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Cheon with Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
A Korean American high school student’s wining piece in a national art competition proved to be plagiarized, prompting her disqualification.
The senior at Bellevue High School in Washington state, Solbi Cheon, produced a piece titled “New Generation vs. Old Generation,” which was named the winner in the 9th District of Washington for the 2013 Congressional Art Competition.
Cheon was set to be awarded a scholarship and a trip to Washington, D.C., where the piece was going to go on display at the U.S. Capitol Building. (more…)
The Korean American Film Festival of New York has opened its call for submissions. The festival will return for its 7th installment, running from October 17-19, 2013.
The deadline for submissions is July 15, here’s the information from their site: (more…)
American held in North Korea had pledged to ‘collapse’ country with prayer
Washington Post
Earlier this month, North Korean state media finally revealed the country’s case against an American citizen named Kenneth Bae, who had been detained there since November. They listed three accusations: that he had smuggled in a critical documentary film, that he had plotted to bring the government’s downfall through something called “Operation Jericho” and, oddly, that he had “infiltrated” dozens of students into a hotel in the North Korean city of Rason to establish a base of anti-regime activity.
The charges sounded peculiar, even absurd, perhaps reflecting North Korea’s paranoia about religion in general and Christian missionaries in particular. But it turns out that, whatever actually happened after Bae crossed the border into North Korea last fall, he had pledged earlier to do something very much along the lines of Pyongyang’s accusations.
Most Koreans Believe Park’s U.S. Visit Was Beneficial
Chosun Ilbo
More than six out of 10 Koreans felt that President Park Geun-hye’s visit to the U.S. earlier this month was good for Korea, but a scandal involving her spokesman during the trip dampened sentiment.
Gallup Korea polled 1,003 adults from May 13 to 15, after the president returned from her six-day U.S. trip on May 10. It found that her approval rating soared to 56 percent during the trip but immediately fell to 51 percent when the molestation scandal broke.
Disapproval of Park rose from 17 to 27 percent over the same period.
School Officials Address ‘Sea of Japan’ Naming Controversy
Patch.com (Fort Lee, N.J.)
Don’t expect the textbooks in Fort Lee schools to refer to the body of water between Japan, Korea and China as “The East Sea” anytime soon. But if the apparently problematic name emerges in classrooms, there will be active discussion on whether it’s “The Sea of Japan” or “The East Sea,” school officials said Monday night.
The Korean-American Association of New Jersey recently presented a petition with 1,500 signatures favoring the name change in the three towns, including Fort Lee.
The body of water has been referred to as “The Sea of Japan” since the 20th century (when Japan took over Korea), but had been known as “The East Sea” in prior centuries, the Korean-American group said. The International Hydrographic Organization, which is responsible for naming rights of water across the globe, has rejected the use of “East Sea”.
World Bank’s Kim Says Universal Health Coverage Can End Poverty
BusinessWeek
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said universal health insurance coverage in all countries can help achieve a goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
“Every country in the world can improve the performance of its health system in the three dimensions of universal coverage: access, quality and affordability,” Kim said in a speech in Geneva at the World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of the World Health Organization’s top decision-making group. “In all cases, countries need to tie their plans to tough, relevant metrics. All of us together must prevent ‘universal coverage’ from ending up as a toothless slogan.”
Asian American Week 2013: Lower East Side Organization Leads Effort To Help Distressed Asian Americans
NY1
A grassroots organization on the Lower East Side is working hard to reduce the high rate of suicide in the Asian American community, and for the first time in years, they believe they are making progress due to the highly publicized suicide of soldier Danny Chen. NY1′s Cheryl Wills filed the following report as part of NY1′s Asian American Heritage Week.
Sentencing Tues. in Biloxi prostitution case
AP via San Francisco Chronicle
A Korean man is scheduled for sentencing Tuesday after pleading guilty to harboring women who were in the country illegally for prostitution.
Moonseop Kim has been in custody since his arrest Sept. 30. He was denied bond in October, when an agent testified Kim had overstayed his visa and was in the country illegally.
He faced counts including conspiracy and harboring of women for financial gain and immoral purposes. He pleaded guilty in March to transporting women who were in the country illegally for financial gain in connection with a sex trafficking operation.
Son Ho Young’s Girlfriend Discovered Dead in His Car
soompi
It has been reported that Son Ho Young‘s girlfriend was discovered dead in his car. She has reportedly ended her own life.
The Gangnam police station commented on May 22, “A used briquet, an empty bottle of sleeping pills and a suicide note was discovered in the car,” and “We assume that this is a suicide.” It has been reported that the suicide note contained information about the deceased’s debts and other self-pessimistic messages.
