“Breathless”: A New Korean Movie on Domestic Violence
My own series of posts on domestic violence in Korea is on temporary hiatus as I realize I should finish others first, but in the meantime the new movie “Breathless” (똥파리, or “shit fly” in typically earthy Korean) on that theme looks like something I should definitely take some time to watch. In the words of Korea Times reporter Lee Hyo-won, whose film reviews are of such high quality that I confess I cut out and keep most of them:
…”Breathless” explores the murky gray zone between compassion and cruelty, redemption and revenge, and the blessings and curses of family bonds. In a nutshell, it’s a family drama that’s inappropriate for children. While harrowingly violent, however, the multiple-award winning film by director-lead actor-producer Yang Ik-june seethes with warmth and humor.
The film is making headlines for entering almost 20 international film events and picking up top prizes, including, most recently, the SIGNIS Prize and the Audience Award, Wednesday, at the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival. And the movie does not disappoint, and establishes Yang as a name to watch out for.
Read here for the remainder, and here for an interview and short biography of producer, director and lead actor(!) Yang Ik-june (양익준), who sounds like a bit of maverick:
”I want to say ‘ – you’ to the world through my films,” he said. He also wants to show the male private parts onscreen someday. ”Koreans think it’s artistic when they see it in a foreign film, but here they censor it. We feel unstable in this world because we want things to be safe all the time, but we need to be courageous,” said the director, who respects cineastes like John Cameron Mitchell (”Shortbus”). ”Sex is part of life,” he said.
For more on the recent decision to allow Shortbus to be screened, see here. I definitely share his sentiments, and as someone notorious among my friends for never shying away from sexual topics myself, then I very much look forward to more films from him!
(Image Source: KoreaFilm.co.kr)
Angry Asian Men
( Source left: unknown; Source right: GR × HERMARK )
Well, angry Chinese men to be precise, for in 2005 there were 32 million more Chinese boys under the age of 20 than girls, some of the oldest of which will already have been having problems finding sexual partners. And the the gap is set to get worse over the next twenty years as the demographic “wave” of China’s skewed sex ratio arrives.
That figure comes from this study released last week, according to the New York Times actually the first ever to provide hard data on the scale of the problems coming as a result of China’s “One Child Policy“, so it’s well worth a quick read (it’s only seven pages long).
Certainly the notion of hordes of sexually frustrated young men haunting Shanghai bars may sound facetious at first (aren’t they there already?), but the reality is that throughout history they’ve invariably proved very bad for social stability and security: much better to send them off fighting wars, so they don’t cause trouble back at home. Which, needless to say, is ultimately very ominous-sounding considering the ugly nationalist streak China has been displaying in recent years, particularly by its young people. For more on that, see this excellent article by Michael Ledeen (with thanks to Tom Coyner’s “Korean Economic Reader” mailing list), who argues partially on that basis that it is quite misleading and outdated to think of China as a communist regime, and that it is actually more a fascist one now. He’s very convincing.
Meanwhile, see here for my take on Korea’s own sex-ratio problems, which – despite what you may read elsewhere – were actually acknowledged and largely taken care of back in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately however, that minor detail tends to get overlooked by the overseas media somehow.
Finally, not that it really has anything to do with this post, but I confess that it inspired the title: if you haven’t heard of the Angry Asian Man blog then be sure to check it out, as it offers an unorthodox (and much needed) perspective on American culture and politics.
Creative Korean Advertising #11: Going All The Way
( Cha Su-yeon (차수연) and Jung Il-woo (정일우). Source )
Probably the only Korean commercial ever to feature a woman repeatedly moving up and down on top of her boyfriend(!), in hindsight it’s kind of bizarre that I barely noticed it when it came out two years ago:
Much more interesting though, is what is said and written in it. Not only does the background text read “You need Vitamin C for love too!” (사랑에도 비타민C가 필요하다!) for instance, but like Chris explains here, who also thought the commercial was perfectly innocent at first:
Boyfriend is trying to airplane girlfriend but he’s having trouble maintaining, if you know what I mean, and so he downs a bottle of 비타500. Immediately invigorated, dude now has no problem keeping her up, and at the end he asks her, “Where shall we go?” She replies, “Hong Kong!”, which I now know is a pretty popular euphemism here in Korea for an orgasm, its origins being the affluent image of Hong Kong that was held in the collective consciousness of Korea until not too long ago. So ladies, next time your man asks where you wanna go, demand he take you to Hong Kong, and don’t let him stop till you get there.
Noble sentiments indeed.
