Some Thoughts on Our Dear Leader

OK, look. It’s 2012. Obviously it’s been a while since this blog has been updated. More than two years! That is a lot of years. So many years. Might as well be all the years, when you take the time to think about it. (Please do not take the time to think about it.) Astounding things have happened since the last JiK post. (Fresh new acronym for a fresh new decade.) The McRib returned, only to leave us again like a rubbery, barbeque-sauce-flavored version of LeBron James’s dad. “I” moved to Korea full-time, got a job, wrote a “real” blog about “my” time there, and eventually moved to New York. Dumb people still care about Michael Jackson being dead. Apparently, those are the only things I can think of that happened between August 2009 and now.

So, yeah, these days I might be one-percenting it up (Oh! That’s another thing that happened, right?) on my stupid little island Manhattan-adjacent, but this isn’t Justin in New York, it’s Justin in Korea and there’s Korean news to talk about, which means we need to talk about it here.

Maybe you didn’t know (you knew), but the great leader, Kim Jong Il, is dead. The North Korean government stated that the cause of death was a heart attack, but let’s try to think critically at least for a moment, yes? Because that is what happens on this blog—critical thinking, endless critical thinking. Everyone knows (EVERYONE) that the number one cause of death in Korea is flying robots. Studies have shown that at any time the average Korean is operating no fewer than ten Bluetooth enabled devices. That’s three Bluetooth devices per hand, even given that one of those devices is probably a Bluetooth hand. It’s a small wonder, then, every Korean doesn’t die whilst piloting their giant flying robots. The whole thing is a safety nightmare.

(You are more likely to die driving your giant robot to the airport than you are in a plane crash.)

I’m not talking about giant flying robots, however, and therefore the majority of the last paragraph has no point. I’m talking about (FOR ONCE) regular-sized flying robots. Not just any regular-sized flying robots, though, regular sized flying CONSTRUCTION robots. LOOK AT THESE FUCKERS:

This is horrifying. Not only will these robots murder us while we waste time eating, sleeping, reproducing, etc. they will then construct architecturally significant tombs for us wherever they’ve cut us down. I’m not saying I know for sure that this is what happened to Kim Jong Il, but let’s be honest: this is what happened to Kim Jong Il. This is necessarily true because robots are assholes. Let this be a warning to all of us: they got to the man who invented the hamburger; they can most assuredly get to you.

Since this is likely to be the last JiK post ever (and just when we got a new acronym), it seems like a downer to end on the fact that we’re all going to be murdered by flying Roombas and entombed in minature Walt Disney Concert Halls.

So, one last time: FAMOUS KOREAN MOVIE LINES!

-- “I drink your lotte milkshake! I drink it up!”

-- “One does not simply walk into Pyongyang.”

-- “I want to play a game… that game is Starcraft.”

-- “All we have to decide is what to do with the bag of rice that’s given to us.”*

-- “There’s no crying in Starcraft!”

-- “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some radishes and a nice fried spam.”

*North Korea only.

Your turn? Leave your quotes in the comments.

Famous Korean Movie Lines

Today Videogum has introduced the self-explanatory Best New Party Game 5: #1stdraftmovielines. In keeping with the remarkably limited scope of this blog, I present #1stdraftkoreanmovielines (for the two people I know with Twitter):

"Forget it Jihoon, it's Americatown."

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn, unless you are older than me or went to the following colleges:"

"You can't handle the truth!"*

"Keep your friends close, but your enemies across a 2.5 mile demilitarized zone."

"As Kim Jong Il is my witness, I imagine I'll be hungry for the foreseeable future."*

"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to book me, aren't you?"

"Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was disloyalty to government killed the dissenter."*

"I feel the need - the need to respect my elders!"

* North Korea only

...Your turn? We should do this all day.

Kim Sung Il: Korean King of Pop

OK everybody, let’s talk North Korea.

Oh man. That place. As if you didn’t know, today was the 15^th anniversary of the death of Kim Sung Il. For North Koreans, this is a huge event. In the words of his son, Kim “King of the North” Jong Il, “Big shit poppin’, little shit stoppin’”.

