Photo of the day #1

Employee puts up lotus lanterns in a temple in Seoul to celebrate Buddha’s birthday (석가탄신일 or seokga tansinil) on the 10th of May.

The picture was taken by Jo Yong-hak for Reuters.


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My private Korean Movie Week

GD & TOP - High high

This week will be Korean Movie Week for me, yay! Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Thirst, A tale of two sisters and, if possible, My sassy girl. Comments will follow. (And click on each of the names to see the trailers!)

I'm also preparing a post with lots of lovely pictures of modern first year birthday parties, that include my favourite Korean tradition: the part in which the child "chooses" her or his future. Parents nowadays are really creative and come up with a lot of really pretty and modern solutions for this moment.

And, well, the video has nothing to do with any of this, but I find TOP is extremely handsome in it, so... why not post it?

edit: i do realize my sassy girl has no connection whatsoever with any of the other movies, but i do feel i'll be in need of something to cheer me up by the end of the week.


Check out more posts from this collaboration HERE.
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Korean movie made with iPhone 4

This is not news but for me, but I thought it was quite interesting and worth posting.

Earlier this year, the news that director Park Chan-wook was about to release a 30-minute movie shot entirely with an iPhone 4 made headlines all over the world (obviously, I missed them due to my post-London depression). The feature, 파란만장 (that means something like "life full of ups and downs" and was translated as Night Fishing), tells the story of a man that, while out fishing one night, ends up catching the body of a woman. Mixing horror and fantasy, the movie was co-directed by his brother, Park Chank-yong, and cost only $133,000 (financed by Korea's only iPhone provider).

For those of you who don't know or can't remember, Park directed other great movies like Old Boy, Lady Vengeance and Thirst.

Check out the teaser trailer:

Below, the Behind the scenes for the movie. Bad thing is in Korean with no English subtitles.

Check out more posts from this collaboration HERE.
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Worldwide Korea Bloggers Roundup #01

I was checking the other blogs that also contribute with The Korea Blog and chose a few posts to share in here. This may become a weekly feature, but I won't be making any promises, because I know myself all too well.

So, without further delay, here are the posts that caught my eye today in this network of ours:



# http://ellacino.blogspot.com/2011/02/koreas-7-cant-miss-festivals.html
Eleonora tells us which 7 festivals we just cannot miss in Korea. My favourite one has got to be the mud festival; I read about it some time ago and I think it must be one of the most fun events to take part in the whole world  (with the Spanish Tomatina in a close second).

# http://www.buhaykorea.com/2011/03/06/n-seoul-towers-a-lock-of-love
The author posts a few picture form her last visit to N Seoul Tower, where you can find the famous locks. I love it how people are so fond of that idea that they try to replicate it everywhere. I've taken quite a few pictures of bridges with locks when travelling 'round Europe.

# http://mymariamargareta.blogspot.com/2011/03/namsan-padlock-lock-your-love-here.html
One more blog post on N Seoul Tower, but this one has a short video!

# http://insidemybackpack.blogspot.com/2011/03/incheon-international-airport-worlds.html
I'm not particularly fond of airports (I actually hate flying), but Jepoi gives some useful information for whoever is flying into Korea through Incheon.

# http://sliceofseoul.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/the-main-use-of-sliced-cheddar-is-for-chijeu-kimbap
Cheddar cheese kimbap recipe! I have no idea how traditional this is, but, oh, my gosh, it looks delicious.

 


Check out more posts from this collaboration HERE.
Check out the other collaborators' blogs here.
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Learning Korean - Talk to me in Korean!

When I talked about some of my favourite websites to get extra study material on Korean, I completely forgot about a recent but great find: Talk to me in Korean! It is, actually, good that it happened like that, because I think this one deserves to be featured alone.



Talk to me in Korean has weekly lessons that come out as podcasts on their website or via iTunes. They start at a very basic level and go up 'til Level 5 (so far), so almost all learners will find appropriate lessons. Besides having the regular video/audio podcasts, they also release every once in a while Iyagi lessons, which are "recordings of Korean conversations, at natural speed, about various topics". And that's not all! TTMIK also produces several other videos or audios with original content for you study times.

One great thing about it is that they have PDFs with each lesson's notes and worksheets for all lessons (but 1-10, Level 1), so you can also practice a bit after listening to the podcast. This is the best part for me, 'cause I'm one of those visual learners, so I need to have something to look at when studying.

But nothing's perfect, and I find that their putting the Korean word side-by-side with its romanization is a considerable drawback. It may be only me, but my eyes go straight to the letters I'm more used to read, instead of focusing on the Korean alphabet. This is manageable, though. I just used a black marker to "erase" all unwanted romanization. I reckon you'd be able to tweak the files if you have that Acrobat Professional (or something like it), but I just cannot say for sure.

All in all, it's quite good and it's been helpful to me, so I'd definitely recommend it!

Their last post is this fun video on popular exclamations. I love those kind of things and I hear "진짜요?" all the time on Korean TV shows, so it was nice learning how to write it properly and also learning a few more expressions. Take a look at the ones below and at the video I'm pasting here. And don't forget to check Talk to me in Korean and subscribe to their feeds!

"Here are some popular expressions used by Koreans when they are surprised or express exclamations.

1. 엄마야! = Oh My God! / Oops!
2. 대박 = Super cool! / Awesome!
3. 우와 = Wow
4. 진짜요? = For real?
5. 그래요? = Is that so?
6. 정말요? = Really?
7. 아이고! = *sigh* / Whew! / Oops!
8. 아싸 = Yay! / Hurrah!
9. 네? = Yes?
10. 어? = Huh?
11. 아/아야 = Ouch!
12. 헐 = What the…
13. 헉! = *gasp* / OMG!"

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIvZSdN3d8Y]


Check out more posts from this collaboration HERE.
Check out the other collaborators' blogs here.
Check out The Korea Blog!