So it’s with some trepidation then that we prepare ourselves for life back home. We’ve gotten used to our simple way of life here and I think we both feel more than a bit disconnected with the lifestyle and contemporary popular culture back in the States.

Looking back, I’ve found that life for an expat in Korea is often full of contradictions. It’s been at times exciting and scary and yet rewarding but frustrating. It’s different yet sometimes strangely comforting and already I am remembering my time in Korea with much fondness. Furthermore, I count myself very lucky as I’ve had the opportunity to see so much of the Peninsula during my time here.

From Seoul’s smoggy urban mass, to the pastoral tranquility of the south’s sprawling rice paddies. From the jagged peaks of Mt. Seorak to the rugged coastlines of Jindo and Geoje Island. From the surreal Cold War hangover at the DMZ to the bustling modern metropolises of Busan, Daegu and Taejon. All of these places paint a grand picture of a truly diverse and dynamic country.

The thing that sticks with me most though, wherever I’ve gone, is just how much this country has accomplished since the calamity of the Korean War over fifty years ago. How in such a short space of time, this country has risen from the ashes of a devastating conflict to rank amongst the great modern powers. And yet despite all of this rapid modernization, and even in the face of new and potentially crushing global forces, it has maintained its ties to a rich culture and history.

The scope and magnitude of this change, when I think about it, is truly incredible. I think the reaction of an older Korean man I met in a Seoul shopping mall sums it up best. He was a retired doctor from Chicago who was returning home for the first time in five decades after escaping during the war. As we were chatting, he pulled a dog-eared snapshot of himself out his wallet, showing him as a young man clutching a rifle and standing next to a war-weary American GI. He shook his head slowly, looked around and said to me, “Just think; the last time I was here, all I could see was flames.�

Above all else, in all my traveling, I’ve been struck by the incredible generosity of the Korean people. Everyone from hotel owners, taxi drivers to people on the street; each has been eager to share their little bit of their country with a foreigner. It’s this spirit that has truly makes Korea so special.

And I can’t forget the foreign community in Ulsan either, without which our stay would not have been nearly so entertaining. From hash runs, to potlucks, to parties and to road trips, my sincere thanks to everyone and I hope you all find happiness wherever your travels next take you.

Finally, I’d like to thank Jin Lee and all the folks at HHI for allowing me to chronicle my adventures in Korea on the pages of FLIK magazine. It’s difficult to put into words and try and sum up my time in Korea but I’m hoping the body of work contained in these columns begins to try and do so.

Hopefully it has given you as much insight into life in Korea as I’ve learned writing from them. Thanks once again.

Turns out, for Koreans, the name Ulsan and the image of whales are nearly synonymous. This area has long been the center of the Korean whaling industry and has an extensive history with these magnificent marine mammals.

The relationship dates back to prehistoric times and is documented in fascinating fashion on the rock petroglyphs at Bangudae near Eonyang. Over 4,000 years ago nearly 60 individual images of cetaceans were carved on to these rock faces. More than 10 different species are represented in the carvings including humpback, right, gray, orca (killer) and sperm whales.

At that time, most of the whaling done was for subsistence and it was the rule that once caught, the whale meat was to be distributed in accordance with the rigid social structure of the community.

More recently, the whaling industry was concentrated in Jangsaengpo near the present-day Onsan industrial complex. In the late 19th century, a Russian whaling company discovered large numbers of whales swimming near the Ulsan coast. Sensing a profitable enterprise, it leased land near the port from the local government and began harvesting the animals commercially.

After the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), the Japanese occupied Korea and began monopolizing the local whaling industry, during which time they significantly expanded the scope of its operations.

An American archaeologist, Roy Chapman Andrews visited Jangsaengpo in 1912 and described it as a bustling community dedicated to servicing a fleet of mostly foreign-owned whaling vessels (most were crewed by Norwegians who hunted the whales for a commission) where the majority of the whale meat was sent off to supply Japanese markets.

When Korea attained independence from Japan following its defeat in World War II, the whaling industry restarted, this time fully under Korean control.

Locally, the first post-war whale caught was an orca – harpooned on April 16, 1945 from a converted wooden fishing boat. By the 1960s and 70s though, the wooden whalers were replaced by modern steel vessels and the catches increased significantly. Records put the average annual catch in that period at around 700 animals.