For North Koreans, Kim Sung Il’s memorial day is like Michael Jackson dying every year. Just like with Jackson in America, all North Koreans are required by law to change their Facebook statuses to reflect how heartbroken they are about the death of a man they didn’t know who hasn’t done anything of interest in the past 15 years.

Of course, that analogy is hardly fair. For one thing, despite the fact that Kim Sung Il was the dictator of an oppressive nation-state whose citizens are required by law to worship him like a god, he probably wasn’t buried in a FUCKING SOLID GOLD COFFIN. For another thing, FUCK THAT.            

Dear Justin... Korean Mailbag!

In its purest form, blogging is a two-way street. The preferred means of communication for the e-proletariat, blogs are all about taking the power of the press away from those fat cats in the liberal media elite and giving it to people without spell check. Well, unlike those fat cats (so fat!), I intend to give the people what they want. You’ve raised your voices, and they have been heard: Korean Mailbag Q and A – you asked for it! (Why did you do that?)

 

Q: I live in Seoul and commute to work. The time going and coming from the office is one of the few times I have in the day to relax and be alone with my thoughts. I’d hate to have to take public transportation, but the cold winters here can be tough. During the winter months, what should I do if my giant robot won’t start?

 

A: Excellent question! Giant robots are a great way to get around, but do require careful maintenance. A remote starter can let you warm up your robot without even getting out of bed. Letting your robot warm-up before leaving the house helps avoid stall-outs and can even prevent engine-damage. Keep in mind, however, not to leave your robot running unattended for too long as it may become bored and fire photon lasers at the paper boy.

 

Carpooling is another option to consider, especially now that eco-friendly transportation is on everyone’s mind. Many giant robots have the ability to combine with other robots in order to form ultra-bots. Talk to some friends and organize your own transportation pool.

(Above: An easy way to save on fuel. Below: Some professional Koreans, ready to commute to the workplace)

 

Q: Is that naked Japanese guy real?

A: Terrifyingly, yes. Also, he’s dramatically lowering your chances of winning delicious mushrooms through the mail.

 

Q: I’m nervous about my upcoming arranged marriage. I want to honor my family, but I’m afraid I will be unhappy with my new wife. Is it possible that my arranged-wife-to-be feels exactly the same way, and that we’ll both go to extreme lengths to get out of the marriage because we’ve both met someone that we truly love, and then after some comic-mishaps we’ll both unhappily relent to be married only to both learn that our arranged-spouses and secret lovers are the same person, thus learning an important lesson about respecting traditional familial values while adapting to modern Korean youth’s rapid and sometime difficult immersion in an urban western secular lifestyle?

 

A: No, but only because you spent all your urban western secular time at the booking club booking the girl with the biggest 깡통.

Korean Safety Update: Know Your Naked Japanese Enemy

Koreans are taught from a very young age to always be mindful of the Japanese. Children check under their beds for Japanese people before going to sleep, and every Korean adolescent knows that unprotected sex could very well lead to Japanese children. Still, many young Koreans choose to disregard the Japanese threat, believing it to be an old wives' tale their parents told them when they were children in order to coax them into eating their mixed vegetables and rice. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in our modern times of LG phones and box-shaped cars, the Japanese are still nakedly thriving among us.

 

Update: I was hoping to link to video, but Hulu has taken it down. Instead, read this article concerning the threat to your safety

 

http://www.japanfortheuninvited.com/articles/nasubi.html

Korean Cultural Update: DRAGON WARS

Movies are like assholes: every country has them, and they all stink. What?

In America we tend to think of Hollywood as the only player in town when it comes to the movie game. Of course, this is hardly the case – many nations have a rich history of moviemaking. The Germans brought the world expressionism and modern use of mise en scene. The French introduced us all to the cinema verite. China gave us a bunch of incomprehensible martial arts movies about flying people. Bollywood continues to do whatever the hell it is they’re doing over there.

It was not unexpected, then, that South Korea would look to grab a seat in the high-stakes world of international cinema. Indeed South Korea has done just that, and with 2007’s D-War this sauna-loving nation has put all its soggy, illegible cards on the table.

