According to Randolph, Travolta definitely has a type. “His preference is Middle Eastern or guys with dark features,” he explains. “His taste has changed over the 15 years that I’ve seen him visiting spas. First he strictly liked black guys. For the longest time if you weren’t black, he didn’t want you. Then he was into Middle Eastern men. Then it was Mexicans and other Hispanic guys. Then he moved on to Koreans. I guess he doesn’t have much of a preference any more.”  [Gawker via a reader tip]

You can read more at the link which is NSFW, but you will find out that his preference for Koreans runs in contrast to this popular ROK Drop thread.  Also notice that one of his favorite haunts is the Korean spa pictured above.

The Korean drama version of City Hunter starts out in interesting fashion when the South Korean delegation to Burma in 1983 is hit by a North Korean bomb attack that killed many cabinet members and nearly the ROK President.  This real life incident in Burma is used to start a chain of events that drives the rest of the series.  In response to the bombing five South Korean government officials to include the ROK Defense Minister form a team to lead a covert special operations mission into North Korea to kill selected North Korean generals and military officials.  Two of the people selected for the team were the Presidential bodyguards Lee Jin-pyo and Park Moo-yul who were present at the bombing in Burma.

The team infiltrates into North Korea and completes its mission but when they swim out into the ocean to escape by submarine off the coast of the North Korean city of Nampo the special forces team is gunned down by the submarine crew.  The crew was given orders to kill the commando team by the five South Korean government officials in order to cover up their involvement in the operation.  All 21 men on the commando team are killed except for one, Lee Jin-pyo.  Lee eventually works his way back to South Korea where he kidnaps the son of his friend Park Moo-yul who was killed in the waters off of Nampo.

With Park’s infant son, Lee goes into hiding in the Golden Triangle area of Thailand.  In Thailand Lee forms a drug cartel operation that over the next two decades makes him extremely wealthy.  Lee uses the wealth he has accumulated in order to put into motion his plan for revenge against the five ROK government officials that killed the commando team.  The key part of his plan is Park’s son now named Lee Yoon Sung.  Yoon-sung attends  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and becomes a computer wiz while also being trained in martial arts and conventional weapons by who he believes is his real father Lee Jin-pyo.  Once Yoon-sung gets a job as a computer network security expert within the Blue House in South Korea, Lee Jin-pyo’s plan for revenge moves forward.  As Yoon-sung begins to bring vigilante justice against unsavory characters in Seoul the public begins to call him the City Hunter.

Lee Min-ho as the City Hunter

This all sounds pretty exciting right?  I thought so to at first because this drama had the feel of a big budget Korean action movie especially since it starts out being shot on location in Thailand.  However, after the first few episodes it appears the drama’s director, Jin Hyeok (진혁) decided to try and appeal to the women audience that makes up most of the viewership of Korean dramas and throw in their the typical drama themes of love triangles and other sappy elements like people dying from cancer that seem to be in every Korean drama.  All this does is slow down the pace of the series.  Other typical drama elements of one guy taking on 20 people and beating them all down one by one while the other people all wait there turn to be beaten up gets old.

The lead actor Lee Min-ho 이민호 , who plays Yoon-sung I also found to be unconvincing as a bad-ass tough guy.  He basically has the Korean boy-band looks that I guess the Korean ajummas like in their dramas.  Likewise another main character and Yoon-sung’s love interest Kim Na-na played by Park Min-yeong 박민영 was also unconvincing as a female presidential bodyguard, but she is hot if you like the plastic surgery beauties that frequent Korean television.  However, I did like Kim Sang-joong 김상중 who played the part of Lee Jin-pyo.  He is a convincing bad-ass tough guy that you would expect from a character that went through all he did in the series.

Park Min-yeong as Kim Na-na

I think overall despite its flaws City Hunter is worth checking out yourself to see if Lee Jin-pyo’s plan for revenge succeeds.  I am just a bit disappointed by the drama though because it could have really been much better if it wasn’t weighed down by all the typical Korean drama themes.  I assume the producers of these dramas must think the ajummas won’t watch them without the typical drama themes, but I think that it would be interesting to see if a drama that was straight action throughout could succeed in the Korean market?

Note: City Hunter is available on both Hulu and Netflix.

Normally you would think that someone played a good game to finish 4th, but really Christina did not play a good game and was pretty much kept around by the other contestants because she was not a threat to them.  She was a non-factor for the most part in challenges and for whatever reason was not liked by the other contestants.  She seemed to come across as being a nice person on the show, but people did not trust her.  She also was the subject of a lot of bullying that some have claimed as being racist.  Kushibo has a pretty good discussion of this aspect of the show.