All of this was a significant boom to the local economy, and there was a saying at the time that the area was so wealthy that even dogs carried a 1000 won bill in their mouths in Jangsaengpo.

In 1982 however, the international community banned whaling, largely because attempts by the industry to self-regulate itself had failed and whale populations worldwide were in decline.

Not surprisingly, this had a devastating impact on the region. Once at the forefront of the Korean whaling industry, all that was left at Jangsaengpo were abandoned whaling vessels and a deserted flensing facility.

The international ban on whale hunting didn’t stop the consumption of whale meat however, as evidenced by the proliferation of local whale meat restaurants even today. South Korea currently maintains no objection to the IWC’s moratorium on commercial whaling but it does continue to allow the domestic sale of whales or dolphins caught as incidental catch or ‘bycatch’. And it’s this meat that ends up on local tables.

This understandably upsets many anti-whaling advocates. Greenpeace claims, for example, that South Korea’s accidental catches are “100 times greater than other countries,” and that a mature minke whale can go for nearly $100,000 US in local markets, making their capture a lucrative accident indeed.

In any case, it should be an interesting month ahead with many local events happening to celebrate the IWC meeting. If you’re interested, you can find more information on the City of Ulsan’s official web site at or for another perspective, you can visit Greenpeace’s web site.

A good digital camera probably tops the list as the most-needed gadget for any global expat, but an MP3 player is surely not that far behind. Given the complete absence of any English-language radio programming here in Korea, bringing your own music with you is basic fact of life. And who wants to cart crate loads of heavy CDs everywhere they go any more anyway?

Last year, 36.8 million MP3 players were sold worldwide and sales are expected to grow to 132 million units by 2009, so this is definitely a rising trend. Personally, I recently purchased a brand-new 40 gigabyte (GB) iPod to replace my CD collection. For the uninitiated, 40 GB roughly translates in to about 5,000 songs or over 300 albums – all on to something the size of a deck of cards.

MP3 players can be roughly divided into two categories. Hard-disk (HDD) players, like the iPod, that are built around a small hard-drive and Flash-memory players that are built around a memory chip similar to what would go into your digital camera.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. For HDD players, size is the obvious attraction. With a portable hard-drive, you can carry an awful lot of music with you wherever you go. The trade-off is most often that these players have limited battery life and are physically bigger and are also more expensive.

Flash-memory players, on the other hand, are tiny and weigh next to nothing. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and usually store between 256 megabytes (MB) to 512MB of music, which is roughly 60 to 120 individual songs. And because they have no moving parts, flash-memory players will never skip like a CD, so they are ideal for working-out, running or taking to the gym.

From day one, Korean companies have led the charge manufacturing flash-memory players. Did you know that the world’s first mass-produced MP3 player was Korean? Saehan’s MPMan was first sold in here the late spring of 1998, months before any competing models hit the markets in the United States.

These days, Korean manufacturers such as ReignCom, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics dominate the flash-memory MP3 player market. ReignCom, which manufactures the popular iRiver brand, expects its global sales to reach 6.5 million units this year alone, up from 3 million units in 2004.

So, what should you be looking for when shopping for an MP3 player? Well, as previously mentioned, your first step should be to identify what you plan on using the device for.

First off, is it important for you to be able to access your entire music collection at any time? If that’s the case, I’d look at a hard-disk player. The iPod is the obvious market leader and is very well designed and easy to use. You also have access to Apple’s iTunes (www.itunes.com) web site to download legally licensed music. Other manufacturers make competing models; however none are so entrenched and widely supported as the iPod.

However, if you plan on using your player mostly while exercising and you value size and portability, a flash-memory player would be right up your alley. I’d recommend sticking with any of the more well-established brands like iRiver, Cowon’s iAudio or Samsung. Your final decision will be more likely dictated by style and your own personal taste however, as most models offer basically all the same features.

Prices are competitive in Korea and you have access to a far wider range of brands and models here than you do anywhere else. So shop around and if you buy something here, remember – you’ll be the envy of every gadget nut back home.

Good, now that I have your complete attention, I thought I’d steer the focus of my column away from Korea this month and towards another passion of mine: technology. I’ll readily confess that I’m a bit of a gadget nut and without fail, no matter where I go, I usually end up being the guy everyone calls for help with their computer.

