Here are some videos we’re watching this week at KoreAm.
Korean Popcorn
Around the streets of South Korea, food vendors line up providing all sorts of meals and snacks for customers. This particular vendor creates popcorn with a bang as well as tons of steam.
Sh-t Asian Chicks Say (version 2)
Asian girls apparently say a lot. Last week, we brought to you a video of “Sh-t Asian Girls Say” and this week, we have another version. This video shows a different set of phrases heard from Asian girls and shows the cruder side of them as well.
Woman Transforms into Rapper Drake
Makeup tutorials are all over the Internet, teaching girls how to get different looks and different effects with cosmetics. One woman took to teaching others how to transform their look from your average girl into the popular rapper, Drake.
Ellen Kim takes over San Francisco
Ellen Kim returns to her San Fran roots and brings her dancing with her. In her latest video, Kim is seen dancing all around her hometown from the streets to the subway, showing her audience a bit of her past.
Jailhouse Musical
We all remember the videos of the prisoners in the Philippines dancing in sync and en massse to popular songs. The Filipino prison dancers have now inspired a 12-episode web series. Prison Dancer: The Interactive Web Musical, created by Romeo Candido, will launch March this year.
Chinese Woman Speaks Up to Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney and John McCain stopped by New Hampshire for a political rally where an audience member told them that the comments made about China did not make her feel good. Romney, who has vowed to “clamp down” on China and has accused Beijing of cheating on global trade rules, was told to not put Asians down.
Victor Kim and YoMama Crew
Victor Kim hits the stage with Lawrence Kao and Anthony Lee in very interesting tiger costumes. The show, a part of the Tic Toc Tour II in Australia, was the first time YoMama Crew performed together.
LG ad for Slim Television
LG’s marketing team has done a great job in disguising the ad for one of their products. This video, although appears to be surveillance footage of a bizarre thief, is actually a pretty simple and smart television ad.
If you have more videos, email them to linda@iamkoream.com.
by Monica Y. Hong
This week’s episode of Top Chef Texas is all about celebrating the old and the new. Kinda like ringing out the old and bringing in the new, but in reverse. Happy backwards New Year! The new comes first in the form of a modernist quickfire challenge. The “cheftestants” have 45 minutes to make a dish that best illustrates modernist cuisine. Their creativity will win them immunity in the elimination challenge.
Chef Edward Lee whips up a dish that is a play on sushi — a salmon belly sashimi, compressed watermelon and a brunoise of three different kinds of radish held together with a coconut fluid gel to represent the rice. Meanwhile, Beverly Kim flash-steams some clams and mussels and serves them with a curry whipped cream and mango chili sauce. She is not too smooth when presenting her dish and squirts foam all over host Padma Lakshmi and then turns into a muppet, namely the Swedish Chef muppet.
Ed says it best, “I respect Beverly as a chef. I respect Beverly as a person. Is she an oddball? Yeah…”
Beverly explains why she is the way she is. “I came up in a very strict family, wasn’t able to sleep over and do normal things, go out to parties so I’m socially awkward cause I only focused on my work,” Kim says. Continue Reading »
South Korea Predicts Changes in Peninsula
New York Times
President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea vowed on Monday to “deal strongly with any provocations” from the North, predicting a “big change” on the divided Korean Peninsula following the death of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, and his young, untested son’s rise to power.
Rumor of N. Korean nuclear explosion prompts brief stock panic in South
Washington Post
A rumor that an explosion occurred at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility set off a brief panic Friday in the South Korean stock market, illustrating one of the ways in which Seoul is vulnerable to its neighbor.
Inside North Korea: The day Kim Jong-il gave me a Rolex
BBC
As part of North Korea’s propaganda machine, Jang Jin-sung spent his career writing eulogies of Kim Jong-il, before growing disillusioned and fleeing to South Korea in 2004. Here he describes life as a member of the North Korean elite.
Miru Kim On How Pigs Used In Her Art Basel Project Got Sick
Huffington Post
One of the most talked about exhibits during Art Basel Miami Beach was Miru Kim’s “I Like Pigs And Pigs Like Me.” For the performance, Kim spent 104 consecutive hours naked in a makeshift pen with two pigs in Primary Projects’ window.
