Tag: Korean movies

Four Korean films to be screened at @cannes Film Festival http://t.co/MJ4OdiceCY pic.twitter.com/jyTra84kEh

— The Korea Times (@koreatimes) May 12, 2015

I am going to have to go watch this film:

Dozens of American and South Korean veterans attended a special screening Wednesday of a South Korean box-office hit that chronicles the Korean War and other hardships South Korea has gone through to rebuild itself from the war’s ashes.

“Ode to My Father” has become a sensation in South Korea since its opening on Dec. 17, surpassing the 10 million viewer mark in less than a month, as it struck a chord with older generations who have witnessed how South Korea overcame poverty and other hardships to become what it is today.

Organizers of the special screening — the Korean Churches for North Koreans (KCNK) and the human rights group LiNK — said they held the event and invited American war veterans to shed light on the meaning of the Korean War to Korea-U.S. relations.

The movie, which tells the story of an ordinary father who sacrificed himself to support his family, begins with spectacular scenes of a massive evacuation operation that pulled some 105,000 U.S. and South Korean troops and about 98,000 refugees to safety during the Korean War.

The December 1950 operation, known as the “Heungnam evacuation” after the name of the North Korean port, came as the U.S.-backed South Korean forces began retreating from North Korea after China sent massive numbers of troops to fight alongside the communist neighbor.

U.S. veterans attending the screening at the Regal Fairfax Towne Center theater included retired Col. Thomas Fergusson, a grandson of Edward Almond (1892-1979), then commanding general of the U.S. X Corps, who is known for his decision to dump all weapons overboard to get more refugees aboard evacuation ships at the port of Heungnam.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en”><p>‘Han Gong-ju’ picked as best film of 2014 by Korean film reporters <a href=”http://t.co/3TBjw7y9u4″>http://t.co/3TBjw7y9u4</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/HanGongJu?src=hash”>#HanGongJu</a> <a href=”http://t.co/gxiBDe0bh6″>pic.twitter.com/gxiBDe0bh6</a></p>&mdash; The Korea Times (@koreatimes) <a href=”https://twitter.com/koreatimes/status/559803858663141376″>January 26, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Via the Marmot’s Hole comes this Andrei Lankov article that discusses what North Koreans really think about the South Korean dramas and movies that has infiltrated their country:

The picture of the South within North Korea is a bit more complex, though. While admiring the almost unbelievable prosperity of the South, viewers are also exposed to many of the negative aspects of South Korean society.

I just came across an interesting aspect to this trend. My North Korean friend, a smart woman in her 30s, once said to me: “there are some violent gangs in North Korea, but there are much fewer gangs than there are here (i.e. South Korea).” I was taken aback by this statement, since South Korea is, actually, a very peaceful place with remarkably low level of violent crime. However, it soon became clear that my friend’s knowledge of Seoul’s “gang life” was based almost exclusively on South Korean action movies and TV dramas that she had watched (and that frequently depict street violence).

Indeed, a number of North Korean viewers have come to the conclusion that South Korea must be a very violent place where police shoot suspected criminals more or less at random, and where massive fights between rival gangs are almost as common as traffic jams in rush hours.  [NK News]

You can read the rest at the link, but this same phenomenon is not limited to just North Koreans.  I have seen this same thought process happen with South Koreans that have traveled to the US for the first time.  Certain urban areas of the US does have a serious crime problem, but in the vast majority of the country you are not going to see gang violence, shoot outs, and explosions like what are depicted in Hollywood movies.