Korea then for me is geek paradise. Without a doubt, this is the most wired nation on earth. With a national high-speed infrastructure that provides more than 70 percent of the country with high-speed Internet access, Korea boast the world’s highest broadband access rates – almost triple that of the United States and more than five times those of E.U. nations.

All this excess bandwidth has created more than a nation of Internet junkies too; it’s had a very real economic impact here. According to a recent Reuters news report, 95 per cent of music stores in South Korea have gone out of business in the last two years. Where there used to be over 8000 CD stores nationwide, now there are little more than 400 left.

Why, do you ask? Two words: File-sharing.

Most of you may remember Napster, the file-swapping program popular a few years ago that jumpstarted the MP3 revolution. Napster made it easy to share your entire music collection with millions of your closest friends and relatives. That is of course until the record companies got wind and shut it down.

With Napster’s demise though, file-sharing hasn’t diminished. On the contrary, it’s grown exponentially and it was recently estimated that more than a third of all the traffic on the Internet today is devoured by file sharing applications.

Which leads me to the meat of my article.

I get a lot of requests from people asking me how or where they can download this, that or the other. So, for the general benefit of the Flik readership I thought I’d share what I know.

By all accounts, the most popular file-sharing program out there today is one called Bittorrent. It isn’t really software like Napster per say, rather more like a new language for networked computers – but I’ll spare you all the boring details.

Suffice it to say, Bittorrent is designed to share very large files, very quickly. This in real terms means now you can share and download video very easily. And here’s where it becomes useful for any expat in Ulsan.

One of the things I miss most about home are my favorite TV shows. While I’m thankful for the CSI reruns on OCN, sometimes I just wish I could catch the latest episode of the Daily Show. With Bittorrent you can.

I’ll leave the debate on the legal nature of this practice up to the reader, but since it’s normally beamed out over the airwaves for free, downloading TV shows off the ‘Net doesn’t seem so bad to me.

Basically, to use Bittorrent – first head over to any one of the large Bittorrent web sites out there. (A complete list is maintained here: www.torrentwatcher.coolfreepage.com) TV torrents, BTEFNet are two great sites for all the latest US broadcasts, Digital Distractions on the other hand, specializes in British comedies and documentaries. There are many others, a quick Google search will dig up hundreds.

When you’ve found what you want to download, click on the link and a small file is downloaded to your computer. This is essentially an address card with the location of the file in cyberspace and with that loaded, Bittorrent handles your download.

If this is even too much work for you, check out Videora – this program actively scans the Internet for all the latest episodes of the shows you want to watch and download them for you automatically. Think of it kind of like a Tivo for your computer.

Now there is much more content available out there for download than just TV shows, music and movies for example. But I’ll leave those up to the readers to find themselves. In any case, you’re living in broadband Nirvana – might as well put some of that excess bandwidth to use.

Much has already been written about the so-called “Ramyeon Culture� that exists in Korea and there’s no doubt that it’s a popular snack food, found everywhere from convenience stores to roadside stalls. Better known in the West by its Japanese counterpart’s name (Ramen), the noodles are cheap, quick and easy to make. Consequently, Koreans eat 3.6 billion bowls every year – which, in my quick calculation, works out to mean that every Korean eats about 75 bowls of ramyeon a year.

That being said, there is much more to Korean food than instant noodles.

Korean food is often characterized by its spiciness. Though I’d argue that on a spiciness scale, Korean food is pretty much medium range – it’s tasty, but not overpoweringly hot. In fact, the times when I have eaten out with a group of Koreans, many of them express surprise that a foreigner could enjoy spicy foods. I usually counter by challenging them to take on a mouth-blistering Indian curry or Mexican salsa and see how they fare.

However, while many of those countries’ dishes come in varying degrees of temperature, Korean food, no matter what is being served; it is almost invariably always spicy. This is largely due to the ubiquitous red peppers which, along with garlic, ginger and sesame, make up the raw ingredients for most Korean dishes.

Originally brought from South America and introduced to Korea during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions in the 16th Century, red peppers give Korean food a unique and delicious bang; granted – once your taste buds have adjusted. I’ve even heard from several sources that the taste and sensation of the red pepper is mildly addictive, driving a diner to seek out ever spicier meals.

