I’d been meaning to post about this guy for a while — he’s a Korean “folk” musician that’s been around for a while. I think he’s well outside the mainstream, and the few Koreans I’ve asked about him hadn’t heard of him. But I came across his music on a download site a while ago and nabbed it because it was described as “acid folk.” I listened to it quite a bit last year on my iPod, deleted the original files, and then couldn’t listen to it once I bought a new iPod.

Then yesterday I came across this post on Ask a Korean!, which is about a musician that goes under the name of Lucid Fall. The song is in a similar vein as Kim Doo-soo… a little folky, but with a slightly jazzy edge that reminds me of one of my all time favorite singer/songwriters, Nick Drake (downloads in the comments).

Anyway, when I post about Korean music it’s usually about K-pop, which I do enjoy from time to time, but my enjoyment of the music (like most) is often fueled by my enjoyment of the women singing it. But Kim Doo-soo is an exception and it’s nice to find some Korean music that I enjoy as I would any other music. I generally like Korean folk, but often don’t like the politics associated with it. Korean classical isn’t bad in small doses, but as with most “classical” music, I have trouble relating to it.

Kim has a number of albums, three of which can be found at the bottom of this category via download. This is my favorite song by Kim, called Deja-entendu. You can find a live performance of the song (and many others) on YouTube here.

Here’s another good one called Free Heart.

A Nexen Seoul Heroes player looks out into the snowfield that is Mokdong Stadium in a photo taken earlier today. It snowed like crazy over most of Korea last night, even where I live in Ulsan, which is just about the least likely place in Korea to see snow due to its low elevation and proximity to the ocean.

More photos here.

But this sure caught my eye today:

IOC says it aided N. Korean Olympic athletes US$115,000

Yeah, I know the Olympics are supposed to be in the spirit of competition, for the love of the game one might say. I’m sure the five North Korean athletes that were given (according to the story) $1,500 each month since 2008 worked hard and competed in good spirit.

Then again, think about how much of that money went straight to the North Korean government, or toward something like  a gold plated hand gun. And how much of it didn’t go to people starving in North Korea?

It’s still a drop in bucket compared to, say, the 400 million Hyundai handed North Korea in 2000, or what U.S. taxpayers likely ponied up for last year in getting Laura Ling and Euna Lee freed.

But it still stinks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU5wJJuxM74

Haven’t heard of the show that’s promoting itself here, but I liked this so much I’ll make a special point to download an episode.

Love the first comment on the video too…

ItsNicolebaybie2011 koreans ARE fuckin crazy, though.

Found via One Free Korea.

Just found this while poking around on Naver. This would be from the “Pig Contest,” at Guanshan Village in Shantou City, found in China’s Guangdong province. More photos here.

Ground was broken today on a new baseball stadium in Pohang. This is somewhat exciting for me because I live just an hour away from the city. Although to be fair I’m about an hour from Busan and Daegu as well. But potential KBO expansion is exciting and since POSCO is to Pohang as Hyundai is to Ulsan, I’d say a new baseball team in Pohang sponsored by POSCO would make sense.

There was a rumor that POSCO would assume the reins of the Heroes, but then Nexen Tire stepped up and will now support the Nexen Seoul Heroes. The stadium above is set to open in 2011. That would be next season, but there hasn’t been any talk of KBO expansion…yet.

The Pohang Steelers are arguably Korea’s most heralded pro soccer team. They’ve won the Asian version of The Champions League three times, and if I’m not mistaken the team outdraws all other K-league teams, despite the city having a population of only 500,000. It’s home ground, Steelyard Stadium, was the first soccer-only stadium in Korea, built in 1990.

With POSCO being one of the world’s largest iron and steel companies, and the soccer team being named the Steelers, you might be starting to see a connection between Pohang and Pittsburgh. That’s intentional, and Pittsburgh is indeed a sister city of Pohang. I’m wondering if that’s why this new Pohang stadium is being built next to a river.

Ah, the Noble City in the title is in reference to Pohang’s offical page in English, which reads:

Global city together with Advanced industries together with Cultures.

Pohang, a city noble In which we enjoy together.

We invite you!

Nice looking stadium though.