I confess, that was also the first time I’d ever heard that of that slang, although I’d add that when I first arrived in 2000, for this particular usage of the English “coming” the equivalent was “going” in Korean, so “going to Hong Kong” makes sense. Unfortunately for the sake of linguistic variety however, by now the Korean (and Japanese) seems to have been completely Anglicized.
Regardless, can you imagine such explicit sexual slang being used in a daytime commercial in most English-speaking countries? Wondering if it represented a trend, I looked at Vita500′s commercials going back to 2004 here, but unlike for alcohol commercials there’s definitely no shift towards more risqué ones over time. Actually, the only other remotely sexual one was this one with Rain (비) and Shin Joo-ah (신주아) from 2005:
But just because Vita500 has only spiced up one of their commercials in recent years doesn’t mean that other food and drink companies haven’t. If you thought that that oh-so-subtle sexual symbolism above was lame for instance, then clearly you haven’t seen this commercial for Seoksu (석수) mineral water from last year (which I discuss here):
But it was particularly these ones for the ironically named Poker Chips (포카칩) that I was reminded of while writing this post. While this may sound a little strange given the screen capture below, personally I find the first one quite endearing:
I couldn’t tell you who appeared in those or when exactly they came out sorry, but clearly they’re all pretty old.
Given that context, then it just goes to show how strange it was that this commercial for Hong Kong clothing company Giordano with Jun ji-Hyun (전지현) and Jung Woo-sung (정우성) was banned when it came out in 2004, and how completely arbitrary Korean censorship can be sometimes:
On the plus side, its banning gave it some notoriety, and rapidly spawned so many clones that the censors just seemed to give up with those sorts of commercials thereafter. This much raunchier one for the tea drink “17차,” also with Jun Ji-hyun, came out just one year later for instance:
These days, aside from the government’s push for a “real name” internet system of course, one other notable censorship issue is the Youth Protection Committee’s (of the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs; see #4 here) recent banning of music group TVXQ’s latest songs from being played on TV and the radio because of “lewd content” (see here also). But one might ask what exactly the point was considering the album has already been out for six months though!
(For all posts in the “Creative Korean Advertising” series, see here)
Korean Gender Reader
( Source )
Apologies for the Korea Gender Reader’s one-month hiatus. Naturally even I can’t cover everything I missed(!), so today’s post will be a mish-mash of news from March and from last week.
1. Baek Ji-young Chosen as Soju Model
The innocent victim of a sex-scandal in 2000, singer Baek Ji-young (백지영) has had to fight hard against Korea’s double-standards to rehabilitate her career, and it’s both a reflection of that and how much Korea has changed since that she was recently chosen in an online-poll as the next model for “Ip-Saeju” (잎새주) soju, produced by Bohae (보해양조).
Of course, by now it’s quite rare to find Korean soju and beer advertisements that feature virginal-looking women, although they were the norm two years ago when both were almost exclusively marketed towards men. I wonder if Baek Ji-young would have been considered too risqué had a similar poll have been conducted then?
Update: Somehow I missed it the first time, but – not to put too fine a point on it – that one on the left has to be literally the sluttiest soju ad I’ve ever seen. In the strange event that you haven’t already, click on the image for a closer look to see what I mean.
Baek Ji-young does mention in those above links how happy she is to appear in soju advertisements like top stars Lee Hyori and Song Hye-gyo, but regardless of how true or not that is, one senses that they wouldn’t personally consent to appearing bra-less and with an open zipper in them. It smacks of desperation.
On the other hand, however unfair or unwarranted she’ll always be stuck with her promiscuous image, so she may as well play into it.
2. Statistics on the Effects of the Recession on Women
On many occasions I’ve pointed out that, like during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, women workers are again the biggest victims of the current recession. But finally, here are some actual figures:
According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), Sunday, the number of people employed in their 30s fell by 167,000 to 5.81 million in February from a year earlier, the lowest since the office began compiling data in June 1999.
In particular, the number of female workers in that age bracket dropped sharply by 157,000, while male workers declined by 9,000, indicating women are more severely affected than men by the unfolding corporate downsizing and the collapse of self-run businesses.
And why…
”A significant portion of 30-something female workers are employed on a non-permanent and temporary basis, without job security and other fringe benefits. Companies target them first when things go bad because it is easier to lay them off than regular workers,” the official said.
