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Category Archives: TV drama

The Grand Culture Project

22-Aug-07
At the SOAS / AKS conference on 26 June, the talk by Kim Hyeon, Associate Professor of Cultural Informatics at the Academy of Korean Studies, had the title "the Korean Wave, Cultural Content and Cultural Informatics". "What on earth is Cultural Informatics?" I hear you ask. You would not be alone. But read on. The premise of the thesis runs roughly thus: Some of the biggest hallyu hits have been Joseon dynasty historical dramas. Take Dae Jang Geum and the King and the Clown. These have been great export earners for Korea, Inc. Wouldn't it be great if you could bottle the formula? But a brief look at the genesis of the King and the Clown highlights a problem in the lifecycle of a ...
Also filed in Academia, Business, Conference reports, Dae Jang Geum, Film, Hallyu, Lee Jun-ik, SOAS | | Comments (0) »

Dae Jang Geum musical needs translator

08-Aug-07
From this week's Seoul Selection newsletter Seoul Selection is looking for translators to translate the libretto of the musical "Dae Jang Geum" produced by PMC Production. The translation --- approximately 30 pages (A4) --- needs to be done rather quickly, with the deadline for the translation being Aug 18. You should have plenty of time next week if you'd like to handle the entire translation on your own. If time is an issue, we'd be more than happy to put more than one translator on the project. If you're interested, send a resume and a translation sample (click here for the sample text --- translate only the text in bold) to publisher at seoulselection dot com no later than Thursday ...
Also filed in Classifieds, Dae Jang Geum, Performance arts | | Comments (0) »

Your help requested. And, some people have all the luck

28-Jun-07
A reader at ukfan's DJG Comic Relief forum is doing a research project on Dae Jang Geum. He's a PhD researcher at Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change at Leeds Metropolitan University. As part of this he needs your help to perfect a cultural survey. The survey can be found here. Please email it to him at the address shown on the word document. He needs it in the next few days. Once he has reviewed your answers to make sure the questionnaire is working OK he gets to go on a field trip: to the DJG theme park in Yangjoo City, Gyeonggi Province, where he will interview a scientifically selected sample of tourists. If only I had had so much ...
Also filed in Academia, Ask an expert, Dae Jang Geum, Hallyu, Travel | | Comments (1) »

Jumong a bright spot in media industry gloom

13-Apr-07
The Chosun recently reported a gloomy picture of the earnings of the Korean film industry. As Jon Pais speculated over at Twitch in November last year, Even if production costs stabilized, as the number of films increases, decreased profitability is inevitable. But production costs are soaring and don't show any signs of slowing down. In the first half of 2006, blockbusters aside, 40 films couldn't even break even. This situation is only likely to worsen in 2007. The Chosun confirms that picture. In an environment where profitability is uncertain, film investors want bankable stars, which of course boosts production costs further. As is well known in the case of Beyond the Years, even an internationally acclaimed director such as Im Kwon-taek doesn't ...
Also filed in Business, Dae Jang Geum, Film, Jumong | | Comments (5) »

Dae Jang Geum survey

03-Apr-07
A request for assistance from a PhD researcher. Hello, I'm a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. I am interested in studying popular cultural phenomena in or related to East Asia. I'm currently working on a research project about viewer's perceptions and opinions of Korean TV dramas. I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me out by completing the web survey linked below. The study takes about 5-15 minutes depending on your answers. Please be noted that this research project has been approved by University Institutional Review Board. You need to be at least 18 years of age to participate. Your participation will be completely anonymous and voluntary. Once you start the survey online, you will ...
Also filed in Ask an expert, Dae Jang Geum | | Comments (0) »

Visit the Dae Jang Geum campaign sites

29-Dec-06
Pay a visit to ukfan's DJG comic relief discussion board. There's a sample of his work below. And if you haven't done so already, sign Alice's petition to get DJG shown on the BBC, and visit her blog.
Also filed in Dae Jang Geum | | Comments (3) »