Anyway good luck to Christina in the future, but I don’t think she will ever be invited to compete on Survivor ever again because she was a boring contestant.

It was Friday night, May 22, 2009, and one of New York City’s most storied music venues, the Fillmore at Irving Plaza, was sold out. The line stretched all the way down Irving Place, turned the corner onto East 16th, and kept going. People had come from as far away as Michigan, Toronto, and Ohio, but they weren’t lined up for the latest indie darlings or house music sensation. They’d come to see an improbably successful Korean trio named Epik High, which as far as anyone could tell was the first Korean hip hop act to attract a mainstream American audience.

The group was headed by a skinny 28-year-old named Dan Lee, and when he danced onto the stage that night the audience started dancing with him. Lee—whose nom de rap is Tablo—had a puckish charm, a sly grin, and a reputation as a genius. In South Korea, Lee was already a superstar. He had released four number one albums with Epik High and published a best-selling collection of short stories in both English and Korean. Talk show hosts almost always found a way to mention that he graduated from Stanford in three and a half years with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English. Though that would probably count against a rapper in the US, back home he was lionized as a symbol of success.

Now the group was building a fan base in the States. In addition to its New York show, Epik High had sold out major venues in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The crossover success was visible on iTunes, where the trio was soaring up the hip hop charts and would soon hit number one in the US, topping Kanye West and Jay-Z.

But then, at the height of the group’s fame, the comments sections of articles about Epik High started filling up with anonymous messages accusing Lee of lying about his Stanford diploma. In May 2010 an antifan club formed and quickly attracted tens of thousands of members who accused him of stealing someone’s identity, dodging the draft, and faking passports, diplomas, and transcripts. The accusations were accompanied by supposed evidence supplied by the online masses, who also produced slick YouTube attack videos. It was a full-fledged backlash.  [Wired.com]

You can read the rest at the link but it was a total online witch hunt to destroy Dan Lee’s career which it ultimately did.  This guy had to completely drop out of the public’s eye and go into hiding because of all the death threats.  One of his main detractors readers may remember I exposed as a fraud when he accused Insooni of faking her daughters acceptance to Stanford.  What is even more troubling about this story is how his own cousin out of petty jealously is the one that started the malicious online rumors that other people latched on to.  Even more interesting is this guy sounds just like own resident ROK Drop troll Tom:

In a six-paragraph rant, Cho went on to accuse Lee of inflating his IQ score and falsely claiming to be a top student in high school and college. Lee, he wrote, was even a screwup as a kid and got kicked out of middle school. “For the record, this is not jealousy,” Cho added. “I have no reason to be jealous of an individual whom I obviously despise for his lack of candor.”

Simmons didn’t respond; she was baffled that her comment had provoked such vitriol. Three days later, Cho wrote again: “One more thing, Ms. Simmons. Great people of east Asia don’t need you. We will own this century, and the next, and the next, until all non-Asians are essentially pounded to submission … Of course, it is the mission of thought leaders like myself who will propel what will be united Korea in the meantime.”

This is coming from a guy making a living in California.  With the joking about Tom aside I think the most important thing to take from this entire sad incident is that it took an outside American journalist to shed light on the truth of what happened.  Why couldn’t something as easy as verifying Tablo’s academic credentials at Stanford been done by some one in the major South Korean media?  If the South Korea media had aired stories showing the online rumors were not true eventually the online smear campaign against Tablo would have lost traction I believe.  As it is fortunately Tablo has gone on to revive his career but the problem of Internet smears and incompetent major media in Korea continues.

 US pop diva Lady Gaga arrived in South Korea late Friday, one week before a Seoul performance which will kick off her third concert tour.

The singer, wearing a floor-length low-cut white dress, white gloves and a pearl-encrusted mask, blew kisses to fans at Seoul’s Gimpo airport who tried to snap her image on smartphones.

Her schedule in South Korea for the coming week was unclear and concert organizers Hyundai Card declined to give details.

“The Born This Way Ball” tour begins on April 27 at Seoul’s Olympic Stadium.

From there Lady Gaga will take her hits and extravagant costumes to Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia, and then on to 21 European cities.

South Koreans aged under 18 have been banned from the concert after it was rated unsuitable for younger audiences.

The show had an initial age rating of 12 and older but the Korea Media Rating Board — a state watchdog — adjusted it upwards. [Rappler]

You can read the rest at the link but besides kids under 18 being banned from the concert, Christians are supposedly organizing to protest at her concert.  I would be surprised if they draw much of a crowd because I just don’t see this being something Koreans are going to bet too worked up about.  I hope Stefani enjoys here time in Korea and I would love to see her in a hanbok!