No meal would be complete in Korea without its side dishes however and kimchi is probably the most well-known Korean side dish. While I’m sure every expat in Korea has already encountered it on a regular basis, did you also know that this traditional side dish is packed full of widely recognized and well-documented health benefits too?

When it comes to fighting cholesterol, kimchi can’t be beat – it’s a multi-function, fully-loaded cholesterol Terminator. The garlic and onions used in the red pepper paste work to blast cholesterol off of arterial walls. The red peppers have nearly 10 times the amount of Vitamin C of any other food and the high levels of Vitamin C helps transport and dispose of the cholesterol naturally.

Couple that with the fact that the fermented cabbage contains a massive friendly lactic bacteria army that will lay siege to your intestinal tract and keep it in tiptop condition. Incredibly, kimchi has even more lactic bacteria than yogurt. Finally, aside from the obvious health benefits, a regular diet of kimchi can result in a general rise in appetite, acceleration of your metabolism and less overall fatigue.

The number of side dishes or “chops� with which it a dish is served is another discerning feature of any Korean meal. A typical Korean family’s meal comes with 3 or 5 chops (excluding rice and kimchi of course, they are a given). A more ceremonial or traditional meal could have as many as 9 or 12 chops. Side dishes range from province to province in Korea, and whenever I’m traveling to another region of this country, it’s always interesting to see what kind of side dishes are going to be served with my meal.

In any restaurant you visit, the side dishes and kimchi are, bless them, refillable so if you stumble onto a particularly delicious item you can attack it with repeated rounds. If something doesn’t tempt you, it’s no problem to just leave it alone as well.

Final noteworthy items of any Korean meal are the soups and stews, “guk” or “jikge”. Throughout the country’s history, a distinctive soup culture was born here either through famine or cold weather. When the country was poor and families were much larger, Koreans used soup to stretch out limited ingredients. Hot soup also played a role in mitigating the effects of the bone-chillingly cold Korean winters.

The fact that so many of their traditional meals feature soups and stews so prominently meant that spoons were essential for eating and this preference of using spoons with their meals is one of those little idiosyncratic differences that still separates Koreans from their Asian neighbors today.

So wherever you are in Korea, there will be no shortage of local restaurants for you to go and enjoy a fresh culinary adventure. Be adventurous and your taste buds may even end up thanking you.

Let me explain. Recently I was interviewed for a segment that would appear on a local news broadcast. During a brief pause in the shooting, I was chatting with the reporter and mentioned that one of my hobbies was hiking. He was very excited (as it turns out, he had himself just climbed two-thirds of the way up Mt. Everest) and so he invited me to join him for a very special evening.

Turns out, the following week held an important night in the Lunar Calendar. Living in Korea, most of us are familiar with the big two celebrations; Solnal (Lunar New Year) and Chusok (the Harvest Moon festival), but did you know there was a third day of large significance?

Taeborum is a traditional holiday with great meaning to Koreans, especially farmers. Literally, Tae means ‘great’ and Borum means ‘round moon’ and it occurs on the night of the first full moon in the first month of the Lunar Calendar, which in this case fell mid-February by the Western Calendar.

Just as the full moon’s light drives away darkness, so too is it believed that the ceremonies on Taeborum will drive away misfortune and evil spirits and guarantee bountiful crops for the year to come. It is also a tradition that at night, people climb the top of a mountain near their village and do the Talmaji or ‘viewing of the moon’ and so it was that our group boarded a bus in downtown Ulsan that night and headed north towards Gyeongju.

Our destination was Namsan, a popular mountain that is a virtual “open air museumâ€? – steeped in history from the Shilla Dynasty and covered in pagodas and Buddhist iconography. Ours was a varied group from all walks of life; professionals, mothers, children, retirees and us three visiting foreigners. From the parking lot at the base of the mountain, we set off as a pack into the chilly night and up the side of the mountain.

It’s said that whoever is the first person to see the full moon on Taeborum will be blessed with the most luck, so there are often competitions to see who can climb fastest and highest to the best vantage point. Thankfully, on our night out, there was no race up the mountain.

We proceeded slowly and methodically up the hill until we reached an open clearing mid-way up the path. There we unfolded a large mat and set out the offerings, which included fresh fruit, rice cakes, traditional liquors and nuts.

