A couple of items from today’s Chosun Ilbo which I didn’t want to lose: (1) Lee Young-ae’s Japanese fans tell her she looks as if she’s 61 years old (2) Rain confirmed in Time 100 as one of the world’s most influential entertainers. The KBS site has a rather more fetching photo of the star … [Read More]
Category: Light reading (page 16)
Bi / Rain to make it into Time top 100?
This one’s a story worth following, for the power of the Hallyu. According to the Chosun Ilbo, Rain is only just slightly behind Ang Lee and ahead of JK Rowling and George Clooney as the most influential artist / entertainer of 2006 in Time Magazine’s top 100. You, along with thousands of K-Pop fans, can … [Read More]
How to boost your stock price
Get Yonsama to buy some shares. Though I guess this would only work with Korean small-cap media stocks: [Ottowintech]’s share price, which stood at W12,700 on March 27 right before resuming stock transactions, quadrupled in less than 10 days, netting Bae, who invested a total of W9 billion in the company, more than 10 times … [Read More]
Elevator music leads to defection
To many it’s the sort of music one would endure all sorts of hardship to get away from — but to a talented North Korean pianist it was a revelation which led him to defect to the South. Yes, it’s the easy-listening grooves of Richard Clayderman which inspired the conversion. It says something about the … [Read More]
Eric promotes Spam
Not the unsolicited email, but the processed pork luncheon meat so ridiculed in the Monty Python sketch. As Rowan Pease said in her recent talk on the hallyu in China, the only way for stars and studios to make money out of hallyu is via celebrity endorsements; but it’s certainly puzzling that such a (to … [Read More]
Hyori withdraws “plagiarism” single
Lee Hyori has decided that discretion is the better part of valour, and has withdrawn performances of her single Get Ya!, from her album Dark Angel, which allegedly steals from Britney Spears’s Do Somethin’. [Read More]
Korean protests baffle Belgians
I can’t put it better than the Chosun Ilbo’s own headline. One of the more peculiar stories. In fact today’s Chosun is packed with entertaining stories: Britney Spears’s songwriters accuse Lee Hyo-lee of plagiarism; and a sex survey by pharmaceutical company Bayer finds Korean men the most selfish in bed. [Read More]
Kim Ki-duk mistaken for a tramp
A nice gossipy item from the Chosun Ilbo: Kim [Ki-duk] went to Jungbu Police Station in Seoul to obtain a permit to manufacture a model gun for his new film. But his seedy appearance inspired little confidence, and when he kept repeating the phrase, “The leading man’s gun, the leading man’s gun,” police decided he … [Read More]
62% of Koreans can’t use chopsticks
According to the Chosun Ilbo, “only 38 percent of [Korean] adults, split almost evenly between male and female, [are] able to use chopsticks in the correct manner.” The problem could threaten Korea’s future intellectual prowess. Professor Kim Phil-soo at Daelim College who conducted a survey of 252 Korean adults said: “chopsticks require a person to … [Read More]
Fourth most ideal rear belongs to transgender star
Sorry to be a bit tabloid, but I just had to preserve this article from the Chosun Ilbo, which illustrates the Korean obsession with plastic surgery. Visitors to a plastic surgeon’s website were asked whose bum they would most like to have. The preferred posterior profiles were owned by the following celebs, in order: Jeon … [Read More]