Our July Issue Signed By Victor Cook
Have you seen our July issue yet? It’s packed with great stories, tidbits, commentary and things to do. Who’s that on the cover, you ask? Why that’s Kevin Cho, aka Stealth, the star of a new comic book series called Mecha-Nation. He’s a high school kid who transforms into a superhero with amazing powers. And he just happens to be Korean American.
Mecha-Nation is the brainchild of Victor Cook, the supervising director of The Spectacular Spiderman. Cook has directed several animated series including 101 Dalmations: The Series, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Mickey Mouse Club House and Lilo & Stitch: The Series.
Now, a special offer: The next 25 people who subscribe to KoreAm will receive a copy of our July issue autographed by Victor Cook. It’s a great collector’s item! Just forward your email receipt to elizabeth@iamkoream.com.
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In Bloom
South Korean superstar GIANNA JUN, starring in this month’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, hopes to bring her special brand of sassy to American audiences
by Jaeki Cho
photographs by Peter Ash Lee
IF YOU WERE AMONG THE millions who saw My Sassy Girl (2001), the highest-grossing romantic comedy in South Korean box office history, or have been exposed to the TV commercials selling cell phones, fried chicken, jeans and cosmetics during a trip to the motherland, you’ve likely been enchanted by the addictive—and highly marketable— charm of superstar Jun Ji-hyun.
At 29, and a decade following the film that propelled her to stardom, the actress/model continues to top the Korean celebrity hierarchy. Adopting the Western name Gianna in recent years, she’s also trying to work that same magic in Hollywood with her second full-length feature film in English, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, released this month. The film, adapted from the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by Lisa See, has no shortage of star power, with Wayne Wang of The Joy Luck Club fame directing, popular Chinese actress Li Bing Bing co-starring, and Asian American media mogul spouses Wendi Deng Murdoch and Florence Sloan producing. (Murdoch is married to Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., and Sloan to Harry Sloan, former CEO of MGM, who now heads Global Eagle Acquisition Corp.)
Jun plays Snow Flower, a character matched to Li’s Lily as laotong, that is, an arranged sisterhood from youth. They communicate secretly by writing notes between the folds of a white silk fan. In a parallel story in present-day Shanghai, the sisters’ descendants, Sophia (also played by Jun) and Nina (played by Li), struggle to maintain their close friendship while confronting the modern-day demands
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Throughout his career in animation, Victor Cook has brought iconic superheroes like Spider-Man, Buzz Lightyear and Tarzan, to life on the small screen. Now he’s giving birth to one of his own: a comic book superhero who just happens to be Korean American.
By Jimmy Lee
Step into Victor Cook’s corner office on the Warner Bros. “Ranch” studio lot in Burbank, and it’s like entering a fanboy’s fantasy.
Along with the large photos of Buzz Lightyear on the walls are multiple Spider-Man action figures lining the shelves, although the iconic Marvel superhero doesn’t fit in with all the DC characters—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman—being animated on the other side of the floor.
But the project that KoreAm is here to write about has nothing to do with what goes on in this workplace. Nor does it have anything to do with Lilo, Stitch, Hellboy or Spider-Man, which are just a few of the characters Cook has brought to television as cartoons.
What will come out in July will fulfill a wholly separate fantasy of Cook’s: the birth of his own brainchild. Mecha-Nation is a comic book series, published by Ape Entertainment, featuring a group of teenaged superheroes called Mecha-Sapiens. And at the fore of this super team is a Korean American named Kevin Cho.
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In this 1997 photo, students and residents plant rice in a newly rebuilt rice patty over flood-ravaged farmland in Sugu village, Kujang County, about 90 minutes north of Pyongyang. One local resident at the time admitted to eating plant porridge while trying to overcome the country’s food shortage. Photo credit: Hyungwon Kang
The Food Dilemma
How hungry is North Korea, and how conditional should food aid be? Korea specialist David C. Kang provides an overview of the North Korean food aid quandary.
How bad is the food situation in North Korea?
There is considerable debate about just how bad the situation is. The United Nations’ World Food Program, along with two other U.N. agencies, have released a study concluding that potentially 6 million North Koreans, a quarter of the population, need urgent food aid, citing a harsh winter in which some crops were down 44 percent from expected levels. But even as the World Food Program has launched an international appeal for aid, there are those who oppose such assistance for a variety of reasons. Some argue that the North Korean regime’s behavior should change before any aid is given, while others contend the situation is not so dire, citing evidence that the North Korean military has stockpiled up to 1 million tons of rice, much of it possibly diverted from aid organizations. And still others believe that the regime is simply saving up its food for 2012, when it plans a major celebration for the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-Sung’s birth.
There is, however, evidence that food prices are rising in North Korea and are rising faster than world food prices. This is not only a sign that demand is outstripping supply, but also that the situation in North Korea is not simply a reflection of global food prices. That is, although North Korean elites and the military are unlikely to suffer, some ordinary citizens may be facing severe shortages. In late May, the U.S. sent a fact-finding team to North Korea to assess the situation, and the team’s report is being prepared at this time.
What is the current South Korean and U.S. government stance on providing food aid?
The overall stance of the U.S. government has been one of “strategic patience,” which means ignoring and containing North Korea until it first makes concrete steps to back down from the belligerent behavior of the past few years and to show measures intended to rein in the nuclear weapons program. The U.S. has also not yet made any decision about the humanitarian situation. South Korea’s approach is generally the same: President Lee Myung-bak has eliminated most economic and aid programs to the North until it apologizes for attacking South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and shelling Yeonpyeong Island last year. Within this overall approach, however, there is a willingness to potentially provide humanitarian aid to the North if the situation is dire enough and if the North meets certain preconditions.
In this 1995 photo, residents wait at a Pyongyang bus stop. Photo credit: Hyungwon Kang
Will denying North Korea food aid lead to popular unrest against the government?
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Yoon Myung and Tai Sook Suh came to America searching for a better life for their children, Andrew and Catherine.
Loyal to a Fault
Filmmaker Iris Shim’s award-winning documentary delves into motivations and manipulations behind a tragic sibling murder plot.
by Suevon Lee
Iris Shim never intended to make a documentary. Her instincts were more inclined towards narrative filmmaking, but when truth turned out to be stranger than fiction, she felt it had to be told.
Thus began a five-year effort to chronicle one isolated act of violence through the prism of an immigrant family’s disjointed, tragedy-filled experience in the United States.
Shim debuted her work, The House of Suh, at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto last May. It has traveled the independent film festival circuit over the past year, receiving much critical and audience acclaim.
The 95-minute feature-length documentary will air in shortened form July 17 on MSNBC through the channel’s documentary film unit and releases on DVD this fall.
An engrossing, penetrating film that incorporates certain cinematic elements through the use of original scoring and animation from hand-drawn sketches, The House of Suh centers around Andrew Suh, a 36-year-old man serving a 100-year prison sentence in Illinois for killing his sister’s boyfriend in 1993.
Filmmaker Iris Shim spent five years on her documentary.
While it is the murder—carried out when Suh was a student on full scholarship at Providence College in Rhode Island—that inspired the film, it’s just one piece of a complex family narrative stitched together through interviews and rare archival footage.
“There’s a whole revelation of why [Suh] actually pulled the trigger,” Shim, 29, said in a phone interview. “It comes down to family loyalty, to what he perceived his duty was as the son of the family. To tell you the specific reason is to give away the ending.”
The feature-length film hovered over completion: Short on funding, Shim and producer Gerry Kim had to rely on donations from Shim’s church and other grassroots contributions to complete filming.
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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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