Here are some videos we’re watching this week at KoreAm.
Girls’ Generation’s Surprise
Girls’ Generation sent hearts of many South Korean soldiers aflutter as they made a surprise visit to a military base. The crowd of horny men soon became delirious, jumping up and down crazily as they sang along to the songs, eventually drowning out the Girls themselves.
Kids Getting Sprayed with Water
It’s not always expensive toys that bring children joy and amusement. Sometimes, it’s a cardboard box or even, in the case of this video, a spray bottle full of water. These two kids giggle and laugh endlessly because of the spray bottle, to the point of turning bright red.
David Choe Tags Facebook
David Choe, a muralist, painter and graffiti artist, was invited by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the new headquarters of the social networking website. There, Choe tagged the pure white walls with different images, just as he had done in 2006, on the walls of the original Facebook headquarters.
Building Constructed in 15 Days
In 360 hours, a Chinese sustainable building company, Broad Group, did what many thought to be the impossible and the unsafe: they built a 30-story hotel prototype. The research in the video explains all the safety tests done for the building as well as how the building is much more efficient in saving and utilizing energy.
Lost in Tokyo
With two days to himself in Tokyo, Japan, photographer Mark Bramley took nearly 10,000 photographs and video footage of the bustling city. His time-lapsed video shows everyday life in Japan.
Kids React to K-pop
Eleven kids, aged 7 to 13, react to seeing Super Junior, Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 for the first time. The kids react and comment on the popularity of K-pop as well as style choices and the mass appeal K-pop may have.
Bonus Footage:
Spica – Doggedly music video with Lee Hyroi
Spica, a new girl group, features Lee Hyroi in their music video for “Doggedly.” Hyroi, who hasn’t made a music video appearance in a while, is from the same company as Spica.
Shrieking Reporter
A reporter demonstrates a different way of traveling down flights. The building she’s in offers a staircase as well as a slide and as she slides down, her hilarious and unique screams echo in the staircase.
Draft Punk Word Project
A class of seventh grade students participate in an exercise put to Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger.” The students follow the lyrics and raise the appropriate card to follow the song. Nothing like having a Western hipster as your English teacher.
Drummer Kid Boots and Rallies
After an intense drum solo, a drummer gets sick but stays professional the entire time, declining help from a teacher, who rushes to his aid. This kid is sick!
Beatboxing Flutist
This flutist takes her music to a whole different level. As she plays her piece, the young musician stars to beatbox, creating a unique sound.
Morbid Wedding
Chadil Duffy, a young man from Thailand, had plans of marrying Sarinya when she unexpectedly passed away. Duffy, so in love with his girlfriend of 10 years, continued on with the wedding and married her corpse. Yikes.
The Wonder Girls are Back!
The Wonder Girls return with a song demonstrating how far their English skills have come. “The DJ is Mine” features another group, School Gryls, and shows the two girl groups battling it out for the love of the club’s DJ.
Samsung’s Smart Window
Samsung has developed a remarkable device that puts LCD in the last place you’d think to put it: in a window. Their new Smart Window transparent LCD doesn’t use back light units like traditional LCD screens. Instead, it relies on ambient light to let you see what you’re doing and without the back unit lights, you can see through the display and even when there is no ambient light, the Smart Window has a special transparent back unit light to illuminate it.
Korean High School, the Documentary
Kelley Katzenmeyer graduated high school, left her home and began taking high school classes in South Korea. In Korea, she intended to look at the education system but later found students’ concerns with test scores as well as beauty.
If you have more videos, email them to linda@iamkoream.com.
by Jessica Yoon
Local artist Maggie Hazen has undertaken a project to create an art memorial in honor of the 20th anniversary of the LA Riots.
The memorial, commissioned by Korean Churches for Community Development (KCCD) and the SAIGU campaign, will be a modular installation consisting of approximately 6,000 miniature and individually crafted plaster vessels filled with basic food ingredients, which will represent the occupation and unification of the Los Angeles community.