Nuts play an important part in the ceremonies of Taeborum. It’s believed that eating hard nuts like peanuts and walnuts will strengthen one’s teeth. But more than that, there is also a historical rationale behind the tradition. Long ago, many people suffered from painful skin conditions due to malnutrition and as there are many more nutrients in nuts than rice, it was believed that if you fed nuts to children on Taeborum you could help prevent them from getting any disease in the upcoming year.

Back on the mountaintop, when the ceremony was over, we all ate our peanuts until it was time to line up for the wolf cry. I was honored to be chosen as one of the three who would get to give the wolf cry on this important occasion.

So with a deep breath, I let go with the biggest howl I could summon. My voice echoed down the mountain valleys as it rang out through the cold, still air.

Trudging back through the night, we arrived after a while to a great feast of traditional food, including fresh vegetables and Okokbap (or ‘five grain rice’), a glutinous rice combination mixed with millet, red beans, sorghum and large beans.

After dinner, it was time for the games. First up was the Jwibulnori. Using perforated tin cans with long wire handles and filled with burning wood, the children whirled the tin cans round and round in the air as fast as they can.

It was believed that Jwibulnori could prevent the spread of diseases. Burning the dry grasses in the rice paddies was a way to eradicate field mice and exterminate the insects that infested the dry fields. Secretly, the pyromaniac in me was delighted, and the kids and I had great fun launching the flaming tin cans into the dark sky with great burning comet-like trails of embers.
After a long night, we re-boarded the bus and head back towards Ulsan, tired but hopefully destined for great things in the year ahead.

[Special thanks to Mr. Lee Dal Woo of UBC News and the Ulsan Wolfcry Hiking club for allowing us to join their group for its Taeborum celebrations.]

Nanta is unquestionably a Korean success story; it has been performed over 38,000 times in 15 different countries. Since it debuted six years ago, an estimated 1.5 million people have seen the show and in 2003, Nanta became the first Asian commercial musical in history to premiere on Broadway (re-dubbed under the name ‘Cookin’ I might add).

The word Nanta in Korean means unrestrained, out of control punching – think kind of like a heavyweight boxing bout and you’ll be close. Similar to Stomp and Tap Dogs, it fuses western production values with a traditional Korean tempo to create an explosive percussion show that combines martial arts, drumming, dance, comedy and cooking.

The story takes place in a large kitchen where three zany cooks and their roguish assistant are preparing for a wedding banquet under the supervision of their frazzled Maitre D’. He tries valiantly to keep them to a strict time limit; however, the chefs continue to defy the schedule with successive spasms of percussive pandemonium.

Nanta’s rhythms are derived from a Korean form of folk music called Samulnori (literally, sa and mul mean four objects and nori means to play). Traditionally played by farmers to relieve themselves from the burden of their hard work and to celebrate harvests, Samulnori combines four instruments (usually drums, gongs, wooden blocks and bells) to create memorizing percussive beats.

In Nanta however, they turn all kinds of kitchen items – knives, chopping boards, pots, pans, dishes, even brooms and water jugs – into their instruments. The show is built primarily on these rhythms and has very few spoken words; rather, the performers rely on a kind of gibberish and body language to punctuate the performance and tell the story.

The music of Nanta has also been modernized and is supported by a strong rock soundtrack which drives the show with an up-tempo, infectious beat that will leave you bobbing your head in time and laughing at the cooks’ crazy antics. All together it combines into an exciting synthesis of music and dance that actively encourages audience participation.

In fact, audience participation is an integral part of Nanta, with the performers regularly engaging audience members or bringing them up on stage to help with the preparations. I was dragged (willingly) up on stage to help with the dumpling making contest, which I’m happy to report my team won.

In any case, as the evening progresses and the time crunch tightens, a virtual tornado of chopped cabbage, onions and carrots fills the stage, as the chefs work furiously to meet the deadline. In fact, when its all over, I’d be hard pressed to name a messier production than Nanta.

Nanta is officially the longest running Korean stage production and last year, moved into a permanent home in its own theater near Deoksu Palace. To get there, get off the Subway at City Hall Station. Take exit #12, and head towards Deoksu Palace. Walk along the palace walls toward Kyunghyang Newspaper building and you’ll see signs pointing you to the Nanta Theater.

So if you’re looking for something to do one cold winter weekend, I’d highly recommend traveling up to Seoul and check out Nanta. More information can be found on their web site at www.nanta.co.kr

Living here in Ulsan, I spend much of my free time exploring the beaches but unfortunately, it seems an outing to the ocean these days is more akin to a trip to the trash heap than relaxing on the Riviera.