But this morning, Miami New Times’ Riptide blog reported that a local animal rights activist said Kim’s pigs wound up deadly sick and mistreated:
Lose Weight with Korean Diet – Part 1
Ask a Korean!
Given that weight loss is always high on the list of new year’s resolutions, the Korean figured this is a good question to open up the new year. Can Korean diet help you lose weight? Allow the Korean to put it this way: Korea is the thinnest country in the developed world, while America is the fattest. As of 2009, only 3.5% of Koreans over the age of 15 was obese. The same number in America was an astounding 34.3%.
Obviously, there are reasons other than diet that Koreans are slimmer than Americans. (For one, ready availability of public transportation in most cities, leading to more walking. Genetics, for another.) But it should be equally obvious that Korean diet and eating habits have a great deal to do with the svelte figures of Koreans.
‘Miss Kim’, January 19-29
Angry Asian Man
Miss Kim is a play about a Korean American woman coming to terms with being sexually abused by her uncle, family denial and betrayals, and somehow finding humor through it all. What’s even more unique about this Off-Broadway play is that the lead, Gina Kim, is telling her own story.
Ex-Major Leaguer Park Chan-ho comes home
Korea Times
Korean baseball pitcher Park Chan-ho, a former Major League Baseball All-Star who recently signed with a South Korean team, is the living proof that you can come home again.
World Champ Simon Cho returns to skating after back fracture; aims to win US title
AP via Washington Post
The fractured vertebra in Simon Cho’s lower back still hasn’t fully healed.
He’ll be competing this weekend in the U.S. Short Track speedskating championships nonetheless.
Talk about supercool bragging rights. How many kids get to tell their classmates their dad is off chasing pirates on his warship?
It’s certainly one of the highlights of U.S. Navy Commander Steven Lee’s young son and daughter. In February, the 18-year veteran of the Navy took command of the USS Gonzalez, one of this nation’s armed-to-the-teeth warships. Though two other Korean Americans have commanded at sea, he is the first Korean American graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to do so.
“It’s an amazing ship. It can do amazing things. I call it my toy,” said Lee, with a chuckle, speaking by phone while his $1.8 billion “toy” was in port at Norfolk, Va. The most recent deployment for him and his 280-member crew involved conducting counter-piracy and counter-terrorism operations in the Somali Basin and Indian Ocean.
“We can strike a target from the sea with our long-range missiles,” Lee said, noting that the ship plays a supporting role to U.S. Special Forces looking for terrorists on the ground. Continue Reading »
Rihanna is raising eyebrows for her music video, “We Found Love,” after a blogger accused the pop diva of stealing the work of grunge photographer Sandy Kim.
Kim, known for her sometimes graphic yet intriguing shots of everyday life, has generated a lot of buzz in the artistic photography world in recent years. FADER contributor Bryan Derballa uses side-by-side comparisons to point out the noticeable similarities between Kim’s images and scenes from Rihanna’s video.
Apparently this is not the first time Rihanna–or video director Melina Matsoukas–has been accused of ripping off other artists in her videos. According to blog ArtLyst:
[Rihanna's] music video for her hit single S&M sported imagery blatantly lifted from the work of famed photographer David LaChapelle. Accusations of plagiarism came from all sides, with one scene depicting Rihanna ‘walking’ a man on a leash and on all fours corresponding to LaChapelle 2002 image for Vogue, Aristocrats. Indeed, the similarities were so great that fans of the photographer were initially concluded that LaChapelle had in fact directed the video.
Clearly, Rihanna has been notorious for ripping off various artists and their work, but it begs the question of whether this actually matters. With the video approaching 100 million views on YouTube, fans still seem to idolize the pop goddess despite the fact that her videos have repeatedly been accused of plagiarism. Still, the similarities are hard to ignore.
Check out more side-by-side comparisons after the jump: Continue Reading »
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Featured Event
One of the the biggest Asian cinema events to hit Southern California opens on May 10. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, features the latest works by established and emerging filmmakers, along with seminars, panel discussions and symposiums on topics relevant to Asian Pacific cinema.
Opening Night features “Shanghai Calling,” directed by Daniel Hsia and starring Korean American Daniel Henney, who plays a Chinese American expat lawyer navigating his way through the mean streets of Shanghai (the picture above also indicates he is a raisin smuggler). But does he take off his shirt? Go watch the movie to find out! read more
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