History of the North Korean Army

Okay, this is pretty far from what I usually talk about on this blog, but I also thought it was pretty cool -- it is the US Army's 1952 History of the North Korean Army. It was classified up until 1982 (if I am reading it correctly), and was posted onto the Secrecy News website a couple of days ago.

The profiles of the NK leaders (including Kim Il Sung, of course), beginning on page 90, are especially interesting. Like this fun tidbit:

Non-Communists who know KIM personally describe him as a roughneck, poorly-educated, poor at languages, with little administrative ability. He is, however, an able and ruthless guerrilla leader.

Kunsthalle One-Year Anniversary Party

One of the more interesting artistic spaces in Seoul, imho, is Kunsthalle, the stack of shipping containers located close to the Dosan Park Intersection in Gangnam. And they are having their one-year anniversary party this weekend, April 8-10.


Each day from 5pm until 3am will feature events, music, dancing and plenty more. Saturday will also have brunch from noon to 5pm. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Kunsthalle has hosted a wide range of artistic events and other cool stuff since it opened last April (it was event host to the Korean Music Awards on March 30). Set up by the Berlin artistic group Platoon (they call themselves a "movement"), this is an attempt to blend the artistic and the political into a seamless entity. Or, I suspect, it is a cool way to meet girls. Whatever, I think it is worth checking out and supporting.


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Oh, and over at my main website, I talk about Seoul Fashion Week, the recent article about it in the New York Times, and Korean design in general.

Meanwhile, over at the other blog...

Some thoughts on Korean movies in America, live music websites, and other things over at my new blog. I guess I should get into the habit of writing over there. Feel free to check it out if you like.

More MOTHER

More news from Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER, this time from Hong Kong, where it picked up three prizes at the Fourth Asian Film Awards, including Best Picture. It also won Best Screenplay and Best Actress.

Korea has done quite at the Asian Film Awards in general, picking up Best Picture at the first Awards for THE HOST (which also won for Best Actor, Cinematography and Visual Effects), and at the second Awards for SECRET SUNSHINE (which also won for Best Director, and Best Actress).

Meanwhile, MOTHER continues to do well in the United States, and has now made over $100,000. Last weekend, it grew to 19 screens (up from six from the previous weekend) and its box office topped $53,000 (up from $36,000). It will be interesting to see if it can keep it up for long.

MOTHER in America

Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER opened last weekend in the United States. Just six screens, but it opened to nearly $6,000 a screen -- good enough to be the No. 2 movie by per-screen average (for movies on more than one screen).

So, just $35,000 so far... not sure if distributors are planning on growing MOTHER's release. Since my last post about the film, its Rotten Tomatoes rank is up 1, to 88, but its Metacritic score is down on, to 79. Still, pretty good -- it has the fourth-best score on Metacritic and ninth-best on Rotten Tomatoes.

Band of Brothers, The Pacific ... The Korean War?

I came across a great interview with Bruce McKenna, the head writer and showrunner for the epic HBO series THE PACIFIC (and a writer for BAND OF BROTHERS). Totally worth a read.

But at the end of the interview, they ask him if he would like to move on to the Korean War next. And this is what he said:

HitFix: Do you think, though, that if this works out as well for HBO as they're obviously hoping, that they're going to go looking for that next war? Are we off to Korea next? Do we skip ahead and do Vietnam?

Bruce McKenna: I don't know. We'll see how well "The Pacific" does. I think it will do well. For me personally, the one war story that I would write is the story of the Chosin Reservoir. The Korean War is the forgotten war. Forget the Pacific, nobody knows anything about Korea. It's a Marine story and it's quite moving. Whether HBO does it or not, I hope they do. They did "Generation Kill" and I think something on Korea would be a great idea.

HitFix: Does that feel like another miniseries to you? Can you even think in a two-hour format anymore or are you stuck thinking in 10-hour blocks?

BM: Believe me, I think in whatever format they're willing to pay me to write. The Chosin Reservoir would be a better movie than a miniseries, because it was a very contained event. Now Korea? That's a miniseries.

So perhaps it is not likely at this stage. But just the thought that someone like McKenna would like to tackle the Korean War is a nice thought. Maybe we will get lucky some day.

MOTHER Comes to America

Bong Joon-ho's MOTHER gets a limited release in the United States today, and so far the reviews are very good -- 87 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 80 metascore on Metacritic (which I find more useful than RT).

Manohla Dargis at the New York Times gives the film a glowing review. And even more interesting, the New York Times has Bong himself describing a scene from the film, talking about how and why he shot it the way he did.

I am not sure how big the release of MOTHER is (I suspect it is rather small), but will update this post once I find out.

I find it remarkable that a quirky film like MOTHER would get such a strong response in the West. MOTHER has almost none of the typical features you see in an Asian film that gets released in the West. No martial arts. No ghosts. No gangsters (well, almost none). It is like audiences in the West are growing much more comfortable with international cinema. Like it is getting normalized. Which I think is a great thing.

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In a completely different vein, I just came across this fascinating little article about cinema in Saudi Arabia. Apparently all theaters there were closed in 1980 and just now some people are trying to bring them back. In general, I find the history of world cinema a great subject in general, and especially so in the Arab world. For instance, how many people remember that Egypt once had a very strong movie industry? I once met a filmmaker from Bahrain (perhaps the only filmmaker from that small island state), Bassam Al-Thawadi and he told me a lot of great stories about what it was like for him trying to make movies in Bahrain.

Maybe the same forces that are making Korean movies more normal in the West are also, in some small way, liberalizing the Arab world? Is this an example of the soft power of culture in globalization? Maybe not, but it is something I like to think about these days.