I heard about this film from a friend of mine Vicci Ho (web editor for the Variety Asia and director of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which happens very soon) at this year’s Pusan International Film Festival. Went and saw the film a few days ago. But first, I want to talk briefly about PIFF.

Half of my life - just about - was spent in Australia.
The other half - earlier part - was in Korea.
Half of that was in Seoul.
And the other in Busan.
PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival) is held annualy in Busan.
Pusan = Busan.
Yes, the name change took place a few years ago, and what a pointless move that was.

I finally managed to experience PIFF in real life this year.
Up until then, it had been reports from friends and family working and enjoying the festival, and other gloriously positive press building up my expectations for this supposedly one of the most important film festivals in Asia.

I like film festivals. I like the exhausted ghostly faces walking around but with passion, and I love the diversity of films one can see as compared to the rest of the year when the palette feels rather mono-tone, especiallly so in Korea. PIFF07 was my first film festival where I didn’t see a single film. I did get a memorably good banana on the beach for free (sweet, ripe, and smells fine) and more importantly, I met some great individuals there. But no film.

PIFF is well known for its young enthusiastic fans, who of course came along to the opening despite the horrible weather this year. They sort of ‘hang around’ the festival area/s, making the site look more lively while screaming madly when someone famous drops by. Some of them do watch films of course, and it is indeed quite hard to get tickets unless you’ve booked well in advance. I went to Haeundae, where the festival was held (mainly anyway); it’s an interesting area, yes. It’s got a beach. (<- and yes, that's a full stop)

There are a lot of hotels. It's a holiday destination (but not so much of a glamorous one - people go overseas for a nice beachy holiday). There's nothing much there. I had a hard time trying to figure out where I could take people around that area. I called my friends who live around there, and I did location-based mobile search etc, but there just wasn't much around. Many restaurants were seafood or korean bbq-oriented, so I know for a fact that one guest who happened to be vegetarian opted for staying in their room, hungry, rather than going anywhere - there was no point.

According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there are 712 annual local festivals around Korea. Including 'not-so-offical ones' the number's somewhere between 900-1200. Korea didn't have such a festive environment - in an officially realised form anyway - until mid 90s when the local self government system was introduced. And let's face it, Korea was having a hard time making a living till then - and it was not until min 90s that media and culture industries were seen as proper 'industries' that could generate serious money.

PIFF's based both in Haeundae and Nampodong. Nampodong used to be the main area, but it seems that the locative shift is happening gradually towards Haeundae.

As the above map shows, Haeundae is a pretty long way out from the centre of Busan. From Seomyeon (another central shopping/business area), for example, it takes about an hour to get to Haeundae. Nampodong, on the other hand, is central itself (it’s a big shopping district with big and small markets/shops inc. fashion, seafood, and more + a lot of restaurants and small hotels/motels. There will also be another Lotte hotel and department store in a few years). It’s always busy with both locals and foreigners, shopping, eating, and walking around.

I understand that Haeundae may have some potential, and perhaps PIFF was seen as a great opportunity to boost the slowing economy of the area. But I wonder, where are the considerations to the visitors of the festival? What are they supposed to do there? What is the festival doing in terms of the city marketing? Wasn’t it one of the main reasons why the festival started in Busan? What are we seeing marketed here? Yes. Busan is a harbour town, and the beach is always a nice feature to show. However, I’m really doubtful that Haeundae has what it takes to host PIFF at this stage. Yes it may have some potential if the infrastructure improves, but why invest more when the same if not better could be done with less? I don’t see the passionate, loud, friendly, and genuine Busan (which is quite similar to Osaka, culturally) in Haeundae - at least I see less of it there than Nampodong. I’m disappointed, and I’m concerned. I love Busan, and I’d love to see it flourish culturally without seeing the demise of its most important festival.

I think I can stop right here re: PIFF.

So, Goong Nyeo.

At the moment it’s on at cinemas across the country in both the digital and analogue format (no difference in price), and it’s also available in the KTX (express train) cinema compartment. With additional 7000 won, you can watch it (high-def) while travelling from Seoul to Busan (which takes a bit less than 3 hours). On your way back, it’s the Resident Evil 3 at the moment, I think.

I watched the analogue version at CGV in Mokdong, Seoul. It’s a debut film by Mi-jung Kim, a female director, and apparently she tried to involve as much input from females rather than males for this film. After all, it is a film about the court ladies in Choseon dynasty - more specifically, it’s about a mystery surrounding the murder of a Goongnyeo. The plot itself - well, obviously it’s the process of solving the mystery - gets a little weak as it progresses, especially with the sudden addition of supernatural powers through Japanese-horror-CG-like effects. However, in general it’s visually impressive - aestethically pleasing and detailed. The portrayal of depressing gender issues under the Confucian philosophy/politics is nicely done, and I found it particularly amusing how all the male characters were portrayed weak and/or ugly in one way or another, including the little baby prince. The audience started laughing out loud when the prince first appeared on the screen. I thought he was cute, but people were laughing at the fact that he was an ugly baby, not a typical pretty little performer like in most films.

I think it’s also very interesting to see the rise of hoonnam (literally warm man - gentle and nice to women, a lot more feminine than the traditional ideal of men) and other dramas such as jogang jicheo club (first wives’ club) in which women take revenge on their weak and selfish cheating husbands, and also wang gwa na (king and me), a story about the King’s eunuchs in Choseon dynasty. Both are currently broadcast on SBS - very popular.