3. Another Knocked-up Korean Star Gets Married
( Source: Unknown )
An inelegant way to put it perhaps, but how else to convey just how routine this is becoming? Of course, in practice just like everyone else Koreans have long been more tolerant of premarital sex and pregnancy provided that the couple ultimately “did the right thing,” but it’s certainly been only recently that Korean celebrities, usually held to much higher moral standards than the public, could start being so blatant about it.
Or can they? In this particular case, minor celebrity Jung Sia (정시아) still felt compelled to deny pregnancy rumors until an wedding date was set, but despite that I’m quite confident that sooner or later not only will some female celebrity be unrepentant after being “exposed,” but will also be supported by most Koreans (albeit by indifference more than active censure).
4. The Continuing Korean Low Birth-Rate Saga
While it’s been one of my areas of interest for a long time (see here and here), even I tire of repeated articles that mention that Korea’s birth rate is one of the lowest in the world and…little much else really, so I’ll try to keep this section to a minimum:
—–———-4 in 10 Korean women report that they are delaying pregnancy due to the recession, but certainly not helping are management and colleagues’ changed perceptions of new mothers’ abilities and career ambitions once they return to work.
—————Last year, the average marrying age was 31.4 for men and 28.3 for women, but the number of marriages is beginning to dwindle.
—————Health, Welfare and Family Affairs Minister Jeon Jae-hee and comedian Kim Ji-sun (right) are currently holding radio campaigns to “boost the country’s birthrate,” which totaled about 630,000 infants in 2000 but declined to 430,000 in 2005 (although there was a temporary increase in 2008 because Koreans rushed to get married before – and then have children during – the auspicious Year of the Pig).
Although that’s better than nothing, one gets the sense that it’s like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic considering the wider problems with inadequate and expensive childcare facilities and workplace discrimination that are the real reasons Korean women are discouraged from having children: it’s not just a matter of feeling more maternal. But to be fair, John Jae-hee does acknowledge that the benefits of incremental improvements to policy are likely to be moot given the current recession (Note: rather confusingly, not least for the Ministries themselves, there is a seperate Gender Equality Minister by the name of Byun Do-yoon).
————–Lawmaker Park Sun-young of the minor Liberty Forward Party (LFP) recommended that in order to increase birth rates Korea should adopt the French policy anonymous birth, under which pregnant women can visit a hospital, register anonymously, give birth and leave.
While commendable in itself, I doubt there’d be much effect on the birth rate in a country with a strong stigma against raising children out of wedlock (see #3 above). More interesting in that report are statistics on the extremely high number of abortions in Korea, and the fact that only 1% of fathers take advantage of the *cough* generous 3-day paternity leave to which they are entitled, introduced last year. To be fair to Korean fathers though, as an undergraduate I read that even with the extremely generous provisions offered in Scandinavian countries that few fathers took up the offers there either, and I’ve read on at least one blog here (although I’ve lost the address unfortunately) that many Korean employers are completely ignoring or effectively prohibiting male employees from taking paternity leave.
In today’s economic climate, the maxim “Choose your battles” comes to mind, and 3 days hardly seems worth it.
—————A strange report on a bill to reduce the term limit for abortions from 28 weeks to 24. Strange because first it notes that Korea has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and then it states that:
Healthy women who undergo elective abortions can be imprisoned for up to one year or fined two million won. Doctors performing the abortion can be imprisoned for up to two years.
And yet doesn’t comment on the obvious contradiction .
If you’re interested in the debate about term limits, then you’ll probably be interested in last year’s decision in the UK to keep the abortion limit to 24 weeks (see here and here). In sum, that limit was set in 1990, and there was a move to reduce the limit to 20 weeks because of advances in medical technology since, but in fact despite those the rates of 24 week-old and younger premature babies surviving is virtually unchanged. Hence although it was made a conscience vote (not along party lines), it was overwhelmingly rejected.
—–———Finally, by 2020 probably up to 50% of teenagers in many rural areas will be biracial (see here also). But see here for a brief report on the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse faced by many of their immigrant mothers.
5. PETA Demonstration in Seoul
For the story behind the jarring image on the right (source), see here.
I’m definitely anti-fur, always bought free-range eggs and chicken before moving to Korea (which lacks them), and was even vegetarian for the odd couple of months or so as a student, but despite all that I’m vehemently anti-PETA, and for so many reasons that I could write several posts just on that subject alone. Keeping on topic though, while I often disagree with much of what I read on the blog Feministing, its critique of PETA’s use of (attractive) naked women to advertise its cause is spot on:
…the thing I hate most about this particular PETA propaganda is that it takes what should be a message of empowerment, Love-Your-Body-style, and turns it into yet another affirmation of the female ideal. As [co-author] Renee puts it, “It seems that they respect the rights of animals far more than they respect women. Consider that they don’t use images of male nudes, nor do they use images of women with varying body sizes.”