Son Ho Young’s reps reported on May 22, “On May 21, Son Ho Young was in the Gangnam Police Station from 10PM to 12AM to be investigated. Before he received a call from the police, he did not know about this at all.”
Cannes: Park Chan-wook’s ‘Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance’ Getting Remake
Deadline Hollywood
Silver Reel and Lotus Entertainment have partnered with di Bonaventura Pictures and CJ Entertainment for an English-language remake of Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. The script is written by Broken City scribe Brian Tucker, based on the first film in Park Chan-wook‘s Vengeance Trilogy.
The film centers on two men who are bound by their common sense of loss and headed on a collision course of revenge. The other installments in that trilogy are Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. A remake of Oldboy will be released in October by FilmDistrict, directed by Spike Lee and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Brolin and Sharlto Copley.
Psy Becomes First Korean Singer to Win Billboard Music Award
Chosun Ilbo
Psy has become the first Korean singer to walk away with a trophy from the Billboard Music Awards.
He received the Top Streaming Song (Video) award for “Gangnam Style,” the most-viewed music video on YouTube, at a ceremony held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Sunday.
Interview: Producer Kyu Lee on Bringing Psy and ‘Korean Wave’ of Pop Culture to US
Asia Society
Kyu Lee grabbed attention last year for teaming up with Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun to bring Psy stateside, touching off the “Gangnam Style” phenomenon. Known in the media industry as “Q,” he connects A-list Korean stars and directors to the U.S., helping to bring Hallyu (the “Korean wave”) to a wider audience.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kyu immigrated to the U.S. at the age of two. He began his entertainment career with a ten-year stint at Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), where he rose to Executive Assistant to both the Vice Chairman of SPE and Chairman of Columbia Pictures Motion Picture Group. Kyu is also the founder and CEO of Kino 33 Entertainment.
Ken Jeong bares his soul – and body – in ‘Hangover 3′
MetroWest Daily News
Though he stole all audience attention away from every other actor in his brief scene as Dr. Kuni in “Knocked Up,” no one was ready for Ken Jeong’s intro in “The Hangover.” He leaped out of a car trunk, wearing only black socks, and proceeded to beat the tar out of Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis with a tire iron. That’s right, wearing only black socks. His Mr. Chow eventually became an important character in that film and its sequel. In “The Hangover Part III,” Chow, naked again, of course, is quite often the center of attention. The doctor-turned-actor, who is also a regular on the TV show “Community,” chatted recently in Las Vegas.
Why do you like to be naked onscreen so much?
Chow originally had clothes on in the first one. It was my idea to have him be naked. I was really nervous, asking [director] Todd Phillips if it was OK, that it would be funny to do it naked. And Todd said, “You don’t have to tell me twice.” He immediately gave me a nudity waiver to sign because he didn’t want me to change my mind. I just wanted to service that script. I’ve got nothing to brag about. I wasn’t trying to show off. It was a character choice, not a personal choice. I’m a happily married father of twin 5-year-old girls. I don’t even like to take off my shirt at the beach. I’m really shy. I’m not an exhibitionist. I’m very demure about my body. But an actor acts, that’s why I do what I do. You’ve gotta make fearless choices to be an actor. Otherwise everyone would do it.
Shin-Soo Choo Could Be Good Mets Pickup as Free Agent
New York Times
The first batter to face the winless Marcum could be a big part of the Mets’ future.
He was Shin-Soo Choo, the Reds’ center fielder, and if the Mets really want to contend sometime soon, they should make a strong attempt to sign him as a free agent after the season.
“He’s the big reason why we are where we are right now,” said Brandon Phillips of the Reds, who hold the second-best record in the National League. “Playing against him when he was with the Indians, I always told everybody he’s one of the best all-around players in baseball — underrated. Right now he’s just being himself. It’s a blessing to have him over here.”
Korean high school pitcher averaging 139 pitches per game
CBS Sports
Lee Su-min, a 17-year-old pitcher for Daegu Sangwon High School in South Korea, has thrown 974 pitches in seven appearances this season, six starts and one relief outing. He’s thrown a complete game in every start. In his most recent start, Lee threw a whopping 178 pitches in 9 2/3 innings.
Now, obviously with this kind of workload, there’s a reason the coach is doing it. Lee is a stud. He has a 0.44 ERA with 88 strikeouts in 62 1/3 innings this season. And due to the circumstances, both Lee and his coach believe the workload is acceptable.