With almost 100 per cent of Korea’s population living within 100 kilometers of the ocean, a small amount of human impact on the sea shore is probably unavoidable. But what I find truly shocking is the carelessness by which garbage of all sorts seems to be just arbitrarily dumped up and down the coast.

On of my frequent trips to the beach, I routinely find smashed Soju bottles, discarded ramyun containers and crumpled cigarette packets among other debris. In places, the rubbish has accumulated so much so that it’s been piled into huge, unattended heaps.

Once, while walking on a desolate stretch of otherwise perfect strip of sand on Bigeum-do near Mokpo in South Cholla province, I even found an abandoned 32-inch television half buried in the sand.

Not only is all this garbage a serious blight to an otherwise pristine landscape but it poses a serious environment problem as well.

According to Korea’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries’ web site, 4.5 trillion won (US $3.8 million) has been allocated towards the “creation of a clean and living marine environment � and more than 65 per cent of this total said to be going towards preventing land-based pollutants from leaching into the sea.

While much of this money is certainly directed towards big industrial offenders, surely some of it could be used for an effective public awareness campaign highlighting the problem of all this litter.

Say, for example, if each one of the thousands of lone fishermen I see standing on the beaches or jetties each weekend, vainly casting their lines into the waves, were each to pick up and dispose of one discarded bottle or can when they departed – imagine how quickly the beaches could be cleaned up.

Or perhaps we should look at the Arbor Day (Singmogil) model, which successfully reforested much of Korea after the devastation of the Korean War. Mobilize students and community groups on one day each year to tidy their local seafronts with a massive, coordinated clean-up campaign. World Ocean Day, held every year on June 8, already provides the perfect opportunity for this.

Finally, I would implore the local and provincial governments to enact stronger fines for littering. Only through strict penalties backed up by adequate enforcement, will people’s imprudent attitudes change. Furthermore, surely a small amount of their local budgets could be allocated to providing adequate refuse containers and waste removal service along the waterfronts.

Koreans are justifiably proud of their rich and diverse maritime history. Korea ranks amongst the world leaders in shipbuilding, shipping and fisheries, which is an entirely remarkable achievement in its own respects.

Wouldn’t it be nice then for Korea to move forward into the 21st Century with an unspoiled coastline and clean, clear waters?

Before moving to Korea I had rarely sat down to watch Asian movies before. Sure, I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I had seen a handful of Jackie Chan flicks but most of the time, to be honest, I didn’t have the time to muddle through the subtitles.

Little did I know what I was missing, Asia and Korea in particular has a rich cinematic history. But it’s only in the last few years that Korean films have found an audience outside of the peninsula.

In the not so distant past, Korean movies were weakened by poor story telling, anemic direction and a lack of any recognizable movie stars. Not so anymore. Take Silmido and Taegukgi, two of the most commercially successful Korean films, as recent examples.

Silmido recounts the true story of a secret unit assembled on a remote island (Silmido) to infiltrate North Korea and kill Kim Il Sung. Comprised of street thugs and gangsters, the team is subjected to a brutal training regime designed to turn them into lethal killing machines. Think of it kind of like a Korean Dirty Dozen.

Likewise, Taegukgi owes much of its direction to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. In this action-packed megadrama, two brothers are drafted into the South Korean Army to help repel the North Korean invasion. The movie follows the ebb and flow of the Korean War and successfully captures the intensity and ferocity of battle while, much like its WWII cousin, still paying homage to the veterans of each conflict.

Taegukgi, in addition to being the most expensive Korean movie ever made (at about $12.8 million), also solidified the status of actors Jang Dong Gun and Won Bin, who played the brothers, as major motion picture stars.

Both movies are slick, action packed dramas whose historical subject matter plunges viewers into more dangerous and tension-filled eras. Big-budget special effects ensure that younger generations, weaned on Hollywood blockbusters, came out to see these movies in droves. Indeed, both pictures passed the celebrated 10 million viewer mark and Taegukgi, which is currently enjoying a limited US release, is strongly rumored to be in contention for a Best Foreign Language Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards.

