Clever Turtles

I ran across this joke in PASSIONS OF THE CUT SLEEVE, by Bret Hinsch, who took it from Howard Levy's CHINESE SEX JOKES IN TRADITIONAL TIMES.

A Taoist gentleman did the bedroom thing, taking off his clothes, folding his hands, and proclaiming, "It's not I like sex, but I do it to continue my ancestral line."

Min Pyong-ch'ol, at one time Korea's most famous English lecturer and founder of the BCM English education corporate group. I worked at a BCM franchise during my first year in Korea, and Autumn was my replacement when she came on her first EFL tour of duty.

I actually met the guy once. His 'R's are hilarious -- he pronounces them correctly, but he puts so much emphasis on them that gives his accent a little bit of a hard-to-place Midwest/Northeast feel.

I'm trying to stay in the habit of posting something, so here's more random martial arts and history stuff.

While reading through a Korean book on traditional martial arts, I ran across a brief description of a hwarang legend that I thought I would translate and post. Like all good legends, it's slightly fucked up.

My friend once had to chance to ask the great Korean director Park Chan-wook a question when he was promoting "박쥐" ("Thirst") here in Honolulu. "Why," he asked, "aren't there decent Korean science-fiction movies?"

This SF/Fantasy/Action film does not provide a counter-example. I would have to say this movies takes Korean SF to a new low. The plot is absolutely incomprehensible -- the only reason I have the slightest clue what was happening was because of the synopsis printed on the Netflix sleeve. To crib from Statler and Waldorf, it's best point is the relatively short running time of 80 minutes.

Hmmm . . . am I able to post now? Do I need to worry about posts being lost as updates are made?

Where is the Man with the Master Plan?

I recently discovered that the independent film "후회하지 않아" ("No Regret") was available through a US distributor. It is purportedly the first feature film to be produced in Korea by a gay director, and is one of the few Korean films to focus on queer relationships in Korea. Furthermore, one of the leads is played by the popular actor Kim Nam-gil, albeit under a pseudonym.

NY Times is carrying an article on an anti-abortion group in South Korea.

Reading the article, it just seemed to scream evangelical Christianity. Evangelical/Charismatic churches have disproportionately high numbers of professionals and every Korean doctor I've seen has had Christian paraphenalia in their office. The article claims the group "has support from Christian activists, but the group says its motivations are not religious and that it has non-Christian members." I'm unconvinced.

I had been trying to track this movie down for years, but it unfortunately passed out of currency within a few years of it's release. Hopefully it will become more available now that director Kim Ji-woon is getting more attention. The only version available through Netflix, and apparently Amazon, is the Chinese dub (what the hell?) and I never ran across it when I was browsing video stores in Korea.