insooni’s representative disclosed that her daughter had been admitted to Harvard.  So this “Whatbecomes” character is obviously wrong and the information on Stanford admissions timelines was so easy to find it makes me wonder if he was outright lying?

Finally, Robert Koehler makes a good point on how interesting it will be to see if the American government is willing to extradite the US citizen making these claims to Korea to face defamation charges?  This guy may be a liar but it would be a scary thing if the US government starts to extradite people to foreign countries for telling mistruths online.

 

Tapped as one of the year’s brightest shooters, Homefront had a lot going for it. A compelling story about a near-future in which the U.S. is invaded by a unified Korea had potential, as did the solid game engine. But even outrageous PR stunts by publisher THQ couldn’t stave off lukewarm reviews from critics, who blasted Homefront for its dated gameplay and brief campaign.

By the way here is one of the stunts the THQ PR people pulled off in LA to promote the game.

I may have had low expectations before watching this film, but it ultimately ended up being one of the funniest Korean comedy movies I have seen.  It is about a small town cop named Jeong Do-man played by Jeong Jae-young who is known by doing everything “by the book”.  The small town that he works in has recently been plagued by a string of bank robberies and a new police chief is brought in from the big city to catch the crooks.  In order to rebuild public confidence in the local police force the chief decides that it would be a good idea to conduct a training exercise where one of his policemen robs a local bank and his police have to respond.  The chief gets one of the banks to play along with the training exercise and he selects Do-man to rob the bank.  However, Do-man who always does everything to the best of his ability conducts a bank heist more complex and cunning than the police chief could have ever imagined.  What was supposed to be a quick police training media stunt to build confidence in the police force turns into a long term stand off with many twists and turns as Do-man is able to thwart multiple attempts by the police to arrest him.

I laughed quite a bit watching this movie and thoroughly enjoyed it all the way until the end. My wife was actually working in the kitchen and was wondering what I was laughing at and she ended up sitting down and watching the whole movie with me as well.  ”Going By the Book” is a type of action comedy in the same mold as My Wife Is A Gangster so it might not be the type of comedy that everyone will find funny, but I think most people will. If you are looking for a good comedy to watch I highly recommend checking this one out.

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The movie is directed by Park Chan-wook who has directed a number of other movies I have liked such as the “Vengeance Trilogy” and stars Song Kang-ho who is one of my favorite Korean actors.  In addition it has the actress Kim Ok-bin getting naked so you would think this would be a good movie, however in my opinion it is horrible.  So horrible in fact I couldn’t watch it to the end.  From what I did watch I can tell you that Song Kang-ho plays a devout priest who willing allows himself to be used to test a vaccine against an ebola type of virus killing people in Africa.  He is the first person to recover from the virus due to the vaccine.  However, there is a side effect, he turns into a vampire.  Not only does he turn into a vampire, but he is also a horny vampire thus the reason why he lusts after the wife of his best friend.  Ultimately the priest ends up fooling around with his best friends wife who then convinces him to kill her husband who she claims abuses her even though he isn’t.  The vampire kills his best friend but is haunted by visions of his best friend’s corpse and his wife eventually admits that she lied about the abuse.   The vampire is upset about this and kills her and turns her into a vampire.  She then goes around killing people and that is all I needed to see.

Maybe fans of vampire horror movies will like this flick but I just couldn’t get into it and just thought it was dumb.  Did anyone else have the same thoughts when viewing this movie?

We all know that it does get tiresome hearing from locals about how Korea has 4 seasons, but the seasonal climate is actually something I like about Korea.  My favorite season is autumn with all of the outstanding colors that blanket the peninsula.  Definitely try and get out and enjoy some the outstanding mountain locations for viewing the fall colors.  Here are some of my recommendations, if you live in Seoul and don’t want to travel far then head over to Gwangneung & the Korea National Arboretum.  It is located just outside of Uijongbu and is a beautiful location to view the fall colors as well as visit the tomb of King Sejo.  For those able to travel away from Seoul the best two locations I have seen to view the fall colors are Woraksan National Park and Songnisan National Park.  Both parks are located in the rugged mountains of Chungcheongbuk-do are provide some of the best hiking in the country.  Additionally both these parks do not see the heavy level of visitors that a much more popular location like Soraksan National Park sees during the autumn time.

Does anyone else have their own recommendations of where to go to view the fall colors?

Note: This is a continuation of a series of postings I started a few months ago that I never got around to completing.

The movie is about a reclusive pawn shop owner Cha Tae-sik (Won Bin) who befriends a little girl named So-mi (Kim Sae-ron) that frequents his store. So-mi’s mother is a drug smuggler who steals some packages of heroin from a local gangster. In retaliation the gangster kidnaps her and So-mi in order to get the drugs back. The kidnapping leads to the reclusive Cha helping the drug smuggling gangsters to move their drugs in order to get the girl and her mom released. However, things don’t go as planned and Cha ultimately has to fight multiple crime syndicates and the police to rescue the kidnapped So-mi.

Cha goes on to beat and kill a number of gangsters in his quest to rescue the girl while both the gangsters and the local police are confused by who this pawn shop owner really is. The movie eventually discloses Cha’s real identity and why he is a recluse that has such great martial arts and gun fighting skills. The movie concludes with some of the best fight scenes in a Korean movie as Cha has his final showdown with the gangsters to rescue the little girl.

The director for this film Lee Jeong-beom I think did a commendable job putting together a fast paced film with some great choreographing of the fight scenes. Keep in mind that this film is very violent and deserving of an R rating for those who don’t like watching those type of movies. Won Bin I thought was really good playing the stoic hero in this film, which is a big change from playing the wimpy younger brother in the hit Korean War movie Taeguki. The sound and video quality from the Blu-ray was top notch as to be expected and I even found the subtitles to be pretty well done considering some of the poor subtitles I have seen before with Korean movies.

As I mentioned earlier in this posting “The Man From Nowhere” I think is one of the best Korean action films. I really like “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” and “Old Boy“and would still rank them higher than this film simply because of the more complex plot and style brought to those films. However, “Man From Nowhere” is a worthy competitor that I highly recommend that fans of Korean action films check out.

Pop star Rain will begin his mandatory two-year military service on Oct. 11.

The singer-actor, whose real name is Jung Ji-hoon, will begin his stint as an active-duty soldier at the Uijeongbu 306 Reserve Battalion.

“I will enlist in the army next month,” the 29-year-old wrote on his official website Friday. “It’s been almost 10 years since I made my debut and I was able to do so many things thanks to my fans’ love and support. I truly appreciate having tried to do my best and having experienced many honorable moments.”

He went on to say that his entry into the military came rather late. “I’m a little embarrassed that I’m beginning the service rather late. I will try even harder to make up for the tardiness.”  [Korea Times]

I wonder if any of these famous pop stars in South Korea that have joined the ROK Army have ever became KATUSA’s?  It seems like being a KATUSA would actually be something useful for Jung Ji-hoon’s career after the Army since he could really work on his English skills.