Further critical acclaim for Korean movies is on the rise too. People are still buzzing about the surprising success of Park Chan Wook’s hit Old Boy, which was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Film Festival in February of this year. It narrowly missed out on the top prize, the Palme d’Or, losing out only to Michael Moore’s controversial documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

In Old Boy, Oh Dae Su (played by Choi Min Shik) spends a night like most of us have in Korea; reeling around the streets of Seoul drunk on soju. The problem is, when he wakes up, he’s been imprisoned in a generic hotel room – where he remains a prisoner for the next 15 years. Suddenly one day, he’s released and the rest of the movie follows his attempts to seek out his captor.

Old Boy is a one-two, sucker-punch of a movie that literally pulls you out of your seat and slams you in the gut as you watch it. As a story of revenge, Old Boy draws from the viewer an innate, visceral reaction that forces you to call into question even your own morality at having watched it. Very few movies have ever succeeded at giving the viewer the same sense of shock and pleasure.

Given all of the success of Korean movies as of late, it’s no surprise then that Hollywood wants a piece of the action. The latest trend in a city deficient of original ideas is to take Korean movies and remake them with Western actors. Miramax has the rights to the film My Wife Is a Gangster, which was sold as a female version of the Schwarzenegger hit True Lies. Il Mare, another South Korean film, in which two people fall in love but live two years apart in time, is being remade by Warner Brothers.

All Korean movies that have been released on DVD have English subtitles these days, so you’ll have no problem watching any of these movies or finding them at your local video shop. I strongly recommend you see any of the movies mentioned in this article. Do yourself a big favor however and watch the original before you’re stuck with the remake.

It’s about this time of year, as the harvesting time approaches, that the stalks are visibly bulging and sagging under the weight of the rice grains. Driving past the acres and acres of the gently waving green plants got me thinking about just what was so special about this semi aquatic grass and how did it come to play such an important nutritional role for so many people in this part of the world.

Rice is such an integral part of so many peoples’ diets, I was soon to discover, that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations declared 2004 to be the International Year of Rice.

By some estimates, rice (“Bahp� in Korean) has been grown here for more than 3,000 years. And indeed, this can be at least partially confirmed by the discovery of carbonized rice grains at a dwelling site in Heunam-ri, Yeoju City that was dated back to 2760 B.C.

In this respect, modern-day Koreans have a lot in common with their Bronze-Age ancestors. Every year, the average Korean household consumes 83.2 kilograms of rice and it’s by far the undisputed champion of their diet.

In my unofficial research into this subject, over the last few years in Korea I think I’ve consumed no less than a dozen different incarnations of the grain, including steamed rice, fried rice, boiled rice, rice patties, rice dumplings, rice soup, rice noodles, rice cakes, rice juice, rice wine, rice tea and what look and taste like rice milkshakes that they give out as free samples in Lotte Mart.

Korea is a country that is certifiably rice mad. Today more than 11,000 square kilometers or nearly 12% of the Korea’s total landmass is dedicated to rice production, far more so than any other crop. Last year alone Korea grew more than 6.5 million tons of rice.

The reason Korea enjoys such fruitful harvests is partly due to the weather. Rice is a water intensive crop; on average, for every kilogram of rice a farmer needs 2,000 liters of water. Luckily for the rice farmers (not so nice for the rest of us living here) Korea receives the majority of its annual precipitation during the peak summer growing months.

One fact that I found especially interesting was that in Korea, farms are limited by law to roughly about three hectares, giving rise to a unique situation in the rice-growing world which rewards small-scale farming and the individual farmer. Whether this arrangement can endure the crush of globalization and a potential flood of cheap imported rice due to proposed free trade agreements remains to be seen however.

In addition to the challenges posed by the global village, unfortunately rural farming areas are also being threatened by unchecked industrialization, development and urban sprawl in Korea. As it has done in so many other parts of the world too, the siren’s call of the big city has drawn many of the youth out of the countryside and away from traditional agricultural jobs, so a shortage of labor is a serious problem.

In spite of all of this, Korea still experiences yearly rice surpluses, but this was not always the case. In the years following the Korean War, famine was a real issue in South Korea. So much so, that the government of the day tried to legislate special ‘days without rice’, in addition to promoting its supposed negative nutritional values.

Needless to say, their propaganda campaign didn’t work and people kept on cooking and eating the stuff. Good thing too, because I want to see how many more rice dishes I can add to my list.