“Since we’re playing only on weekends, we get about five days off in between games,” Lee said (Yonhap News Agency). “On my off days, I work with professional trainers at a rehab hospital (in Daegu), doing some strengthening exercises and getting massages. I am not pitching on consecutive days, and so it’s OK.”
U.S. Women’s Open golf champion Na Yeon Choi up to the challenge of defending title at Sebonack
New York Daily News
Sebonack, a Jack Nicklaus/Tom Doak design, will provide a different challenge than Black Wolf Run, where Choi was the only player last year to break par for the week thanks mostly to a 7-under par 65 she shot to set the course record Saturday.
How Not to Promote Korean Food
Wall Street Journal
K-Pop videos, high-end restaurants, bizarre food health studies and other wacky ideas to promote Korean food have been criticized as a waste of taxpayer’s money by the South Korean National Assembly budget office.
A total of 21.9 billion won ($19.7 million) was spent on the “Globalization of Hansik,” or Korean cuisine, last year as part of a marketing campaign that budget office analyst Cho Yong-hee called a “waste of time, manpower and organization.”
The budget office’s report criticized the government for “inefficiency occurred by similar and overlapping programs” by a range of government agencies.
Roy Choi Being “Straight Up” About Chinatown
Zagat.com
Listening to Roy Choi talk about his new neighbors in Chinatown is like listening to a boy talk about his favorite schoolyard pals. In this little vid from The Hundreds, Choi goes into the kitchens at Hop Woo, where he introduces the chef as the “master of balls,” and checks out Phoenix Bakery for the buttery almond cookies. He calls Hoan Kiem “the most gangsta” place in Chinatown, and Pho 97, “the OG OG pho spot in LA.”
Talking Shop
Over lunch at an L.A. haunt, actor Steven Yeun leads a lively conversation with The Walking Dead writers/producers Angela Kang and Sang Kyu Kim.
Edited by JULIE HA
Photos by ELIZABETH KIM
Who can forget the zinger of a line: “Everything is food for something else”? Or the wrenching scene when protagonist Rick falls to the ground in shock and grief after learning his wife Lori has perished? Fans of AMC’s hit post-apocalyptic zombie series, The Walking Dead, can thank Angela Kang and Sang Kyu Kim, respectively, for scripting that line and that scene.
Actor Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn, may be the most prominent Korean American identified with the show, but viewers who carefully study the opening credits may have caught Kang and Kim’s names flash across their screens as producers and writers for the acclaimed series, which just wrapped its third season.
Kang, who previously worked on the unaired NBC series Day One and the former FX show Terriers, has been with The Walking Dead’s writing staff since 2011. Kim worked on the TNT drama Hawthorne and the Starz network’s Crash before joining The Walking Dead in 2012. (Kim, incidentally, left the show after the third season, and is working on other TV and feature projects.)
Yeun has called the two writers “brilliant.” Glenn is often described as the most humanizing portrait of an Asian American male on TV today, and KoreAm thought who better to interview Kang and Kim than the actor who brought life to some of their words? The writers met up with Yeun at the Hungry Cat in Los Angeles and chatted over lunch about their craft, the industry, and why the character of Glenn portends a promising future for Asian American portrayals on the tube.
Steven: Angela, how did you get into writing?
Angela: I always was into writing stories since the time I was a little kid. I kept a binder of stories that I’d written from the time I was in first grade. Then I started writing plays in high school … and when I went to college, I had some plays produced through the theater program I was in. Coming out [of college], I started doing some plays, and actually, a decade ago, I was in KoreAm magazine because I had written a play that was in Los Angeles, and it did fairly well. So that was my main writing for a long time. And then, I guess I just always loved TV. I thought, I want to learn how to write for TV. I ended up going to grad school at USC and did an MFA in the film program and learned to do screenwriting and TV writing.
Steven: That’s amazing that it doesn’t seem like there was a hitch in a step ever with your parents saying, “What are you doing?”
Angela: Oh, they definitely were like, “What are you doing?”
[Laughter.]
Angela: I mean, we’re Korean, so, they were like, “What are you doing? You should be a lawyer!”
Steven: But how proud were they when you came out in KoreAm? (more…)
A Korean American couple in Southern California was arrested after police stumbled upon a marijuana growing operation worth an estimated $1 million.
Cops were responding to a tip about a burglary in the tony coastal suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes, an affluent community that doesn’t see a lot of crime.
They didn’t catch the burglar but discovered a large-scale indoor marijuana farm operated by Tom Kim, 37, and his common-law wife Molly Hwang, 45. (more…)
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