Clever Turtles

I'm very aware, to begin with, that Korean male pop stars often seem effeminate or homoerotic to Westerners while being very masculine and virilely heterosexual to Asians -- this is a matter of cultural signifiers not translating or mistranslating across cultural boundaries. In most cases, I think, the most glammed up, smooth-skinned, long-haired young men are, in the proper cultural context, very, very straight.

But when I ran across the Big Bang/No Brain collaboration, "Oh My Friend".

Kind of sad, but that's the truth of the music business. Korea's biggest pop act is playing for a dozen hardcore (KoAm) fans in a parking lot in the US.

Recently, Marc Ecko's Complex.com ran a short piece on SNSD. It is pretty much a casual, shallow and snarky review. I've never run across Complex before, but it seems to be an IGN/Maxim knockoff.

Seo Taiji Symphony, a show from Korea's only real rock star (to date).

Korean anti-semitism from the famed music producer JYP.

It's hard to get angry at Korean anti-semitism, because it is so ridiculous. It just doesn't suit Koreans.

It reminds of the scene in "Fucking Amal" where the teenybopper sisters argue if raves are still cool. They little idea what a rave actually is, and there aren't any raves near enough to attend. They just have some idea that they are important to being cool.

Sexy Mong.

I hadn't heard of this show at all, and it probably would have been good if I hadn't. Just the thing to make my ulcer flare up again.

Seriously, I don't know where to begin.

Anyone who follows Korean pop culture has heard of the tumult about the Wonder Girls. I don't have much to say, other than, yes, it's creepy to have teenagers marketed for sex appeal, no, I don't really care too much. The video's "Wonder Woman" girl in fairly everyday situations appealed to my sense of random humor, but overall its just bad pop and bad dancing.

Tyfoon's video. Korean hip-hop is provides your recommended daily value of win.

For those of you following Korean drama, the place they film 커피 프링스 (Coffee Prince) is an actual coffee shop in Hongdae that you can go see. Pictures and directions later if I can ever get my photos off of my cell phone.

Also, there's an OK coffee shop with a neat gimmick. The coffee bar/kitchen is a modified VW van they parked in the middle of the shop.