As you’ll recall, PETA has defended this advertising strategy with the weak response that “sex sells.” It’s an excuse I expect from Axe and Maxim, but not from a movement that is supposedly about justice.
Granted, the Korean woman on the right isn’t particularly attractive, but then she would have been included to add a token sense of local legitimacy: the modus operandi and the arguments against it remain the same.
As a guy I find the notion that naked women are the only way to get me interested in a cause very patronizing, and besides which I seriously doubt that men’s greater awareness of PETA via admiring notorious advertisements like this (second from the top) really translates into effective support.
If I happened to be Korean too then I also would annoyed at the audacity of foreigners thinking that: flying in from the US; walking around naked for 5 minutes; then flying out to do exactly the same thing in another country the next day would somehow be enough to influence my opinions, although I’m not for a moment saying that foreigners shouldn’t protest in Korea and/or that they can’t be effective, especially in situations where Koreans lack local expertise, aren’t interested (but should be), and/or are too concerned about their own reputations to protest themselves.
6. Adidas Korea Finally Uses an Actual Athlete For Advertisements
Too distracted by them to notice myself, commentator Sonagi was right to point out that the skinny, decidedly nonathletic models used to launch Adidas Korea’s “Me Myself Campaign” in February, supposedly all about rejecting the fashion industry’s impossible standards and promoting healthy and fit body images for women, achieved anything but in reality.
Suitably chagrined, I suggested that some kick-ass female boxers could be used instead, but Adidas ultimately plumped for a yoga instructor who goes by the name of Jessica (left, source). Meanwhile, rival Nike Korea is now has a side-contract with actress Park Shin-Hye (박신혜), but currently world-famous ice skater Kim Yu-na (김윤아) is their frontwoman, replacing BoA who was the year before.
I don’t mean to imply by the above that non-athletes are bad choices in themselves, and indeed BoA in particular is clearly very physically active, but as Korean women overwhelmingly prefer passive methods of losing weight (see here and here), then absolutely any link between losing weight and active exercise is to be strongly encouraged.
To illustrate the transformative effects attributed to merely drinking something, for instance, the music group Girls’ Generation (소녀시대) is currently promoting a skin-cleansing drink despite its members’ typical teenage acne, actress Song Hye-gyo (성혜교) is doing the same for one that makes you look White lightens your skin, and Kim Tae-hee (김태희) is still selling drinks that make your face more of a “V” shape.
Bear in mind that such obsessions exist despite Korean women still being the least obese in the OECD. On the plus-side though, limits are emerging as to how skinny a woman’s legs can be before even Korean netizens think twice about praising them.
7. More Bizarre Standards For Female Celebrities
Like this post explains, most Korean female celebrities start with a cute and innocent image and try a sexier and more mature one later, but actress and singer Sandara Park (박산다라), who had a modest career in the Philippines before becoming popular in Korea, is making news for her photoshoot for the “lads’ mag” on the right while she was there (source).
But while it’s true that Korean fans are often upset with real-life behavior out of character with actresses’ roles in dramas and TV (no, really), considering the number of Korean women that have appeared in Korean equivalents – a standard method for advancing one’s career – then I’m at a loss as to what all the fuss by netizens is about. Especially as it’s quite clear that it was a one-off and that it was done because her image in the Philippines then was simply too cute and innocent!
8. Family Who Raped Mentally-handicapped Relative Given Jail Time
Undoubtedly due to public pressure, the four men who repeatedly raped their mentally-handicapped relative over seven years, but whom were given suspended sentences because there was no-one else to look after her (see #8 here, then here), have been re-sentenced to prison time.
9. Sex Offenders Free to Teach In Korean Schools
One does have to wonder where the motives for stereotyping foreign male teachers as pedophiles comes from when you discover things like this:
Currently, criminal records of those sentenced to less than three years in prison are removed after five years. As such, schools can’t always ascertain the criminal record of would-be teachers.
Which meant that a Korean teacher with seven counts of “sexual assault and other crimes” against teens was able to get a job teaching them: for the details read Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling here, KoreaBeat here, and Brian in Jeollanamdo here. Matt also rounds off with an excellently researched and comprehensive “State of Korean Youth” post here, and don’t forget to also read this one describing how a teacher was only given a six-month sentence for sex with an 11 year-old, and how the maximum sentence is still only three years.
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