Haven’t posted much about the Olympics after a blistering tirade against the opening ceremonies. I watched in passing, found myself slipping into my usual passive aggressive rooting for and against Korean athletes. It’s hard not to like Yu-na, but hard to stomach most the short track skaters. And with the Chilean earthquake as the backdrop, it was difficult to get too wound up about any of it. At least until I was subjected to Nickelback , Avril Lavigne, and dancing mounties during the closing ceremonies while eating sesame kalguksu at a local restaurant.

For me the most interesting aspect to these Winter Games will come July 11, when South Korea’s own Pyeongchang goes up against Munich and Annecy (France) for the rights to the 2018 games. I agree with this guy when he says Asia is the only place in the world where winter sports are growing. Hosting the games in Germany or France sounds passe to me. Japan hosted in 1998, the U.S.A. in 2002, and Italy in 2006. Even having the games in Canada again seemed a little ify after Calgary in 1988. France just had them in 1992.

Some Korean made Olympic Art

I wonder though, can South Korea handle hosting the games? Logistically? Absolutely. And I have no doubt Korea would put on a great show. Heck, they didn’t mind building 10 stadiums for the World Cup in 2002, what’s a Winter Olympics? But really, what happens at the 2018 games in Korea when a Korean is disqualified for using an illegal broom in curling? Does the country the ruling judge is from simply get its web site shut down, or do people show up at his hotel room? Sure, the idea of Kim Yu-na skating in her home country for her 3rd consecutive gold medal at age 27 is intriguing, but what happens if she’s regressed a little and a 19-year-old from Japan makes it close? And what happens if the 2018 games are happening in a unified Korea?

I live in Korea, so while I have more insights than some, my view is also skewed. Korea has an amazing way of collectively making things happen. I don’t doubt that if Korea did get the 2018 games, that someone would put the word out that Koreans, at least on the surface, need to behave themselves even if things don’t go their way. The only international sporting even between now and July 11 is the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Maybe that will be a chance. Ah yes, the World Cup, the event in 2006 where a controversial call by a referee during South Korea vs. Switzerland ended with FIFA blocking Korean access to its homepage and the Swiss embassy shutting down theirs.

Germany hasn’t hosted the winter games since it was under Nazi rule in 1936, so having them in Munich might actually make some sense. Throw in the fact that the 2014 games will happen in Russia, which to me is more Asia than Europe, and it becomes obvious that Pyeonchang is hardly in the clear. I hope Korea gets the 2018 games, but it’s going to be another close one, and I wouldn’t go anywhere near the Pyeongchang 2018 rally when the announcement is made on July 11. That just might answer the question in the title of this post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JC6w9hgl7c

Folks, Jackson has been “mock drafting.” Note the present continuous form. We’re not talking one mock draft, probably not two, and quite possibly 10. His wife recently posted the above video, taken just this past Friday night at 11:51 p.m. According to her Jackson had the 8th pick in the Fantasy Prof Pro PhD Pandemonium Mock Draft #7a, and was sure Ryan Braun would fall to him. Evidently he did not. Jackson went ballistic and ended up with Chad Gaudin via autopick.

Here at EWC we host two fantasy leagues. The EWC Champions League is entering it’s 3rd year. I won it last year (Jackson 10th) and the EWC Scrum League, in which I finished 3rd (Jackson 11th). The top finishers in The Scrum win the right to enter the Champions League and the bottom two in the Champs league are relegated to The Scrum. You get the idea. We’ve got several spots open in The Scrum, so if you’re up for it please email us at eastwindupchronicle.com and we’ll hook you up with the password.

It’s good to have some experience in fantasy baseball, and the players are good, but this isn’t really an experts league per se. The leagues are active and the message boards full of witty witticisms. Jackson and I play in both leagues, unless we’re relegated. Jackson missed that by just a few points last year and it was really fun ganging up on him.

LG catcher Joh In-sung and new Twins pitcher Edgar Gonzalez try to work out some differences in signs via a translator during their spring camp in Okinawa.

Not just Uee, but I think the fact that K-pop is once again turning to American football for the 2nd time in a few months is worth noting. Here’s Uee, introduced a couple posts ago, posing for Vogue Korea vamping it up in a few sporty outfits, two of which feature football getups.

This wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that American football isn’t the least bit popular in Korea. I gather there was an effort made by the NFL years ago. Koreans that came of age during the 80s and early 90s do seem to know something about the NFL, and there are some (dying) football clubs at a few universities here, but as popular as MLB and Manchester United styles are amongst young Koreans, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone wearing a pink Green Bay Packers hat.

Scrum Anyone?

Yet, here’s Girls Generation kissing an Iowa Hawkeyes helmet in the MV for it’s recent hit Oh! (which is, by the way, is a typically terrific GG song). It got some attention on Deadspin and other college football-type blogs.

Hines Ward is known in Korea, and became revered for his half Korean bloodness after he won the Super Bowl MVP, but it’s not like Steeler games started being broadcast every Sunday. I don’t think NFL games are broadcast at all in Korea, except (possibly) on the American Forces Network, which I’ve never had access to having lived in Busan and Ulsan, and don’t even find offered when I stay in international hotels smack in the middle of Seoul. I briefly looked for the Super Bowl a few weeks ago while at home in Ulsan, but I couldn’t find it. Truth be told my interest in the NFL has also dwindled since moving to Korea. Part of that has to do with the fact that it isn’t on.

For the record I think the Girls Generation usage of football has more to do with wearing cheerleading outfits than any interest in football — this live performance is more Rams than Hawkeyes. I think Uee is just hopping on what will probably be a very short bandwagon ride. Let’s all get under center while we can. This has been Aaron Shinsano reporting to you for EWC. Thank you.

Photos of Uee from PopSeoul.

Pink Tentacle has a post featuring Urban legends from Meiji-period Japan. My favorite is the belief that electric power lines were insulated with the blood of virgins.

Keep in mind, that during the Meji period (1868-1912) electricity was only starting to play a large role in the modernization of Japan, this following centuries of isolation. The other urban legends the post details are electric power lines juiced with Cholera, chocolate made from cow blood and phantom trains.

Pink Tentacle plans to make the Japanese urban legends a weekly series.

Been looking for a reason to post about Uee for a while. What’s Uee you say? Did I invent a new mashup of urine and pee? No, it’s 유이 (Uee) from the K-pop group After School.

She’s interesting. Yeah, I think she’s hot, but she’s also quite big, which is very unusual in Korean pop. She doesn’t look it so much in the above photo (taken from PopSeoul) above, but she is. She’s big boned and has a bit of a booty…you can get a better idea of that here.

A couple things I want to mention here, neither of which you can predict. Her father is a coach for the Woori Nexen Seoul Heroes. Here’s a not very interesting photo of him, and here’s a pic of her throwing out the first pitch at a Heroes game. Here’s another pic unrelated to her father or baseball, but is sexually suggestive and perhaps the most fun of the three.

The other is that After School’s single Because of You (너 때문에), which came out last fall, is actually a great song. Probably in my Top 10 k-pop of all time. I didn’t hear or see it until I saw the group preform it on a New Year’s Eve show. The fact that a live version of a k-pop song grabbed me is highly highly unusual. I couldn’t find the same version I saw, but this one’ll do. It’s much better than the video (MV), which I won’t bother posting. Uee’s voluptuousness is very much in full effect during After School’s live performances.

There’s more to my fixation on Uee. A couple days prior to the New Year’s Eve thing I saw her on one of the ubiquitous (as in on all the time) Korean TV shows. I’ve never bothered to learn the name because I usually only see it for as long as it takes me to walk out of a room. It’s the one where they wear wigs and sit in a sauna with the guy with glasses. Uee, at the prompting of the others on the show, did a sexy dance. It was sexy, yes (hence me not walking out of the room), but it was also kind of sad because you could tell she was just sort of doing her Uee/After School thing, but she had already sort of revealed earlier in the show that there was more to her than that.

Later in the same show, she confessed to wanting to move abroad. That might not sound like much, but in present day Korea, people just don’t really say that out loud…because that would mean, you know, that you don’t live and breathe Korea with every dying breath. Then, still later Uee was able to cry on cue. Ok, a lot of women can do that but, and this is where I become an unreliable narrator — I was already sold on Uee by that point. To me it showed deep sadness and emotion.

