The Korea Society’s Podcast on the Korean Wave

(Update 2 January 2008: I’ve just found this commentary on the same podcast at the Korea-U.S. FTA blog if anyone’s interested)

It’s funny, but ever since I briefly mentioned the Korean Wave in a (sort-of) book review I wrote of a book on the Japanese Wave, I can’t seem to escape references to it on the internet; it’s like learning a new Korean word, then once you know what it is you suddenly see it and hear it 20 times on the same, familiar commute to work. In addition to the several links I’ve given in the last few posts, today I also heard a 50 minute Korean Society podcast on it, in which back in August:

Samuel Jamier, The Korea Society’s senior program officer for contemporary issues and corporate affairs, sat down with Robert R. Cagle, assistant professor of cinema studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to talk about the future of the Korean Wave and his research on melodrama

If regular readers haven’t heard me mention the The Korea Society on the blog so far, then I apologize profusely, because I’ve done you a great disservice. They have excellent lectures available to download every week or so, invariably by well-known authors, lecturers and/or officials very highly placed in the present or past US Administrations. They are mostly on political and security issues, but not always as you can see, and even if you’re not an international relations theory freak (which you might be surprised includes me), the lectures are so good that they’ve made me interested in the North Korean nuclear issue for instance, a subject which I always found completely dry and boring before I started listening to the podcasts.

All of the Korea Society’s podcasts are available on iTunes, where I found them, or alternatively on this page here. As I type this that podcast is first on the list, but if you’re looking at this post sometime in the future you can either find it yourself in that link, or alternatively if you’re lazy you can listen to the podcast directly here, but you’ll probably have to wait 5 mins or so for the Quicktime file to load up.

The podcast is described as a discussion, but it’s really a question and answer session, and I found the “interviewer” Samuel Jamier to be rather annoying, because for the first 40 mins he speaks in a monotone voice, clearly just asking prepared questions to Robert Cagle, and not adapting the questions to Cagles’s replies. The fact that Jamier is not a native speaker highlights this all the more. But he does lighten up towards the end, and that was just a trivial problem of course.

The focus of the discussion is much less about the Korean Wave’s impact on Japan and Southeast Asia than you might expect, and more about its impact on the US instead. Which is a new and not unwelcome angle for me, but does mean that Cagle actually discusses American movies almost as much as Korean ones, many quite obscure. But then the Korea Society is based in New York and would have primarily an American audience, and it was not uninteresting, especially when he analyzed the differing social developments in the US and Korea that have led to such different melodrama and movie formulas in each. For an American, he also has some strange tastes in Korean dramas and movies, finding 미녀는귀로워/200 Pounds Beauty (2006) hilarious for example (see here for a proper review), whereas I found it merely a light, forgettable comedy, and reads a great deal into it that I think is simply overanalysis. On top of that, rather than being put off, he positively relishes the formulaic nature of Korean dramas and many Korean movies’ sad endings…but then it would be surprising to find an academic focusing on Korean cinema and TV who wasn’t guilty of all the above!

In the process of the interview/discussion he gives away the plots to many movies and dramas, but given his tastes then I won’t be seeing virtually all the ones he mentions, so that’s okay. Actually, one movie he does mention, 번지점프를 하다/Bungee Jumping of Their Own (2001), before I listened to the podcast I wouldn’t have watched even if I was paid, for I’ve hated 이병헌/Lee Byeong-heon ever since my then girlfriend and I watched the drama 아름다운날들/Beautiful Days back in 2001, complete with 5 minute, melancholy staring scenes that would not be out of place in a Bollywood historical drama (though I haven’t seen Joint Security Area (2000), where I hear he’s good). But the way Cagle discusses it, he makes me want to see it now, quite a feat.

My only quibble with Cagle is his take on the recent reduction of Korea’s screen quota system from Korean films having to be played in cinemas from 146 days to 73 days a year as part of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement. While I agree with him that it may have come at a bad time for the Korean film industry, I completely disagree with him that it should be raised back to 146 days again, for two reasons:

1. I’m not pro-free trade or an economic liberal by any means, quite the opposite, and believe that tariffs, or in this case quotas, are essential to protect infant industries. But I’m also aware that once industries have been established, continued protection can lead to them becoming uncompetitive and monopolistic, regardless of the industry. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cagle’s quite narrow field of expertise means he’s simply unaware of the potential for things like these.
2. And those are precisely what have been occurring in Korea. Korean actors and films are winning prizes every other month these days, and don’t need protection by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, Cagle doesn’t live in Korea, and so is probably unaware that the quota system meant that cinemas had to play Korean movies to empty cinemas much of the time, and hence, with the exception of film festivals, only Hollywood Blockbusters could be played in the other 219 days of the year because the cinemas needed the money to compensate! Rather than protecting Korean movies from hollywoodization, which they’ve been doing for many years regardless, ultimately the quotas may well be encouraging an influx of blockbusters. Other than at the film festivals then, for the last seven years the only way for me to see ever so slightly less popular Western movies was to download them, as if they played at all it was often for a week or less.

Having said all that, he makes the point that other than Hollywood, only really India and Korea have thriving film industries, and I’d be the last person to want that undermined in any way. But despite all the nationalist hype about movies like D-War, Koreans are no longer prepared to watch movies simply because they are Korean, and the industry cannot rest on its laurels anymore.

In the meantime, I followed Aaron Shinsano’s recommendations for movies to study Korean with and went to Nampo-dong (for new readers, that’s in Busan) to look for some cheap DVDs of director 홍상수/Hong Sang-Soo’s. Given the nationalist element to the cinema industry here implied by the screen quota, then you may not be surprised to learn that (unlike most of the rest of Asia) it is actually very difficult to find cheap DVDs of Korean movies here, and in Busan I only know of that one store that has them (the very crappy one in Seomyeon, next to Judies TaeHwa, doesn’t have any Korean ones). If anyone can tell me of any others in Busan, I’d be very grateful!

This store only had about 40 total, hardly worth the trip, but fortunately I did find one of Hong’s: 여자는 남자의 미래다/Woman is the Future of Man (2004). I’ll try to watch that, and at least some of the 5 or so other Korean DVDs I have, before I go on my long vacation a week from now. That way I’ll be able to watch them with English subtitles first to get the story, but not seeing them for a month afterwards will give me enough of a break from them to be happy to study them using the Korean subtitles when I get back. Usually, after watching a Korean DVD, very very few of which I’ve really liked, I find it hard to gather the enthusiasm to sit down and watch it again to study with for quite a while!

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