I’ll finish with the trailer for the film:

one of my supervisors, michael keane, has published a new book recently.

it’s called created in china: the great new leap forward.

i must admit that i haven’t read the book yet. however, as a student, colleague, and respectful fan of michael and his work, i have no doubt this book will masterfully guide us through the mysterious and massive land of contemporary chinese culture and industries relative to the idea of creativity, something many of us are still finding hard to even draw a rough sketch of in our heads.

i urge you to grab a copy.

i thank him for his wonderful contribution to our knowledge, and he clearly thanks upstairs for his great talent and smarts ;)

re-adjusting to my ‘home culture’ has been quite fun.
it’s strange to be socially, racially, and immediately accepted.

using my australian mobile phone’s proving to be exorbitant, and i’m going to be here for a while, so i’ve decided to get a korean mobile phone… yes! very excited. currently it’s very cheap to get a phone if one’s prepared to subscribe to KTF or LGT. SKT, once the most popular, has been losing popularity for a while, especially since the launch of KTF’s new 3G+ service, Show (but largely because of the concurrent ‘free phone offers’ for those who’s bringing their numbers over to KTF; LGT offer the same kind of deals, but people don’t seem to have much respect for this company that started with PCS phone services). i’ve previously talked - briefly - about how video call was painted to be the next big thing in Korea, and yes, Show’s mainly about that. however, as i’ve found out by talking to my friends here, it’s still considered to be ‘too expensive’ and thus ‘not worth it’ - as a video phone user (of a few years), i’m not surprised. i never really liked and rarely used the feature. let us be private multitaskers as we are and desire to be, perhaps ;)

anyway, STK’s keen to claim the emperor(ess)’s seat again in the over-saturated Korean mobile world, and they’re ambitiously going to release 7 new samsung phones in a few weeks. not sure if it’s worth waiting. i know that i would like SKT - my roaming phone’s with KTF and the connection’s been very unsatisfactory. besides, i would really like to try the RFID ordering system at the Shinchon McDonald’s. i don’t go to mcdonald’s pretty much ever (except when my niece wants an oreo mcflurry), but i would really like to try this service. if unable, i think i’ll just grab anyone there and ask if i could use their phone :)

SKT has also done some very interesting tv ads about video calls - ‘mastering video calling’ (but interestingly, it’s really about how to look beautiful for it); there have been four lessons so far:

more interestingness when considered in relation to:

1. some of Larissa Hjorth’s work on gendered use of the mobile phone in Korea
   • Hjorth, Larissa. “Snapshots of Almost Contact: Gendered Camera Phone Practices and a Case Study in Seoul, Korea.” Cultural Space and Public Sphere in Asia. Ed. Shin Dong Kim. Seoul, Korea, 2006: 211-32.
   • Hjorth, Larissa, and Heewon Kim. “Being There and Being Here: Gendered Customising of Mobile 3g Practices through a Case Study in Seoul.” Convergence 11.2 (2005): 49-55.
2. Lee, Dong-Hoo. “Women’s Creation of Camera Phone Culture”. Fibreculture Journal 6 (3 Oct. 2006). <http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue6/issue6_donghoo.html>
3. Korea: Is being good-looking a privilege? (GlobalVoices)
4. SOUTH KOREA: the dark horse of medical travel (International Medical Travel Journal)
5. Bae Yong-Joon, Hybrid Masculinity & the Counter-coeval Desire of Japanese Female Fans (Particip@tions)
6. korean film, ‘200 pounds of beauty (미녀는 괴로워)’ (2006)

it’s been one of the busiest times of my life, so blogging has been a desired but difficult thing to do.

quick updates:

1) our conference China | East Asia | Media | New Media went well, with very positive feedback from different participants. we’re currently in the process of changing the website to better reflect our research rather than the conference. i’ve already received quite a few emails regarding the papers and recordings of them; they will eventually be published/available online, so please bear with us. it shall be done.

2) i’m at harvard university at the moment for oxford internet institute summer doctoral programme (w/ berkman center @ harvard). been enjoying it very much. great people - both students and teachers - beautiful surroundings, and endless exchanging of ideas.

3) i will be away till november. i’m going to nyc then to europe for a month, followed by two months of research fieldwork in seoul. if you’re in any of these areas and want to catch up, please let me know :)

anyway, should get back to reading. henry jenkins and a trip to the MIT media lab tomorrow.

Australia’s economy has never been stronger. Despite this, and our Government’s commitment to work with other rich nations to halve global poverty by 2015, Australia’s foreign aid continues to fall short of what is required to meet this target.

Lifting our foreign aid to 0.5% of Gross National Income (GNI) by 2010 and 0.7% of GNI by 2015 could lead to significant improvements for our neighbours in South-East Asia, including around 60,000 additional children receiving a basic education; 40,000 fewer child deaths each
year; and around 11 million people having access to safe drinking water.

With an election only months away, this makes now the time to ask our leaders to Face Up To Poverty including the delivery of more and better aid. Images are powerful, so encourage the Government to Face Up to Poverty by adding your face to the campaign.
– email excerpt from Oxfam

Please do participate if you can here (http://www.makepovertyhistory.com.au/faceup/addyourface.htm).

I was a happy +1 to the launch of Brisbane Modern: Mid 20th Century Design Magazine two weeks ago at Chris and Susan’s, a couple I highly admire. I’ve only met them three times - twice at their place and once at Toby Wren Trio’s performance at the Powerhouse some times ago - but thier great energy is almost tangibly evident whenever they’re around. Brisbane Modern is one of numerous tangibles of their creativity, and passion for and sharing of local ‘creativities.’

The following is an excertp from Chris’s editorial message as written in the magazine:

The genesis of Brisbane Modern is to give readers an insight into mid 20th century design, providing a unique local perspective into the world of design. Brisbane Modern is the first publication of its kind to highlight the talented and often overlooked champions of design in Brisbane

For further enquires, call +61 7 3395 4571.