After School was originally constructed to be a Korean version of The Pussycat Dolls, and was to feature Son Dam-bi, who is part of the same entertainment group Pledis Entertainment. I kind of missed the whole Pussycat thing in the states because I’d already moved here, but I think I get the idea. I think it’s safe to say the main idea isn’t the music, no? Thing is, all girl groups in Korea are kind of like that, so I’m not sure what the plan was. I guess After School are more overtly sexual than some — there’s some pretty lame suggestively lesbo stuff (one girl washes Uee’s hair while she’s in a bathtub) in the Because of You video.

Son Dam-bi never joined After School, probably because she became massively popular on her own. My wife thinks the sudden success of Son (Dam-bi) probably had something to do with her having sex with rich, powerful men. That’s not a label my wife drops often (I drop it all the time), so it should be noted. She thinks the way Son debuted, failed, disappeared, and then suddenly became massive is a little offbeat. My wife grew up on this shit, so I’m not arguing.

Taking that hypothesis into consideration, and the fact that Uee is doing sexy dances in saunas, crying on cue, wanting to move abroad…you see where I’m going. Not sure if The tragic life of Uee is exactly correct, but that’s what I’m running with.

“I never saw myself as other than an Olympic champion,” Orser, now 48, said. “I never imagined not winning. Canada had hosted two Olympics and had no gold medals, the only host country not to win any. I took that personally. I felt I let everyone down.” Brian Orser, New York Times Feb. 20, 2010

The moment Coach Brian aficionados have been waiting for will soon be upon the world. On a cold Saturday night, Coach Brian disembarked a plane at Vancouver International Airport to be welcomed by a horde of screaming fans.

As his young pupil, Torontonian Yunna Kym, carried his bags several steps behind him, there was a palpable tension in the air all present could feel. This was a special night, very possibly the first of many special nights that could culminate later in the week with the crowning of Coach Brian as the greatest coach in figure skating history.

As a sea of waving Canadian flags were hustled to the sides by scores of husky security guards, Coach Brian walked straight ahead, focused and determined, a briefcase likely holding the blueprint for what could be figure skating history firmly cradled in his right arm. As he turned and whistled for his pupil to bring forth his bag, a cloud of frozen breath burst from between his lips, sending several flecks of spit into the air.

The world awaits. Mouths agape.

Kind of interesting to think that there were people who played these games and probably viewed and felt the results in the same way that people that play Major League Baseball 2K10 (or in my case OOTP) do. I bet people used to play these games all day and keep track of a homemade league on a pad of paper.

When I first saw the photo above, I could have sworn it was a version of the same game at the Musée Mécanique in San Francisco, which I last visited at Ocean Beach, but is now housed at Fisherman’s Wharf. However, it turns out it isn’t the same game. That game is called Scientific Batting Practice.

The Biz of Baseball has a bunch of photos of these things, along with the date of origin and estimated price.

He hits on something I’ve thought about while living here in hyper-capitalist South Korea, which is, that the Korean world view was already well-suited to socialism before the doctrine was brought into the country.

MARK COLVIN: Now we journalists are often in the habit of calling Korea, North Korea an isolated Stalinist state. You object strongly to that?

B. R. MYERS: I do. I think it’s very wrong; to put it in a nutshell, Stalinism is all about putting the mind above the instincts. The whole reason for the Stalinist system was that the masses, the proletariat had to receive intensive revolutionary indoctrination in order not to fall back into the capitalist way of thinking.

Now what the Koreans believe, as I said, is that they are born pure and that they are also born generous and unselfish and sharing and this means that they are good socialists anyway even without being indoctrinated in anything.

So what we have in North Korea is a glorification of rationalists, a glorification of instinctive behaviour. So the Stalinist way of trying to understand North Korea is, I think, fundamentally flawed and it leads the West and of course America in particular, I think, to adopt policies towards North Korea that will never bear fruit.

Boy, I think he’s right on the money here. I have to think that Myers work will find it’s way into U.S. policy toward North Korea at some point if it hasn’t already. I’m no expert, but I think his work could turn out to be game-changing. Pardon the sports metaphor. Myers dismisses the idea of trying to bargain with North Korea, as if the regime will suddenly become an open market economy and let the wall come down. He believes the regime cannot go from being a military first government to an economy first government without becoming something like a “fourth rate South Korea.” The regime will never allow that to happen.