 

 Oh man, this movie. The premise of Dragon Wars is simple enough – let’s let Wikipedia explain:

“As a young boy, Ethan Kendrick (Cody Arens) encounters in a shop, owned and operated by antiques dealer Jack (Robert Forster), a mysterious reptilian scale that shines with a blue light. This light projects itself upon Ethan. Seeing this, Jack pretends to suffer a heart attack and sends Ethan's father, who is selling him an antique dagger, to get help. Ethan then listens as Jack narrates a story (largely shown in flashback) explaining the scale.

"Jack, having told this story, reveals that he is himself Bochun, and that Ethan is Haram, reborn to protect the Yuh-Yi-Joo from Burakai, who is soon to return. Jack gives Ethan a medallion formerly belonging to Haram and reveals that the Yuh-Yi-Joo is a girl named Sarah whom Ethan will find in Los Angeles. Ethan accepts the medallion and the responsibility of caring for the Yuh-Yi-Joo.”

            Whoops! Sorry most expensive movie in the history of South Korea, that’s your plot! Jack spends most of the movie faking heart attacks to get people to leave the room and also showing up in disguise to help Ethan get out of tight spots, like some sort of Korean cross between Tony Wonder and Gene Parmesan, private eye.

            Meanwhile, Ethan needs to grow up and become a reporter (who is friends with Craig T. Robinson), so the movie jumps ahead 19 years. Now we’re in Los Angeles, which is obviously under attack by dragons. Ethan and Craig Robinson have the near impossible task of locating a single girl in Los Angeles who matches the description of being either 19 or 20, named Sarah, and has a dragon tattoo. That is so hard! No it’s not though, because like all 19-year-olds with dragon tattoos in LA, Sarah regularly watches the nightly news so eventually Ethan and Sarah and former Ashley Schafer BMW spokesperson Craig T. Robinson all meet up. At this point, Sarah releases some dragons of her own and all the dragons fight and destroy downtown LA while the army fires a bunch of missiles everywhere that just blow up buildings.

            If you’re thinking that you’ve seen this exact movie before, it’s because you have when it was called Transformers, but I cannot emphasize enough that THIS MOVIE IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN TRANSFORMERS.

The best part about this movie is the ending. Love-interest Sarah turns into a spirit and goes to her place in the stars, where presumably she and Ethan cannot date. His work on this planet complete, Jack briefly consoles Ethan, and then decides to turn into dragon dust. Thanks for all the help, E! Hope you had fun with the dragons!

Coincidentally, this is also how Weird Al vehicle UHF ended.

 

Seriously, Dragon Wars:

 

In conclusion, South Korea should make all the movies.

The Other Minister

What a week! Monday, I had the singular honor of meeting the Prime Minister of South Korea, Han Seung-soo! Obviously, it would have been rude to post during my visit, and I haven’t been able to make it online in a few days, but Monday I night I wrote up a quick diary entry. While I was visiting, Seung-soo had a meeting with none other than Kim-Jong Il! What a privilege! Here’s an excerpt of what happened:

 

“Whatever the press and the opposition might say, the Prime Minister is not a foolish man. It had not escaped his notice that, despite Kim Jong’s assurances at their first meeting, they were now seeing rather a lot of each other, nor that Kim Jong was becoming more flustered with each visit. Little though he liked to think about the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army (or, as he always called Kim Jong Il in his head, the Other Minister), the Prime Minister could not help but fear that the next time Kim Jon appeared it would be with graver news still. The site, therefore, of Kim Jong stepping out of the fire once more, looking disheveled and fretful and sternly surprised that the Prime Minister did not know exactly why he was there, was about the worst thing that had happened in the course of this extremely gloomy week.

“How should I know what’s going on in the – er – North Korean community?” snapped the Prime Minister now. “I have a country to run and quite enough concerns at the moment without –“

“We have the same concerns,” Kim Jong interrupted. “The Brockdale Bridge didn’t wear out. That wasn’t really a hurricane. Those murders were not the work of Japanese. And Herbert Chorley’s family would be safer without him. We are currently making arrangements to have him transferred to St. Mungo’s Hospital for Koreans. The move should be effected tonight.”

“What do you… I’m afraid I… What?” blustered the Prime Minister.

Kim Jong took a great, deep breath and said, “Prime Minister, I am very sorry to have to tell you that he’s back. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back.”

 

Korea! What a place!