“I just want to bring something beautiful to something that’s been destroyed,” Hazen told iamKoreAm.com in a phone interview. “I think it will speak to the community in terms of the picture of harmony and unity. That’s what I really want people to look out for.”
The 22-year-old recent graduate of Biola University said the program’s manager, Bonnie Kim, was familiar with her previous work and approached her to do the memorial. Hazen said she realized her work was all about mapping geographical regions of human conflict.
“The motivation is kind of what is the essence of a human being and what is our shared point of common interest?” Hazen said. “I realized that it was food, and so I’m using flour, rice, and cornmeal as three main food staples that kind of represent a wide brush stroke of ethnic diversity and something that we share in common.”
The memorial will also invite the direct involvement of the community by having a select group of 25 to 30 representatives who were directly affected by the riots to take part in creating the installation. The entire process will also be filmed and made into a short documentary featuring the stories of the representatives and the building process of the project.
The memorial placement will be part of a three-day event leading up to the Art Show opening on April 28, 2012 and the L.A. Riots commemorative service on April 29, 2012.
“I’m really just looking forward to seeing the community’s reaction and how they see the piece and I really want to hear what people are saying,” said Hazen. “I’m looking forward to different cultures to shake hands and come to some conclusions and some peace.”
Visit Hazen’s KickStarter page if you are interested in donating to this important project. For more info on the artist, go to maggiehazen.com.
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.
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 »
Here’s a look at some of the videos we are watching this week at KoreAm.
Korean Tow Truck Breaking Traffic Laws
In South Korea, a camera mounted on a Korean tow truck captures the truck’s journey to an accident scene. The truck, however, didn’t just travel to the scene, it raced at least two other trucks to the accident scene. Along the way, the truck broke an outrageous amount of traffic laws by violently racing through the streets, crossing over into the opposing lanes, running red lights, nearly hitting other automobiles among other laws.
Spiral Artwork
Chan Hwee Chong, a Singaporean artist, uses a single black line to reproduce famous artwork from all over the world. His illustrations consist of a single black line spiraled into the likeness of a particular artwork.
Coast to Coast Collaboration
Asian American rappers from across the United States come together to collaborate on a new hip hop track. The black and white music video features the rappers rhyming about everything from music, women, life and other topics. New York’s Rekstizzy (a.k.a. KoreAm contributor David “Rek” Lee), Decipher from Philadelphia and Los Angeles’ very own Dumbfoundead put their own verses and experience into the song “No Apologies.”
India’s Toughest Warriors
The Warriors of Goja prove that they are some of toughest and most resilient men in India and, probably, the world. For an Indian talent show set up similarly to “America’s Got Talent,” this group of men showcase their talent of trying to destroy themselves. The Warriors violently attack themselves and each other with bricks, florescent bulbs, sledgehammers, spikes and even cars causing the judges to gasp in horror. In the end, all the men walked away battered, bruised and bleeding but that didn’t stop their smiles. This video is not for the weak-hearted.
South Korean Lawmaker Tear-Gases Parliament
Earlier this month, a South Korean lawmaker, Kim Sun-dong, tried to prevent a vote on a trade pact with the United States by releasing tear gas into the National Assembly chamber. This video captures the moment and chaos that ensued.
Chinese Pig Walks on Front Legs
In July of the year in Mengcheng County, Anhui Province, China, this piglet was born without its two hind legs. The piglet, called “Piggy the Strong” by the local villagers ways over 30kg. and mostly travels on his two front legs.
Have a video to share? Email linda@iamkoream.com!
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Featured Event
It’s the new year, and Yim Jae Beum is coming to town! After a sold-out show in Los Angeles last October, he is coming back to hold two U.S. concerts for the 2012 Lunar New Year. Everyone already knows this man can sing! He’s got an impressive resume, debuting as a rock singer back in 1986, releasing Korean classics, such as “For You,” and most recently, joining and winning first place twice on the MBC show, “I am a Singer.”
Seattle and New Jersey, get ready! We are happy to announce that we will be giving away TWO (2) pairs of tickets! read more
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