I came across another interview in something called Moneycontrol, where Myers expands on his main idea relative to Stalin and Kim Jong-il, concluding that Kim is more of a maternal mother than a strong father.

Q: You discuss the way the state propaganda machine gives a maternal, almost effeminate, element to depictions of the North’s leaders. That seems in strong contrast to a leadership which many outside see as bent on war and indifferent to the sufferings of the impoverished population. How do you explain that?
A: “North Koreans believe that they are born pure and good, which means that they have no need for a disciplinary or educating father figure like Stalin. Instead, all they need is the motherly parenting of Kim Jong Il. This does not contradict the general warlike nature of the official culture. Social psychologists tells us that the mother principle is on the side of the instincts, and that states which lack fatherly authority figures are more given to spontaneous, rash behaviour, which is of course what we see in North Korea. As for failing to feed his people – remember that in Korea, it’s the children’s job to feed their mother and not the other way around.”

You can read the rest of that very good interview here.

It was also made in 1899 and filed on the lawn of Thomas Edison’s West Orange New Jersey estate. I guess we can cut it some slack.

The film depicts a baseball game during which the players become so angry at an umpire they beat him up.

On this episode they meet a foreigner. An Afghani. Both the “husband” (from the group 2 a.m.) and “wife” (Ga-in from Brown Eyed Girls), can speak a little English, but employ the use of some kind of translating device to talk to the man from another planet. What comes out is not Korean or Afghan, but pure German.

Oh my. I have to admit I have a special little place in my heart for Ga-in, who is the lead singer for Brown Eyed Girls, who I think are actually the most talented (in terms of tunes and, um, looks) girl group in Korea. I wrote about how I used one of their songs as my ring tone for a few weeks. Not so sure I’m into pooping on her chest, but I am half German by blood.

You can find the entire episode with subtitles over at the post on Extra! Korea.

Click to enlarge.

He’s also got an NPB on in the works he’s planning on posting very soon.

These things really jumped out at me when I first moved to Korea. This is an instant coffee machine with a debt/credit system so you can pay for your coffee by using your cell phone if you, um, don’t have 200 won (20 cents).

When I first moved to Busan about six years ago Starbucks hadn’t arrived on the scene yet, so I used to drink three or four instant coffees throughout the day. How my stomach never slid out my ass and onto the sidewalk I’ll never know. I don’t see too many Koreans drinking instant machine coffee on the street these days — it seems like more of a courtesy drink, something offered at a doctor’s office or at an older person’s home.

Anyway, I don’t think the Mobile Vendor ever quite caught on in Korea. I’ve never seen anyone leaning up against one of these with a nice hot cup of instant coffee, looking relaxed and relieved because they were able to pay using their phone. In fact, I just called the phone number on the machine in the top photo and it’s disconnected. Sad.

There’s also a variety of instant coffee machine in Korea that has a pay phone in the machine itself, presumably for those who want to kick back and enjoy a cup of Maxim’s finest while connecting with a loved one, or perhaps, a secret rendezvous waiting down the street at the Noblesse Motel. Maybe Mobile Vendor coffee is good for man.

Finding those machines these days is a rare event indeed. I’ve only seen them in the extreme countryside or in the outer fringes of Busan. But the Mobile Vendor is more common, if only in vending machine graveyards like the one near my new apartment in Ulsan where I snapped these photos.

I hate to be a crank about the Olympics. I’m fine with the basic idea, and there were plenty of moments during the Opening Ceremonies that were memorable — K.D. Lang’s beautiful voice and all the stuff with the projected screens. I can forgive the overuse of French (of which 13% of the country speaks exclusively (by the government’s own estimation)),  the classical and the modern opera signer, the poet laurette with the Amish beard. Fine. You aren’t America. We get it. Funny thing is, when I went to Vancouver I saw a lot of people wearing flannel and smoking weed on the street. And I heard a lot more Chinese than French. In fact, I didn’t hear any French.

But if you’re going to play the nationalism card Canada, at least play it right. Don’t have a mechanical failure during what was supposed to have been the penultimate moment of the ceremony. You blew it. I’m sure there was a decent explanation for it and accidents happen, but the fact of the matter is…it wouldn’t have happened in Beijing and it didn’t happen in Beijing. It wouldn’t happen anywhere in Asia.