Of Ostriches and Royal Warrants

18-Dec-06
Why is it newsworthy to call someone an ostrich? The obvious answer, particularly when the person who's being called an ostrich agrees, is that it isn't. But when it's heart-throb Jung Woo Sung calling TV soap princess Kim Tae-hee an ostrich, it's an excuse to publish their photos and mention their upcoming film "Joongchun" or "Midheaven", in which Jung plays an exorcist and Lee his phantom love interest. The Chosun duly obliged, and so shall I: And in another article this week the Chosun highlighted the number of models who are making it as TV actresses. Cue another opportunity to show some nice pictures. The model actresses concerned are Kim Seon-ah, Song Seon-Mi, Han Go-eun, Han Ye-seul, Han Ji-hye, Hyun Young, ...
Also filed in Business, Celebs, Film, Han Go-eun, Han Ye-seul, Jung Woo-sung, Kim tae-hee, Lee Eon-jeong, Lee Hyolee, Moon Geun-young | | Comments (6) »

Dae Jang Geum campaign gathers momentum …

30-Jul-06
...but still needs your support. A couple of months ago I put up a notice on my old site encouraging you to visit Alice Bennell's blog and join her campaign to get the BBC to buy Dae Jang Geum -- Jewel in the Palace -- for showing on British TV. Since then Alice has been working hard, and her blog has been going from strength to strength, covering not only DJG but Korean culture in London more widely -- she had some great shots of the Korean day at the V&A at the end of May. She's also been creating DJG trailers -- visit her site to see some of them: they've proved very popular. And she's also started up a discussion ...
Also filed in Dae Jang Geum | | Comments (2) »

Interactive Korean-American TV

06-Jul-06
I got an email yesterday from Dion Park at www.iKATV.com, asking for a plug. Happy to oblige. I visited the site and found it a bit baffling at first - all I could find was some brief and blurred YouTube videos. But Dion explained later that the website is still in prototype and is still two months away from its official launch, so I was expecting too much too soon. Dion's email signature reads as follows: Interactive Korean American TV (iKATV) is Global Broadband Network Aimed at Korean-Americans and Korean Diaspora around the world with the intent of creating an international online networking creative community simultaneously promoting Korean culture through the Korean Renaissance in Korean Culture in Music, Film, and TV, Also ...
Also filed in Geek stuff | | Comments (0) »

Prof Kim Chang-nam: history & characteristics of modern Korean culture

21-Jun-06
(SOAS, 5 June 2006, 7pm: the concluding event of the London Korean Festival 2006) I'm more reluctant than usual to make this post. The ground covered in Professor Kim's hugely stimulating conclusion to the London Korean Festival was more than extensive, and left the audience wanting to ask tons of questions. To condense a hundred years of Korean popular culture into 90 minutes or less inevitably involves cutting corners and omitting crucial detail. And summarising that summary here risks trivialising and oversimplifying what Kim was saying. So if you're reading this, think of this post as (a) more private and (b) more error-prone than my usual stuff. I'm just posting this to try to make sense of the scrawled notes I ...
Also filed in Academia, Conference reports, Film, Hallyu, London Korean Festival 2006, Music: K-pop | | Comments (2) »

Campaign for better soaps on UK TV

20-Apr-06
In the past day or so I've had my first unsolicited visitors sending me email - and it's not spam. Thanks for your kind comments, Alice and Dana. Alice is a lady on a mission. Her mission: a campaign to get the BBC to buy Jewel in the Palace and show it on British TV. A hugely worthwhile endeavour. Visit her campaign website and sign her petition. Who knows, one day we might get a soap worth watching on our telly.
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Improve the quality of British TV

16-Apr-06
Alice Bennell is campaigning on your behalf to get the Jewel in the Palace on British TV. Visit her campaign website and put your signature where it counts here. Photoshop trickery by djgukfan at yahoo dot co dot uk. Nice.
Also filed in | | Comments (0) »

Hallyuwood: Korean Screen Culture Goes Global

29-May-05
I was unable to attend the conference, and I am grateful to Prof Hu Puzhong for this report: The symposium has witnessed a relatively blissful atmosphere probably because the Korean wave and its cultural representation in screen production seem to have become an alternative in a world dominated by the hegemony of Hollywood. Academics from the cultural studies sphere discussed and shared their research on the undeniably influential cultural phenomenon. Asian freshness in topics made the symposium not so dry. Chris Berry, a professor in Goldsmith College, University of London, introduced by expressing the terminology Hallyuwood. Since the pan-Asian hits SHIRI and MY SASSY GIRL came out, Korean screen seems to have been accustomed to bringing about surprise for the film academics. ...
Also filed in Academia, Conference reports, Film, Hallyu | | Comments (0) »