The movie is about two siblings that compete in a Kimchi contest sponsored by the Korean government due to the Japanese Prime Minister claiming the origins of kimchi is in fact Japanese.  The sister Jang-eun (Kim Jung-Eun) is famous chef in Japan who returns to Korea to compete in the contest.  Her brother Sung-chan (Jin Goo) works as a cook at the family’s restaurant Chunyang-gak and he enters the contest as well.  The brother and sister are both rivals and they agree that the winner of the kimchi contest will take over control of the Chunyang-gak restaurant.  The movie follows many of the same plot lines found in other Korean food themed movies but it was still fun to watch and the movie definitely made me hungry for some Korean food afterwards.  However, like I mentioned in the opening this movie is strictly for people who are familiar with Korea because for people who aren’t they may not necessarily understand some of the jokes and premise of the film.

The film is about a police detective, Kim Sung-ryeol (Cha Seung-won) who is having an affair on his wife Ji-yeon (Song Yoon-ah) due to the marital troubles the two are having.  The marital troubles were caused by the death of the couple’s son in a car accident caused by Sung-ryeol which he cannot honestly explain to his wife.  The relationship between the two becomes even more strained when Sung-ryeol is investigating a murder scene and uncovers evidence that his wife was linked to the murder.

Sung-ryeol tries his best to hide the evidence that his wife is linked to the murder but it ultimately leads to him being blackmailed by someone who knows he is hiding  evidence.  The movie begins to climax as a gang boss wants revenge for the murder of his brother at the crime scene and eventually finds out Sung-ryeol’s wife is involved.  Eventually the future of the marriage of Sung-ryeol and Ji-yeon, the car accident, the truth of the murder, the blackmail, and the gangster’s revenge all meet at the end where everyone reveals all their secrets.  Unfortunately most of the secrets I had already deduced half way through the movie which is the main weakness of the film.

So if you have Netflix and looking for a Korean thriller to watch when you have time you will probably will be somewhat entertained by Secret but don’t expect a police thriller that comes anywhere close to some of the classic Korean thrillers like Memories of Murder, Mother, or The Chaser, but is similar in entertainment value to a thriller like “Bestseller“.

An animal rights activist turned the red carpet white last week when she dumped a bag of flour on reality TV personality Kim Kardashian.

Outspoken animal rights activist Christina Cho reportedly shouted “fur hag” before throwing the contents of a plastic bag at Kardashian, according to TMZ. The celebrity gossip website also reported that Kardashian, who originally did not wish to pursue a criminal complaint against Cho, now plans to press charges.

Cho is described as a “mega-influential PETA activist,” although the animal rights organization denies having any involvement in the publicity stunt.  [KoreAm via Monster Island]

You can read the rest at the link but I do find the PETA protesters to be a whole lot less annoying when Christina Cho shows up, or better yet, when they bring in the Mongolians.

Christina Cho pictured on the left protesting a KFC in Japan.

The story is about a young man named Ryu Hae-guk (Park Hae-il) who travels from Seoul to a remote village to attend the funeral for his estranged father.  Ryu’s father had started the village as part of religious cult with his best friend Cheon Yong-duk (Jeong Jae-yeong) who was a former police investigator.  After attending the funeral in the village Ryu begins to believe that there was something unusual about his father’s death and decides to stay in the village to learn more about his father and what happened to him.  The longer he stays in the village the more he learns about his father’s life from the mysterious villagers that live there.  One of the villagers that helps Ryu learn more about his father is the smoking hot lone female in the village Lee Yeong-ji (Yoo Seon).  Ryu’s presence however is not accepted by all the villagers who then take turns trying to kill Ryu to cover up the real truth of the village.

Korean actress Yoo Seon.

The truth about the village I thought was pretty easy for the viewer to figure out on their own half way through the film though there was a pretty good twist at the very end of the movie that was unexpected.  Something that was expected with a movie like this is the level of violence with some of it bordering on the absurd such as Ryu being stabbed in the gut with blood all over the place and then being able to run around and fight his adversaries despite the injury like nothing happened.  Something else I didn’t like about the movie was its length with a running time of 163 minutes.  When the truth of the village is easily deduced half way through the film, all the time devoted leading up to its revelation I thought was unnecessarily long.

All in all though I thought this was a pretty good movie and worth checking out for people who are fans of violent thrillers with a little female eye candy provided by Yoo Seon thrown in.