Pre-plastic surgery
Posted on 09/10/2014 12:10:42 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture. By Euny Hong. Picador; 288 pages; $16. Simon & Schuster; £14.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
FROM “Gangnam Style” and competitive electronic sports to kimchi-flavoured pot noodles, South Korea’s cultural exports are eagerly consumed around the world. Filipinos are hooked on its dramas. The French love its pop music and its films. Last year South Korea raked in $5 billion from its pop-culture exports. It has set its sights on doubling that by 2017.
Much has changed since 1985, when Euny Hong, a Korean-American journalist and author of a new book called “The Birth of Korean Cool”, arrived in Seoul. South Korea was most definitely not hip. Its musicians had been muzzled by censorship, and busking, considered a form of protest, had been banned. The country had no mods, rockers or hippies. Dramas were “provincial and tedious”.
Over the next six years Ms Hong witnessed the swiftest part of the country’s economic development, “the painful period between poverty and wealth”. She recalls the anomalies of the time: newly wealthy women wearing mink coats at the fish markets; frequent power cuts in her family’s flat, the poshest in a posh district.
From this unpromising position South Korea managed to charge past Japan to become Asia’s foremost trendsetter, and Ms Hong interviews superstars, chefs and cultural critics to discover why. She finds that cool can be manufactured, up to a point. South Korea’s is a side-effect of the culture-exporting machine that was created at the end of the 20th century and has been nurtured by the government ever since....
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
Pre-plastic surgery
From third world back-water to one of the most advanced, prosperous countries on Earth... in ONE GENERATION!!!
I expect the next generation will mess it back up though. lol.
Yeah, I left there for the last time in 1983 and they were NOT a first world country, although you knew it’d probably come through for them someday because they’re such damn hard workers. Remember the first Hyundai cars they sold here? Those were much better than the taxis we rode in but were still very crude compared to American and Japanese cars, much less German. Look at them now!
Krazy Kim Jung Il, eat your heart out! Well, figuratively speaking, that is. You are missing out on an Oriental Style Wave, with all your “Faux Concentration Camp” zaniness. Wake Up and smell the Chow Mein.
Look how far Germany has come since reunification and times that by 5 or more, IMHO. Remember, those people in the DPRK are just as Korean as the ones down South living like kings & queens in comparison. I watch a Korean style cooking show with my wife and am AMAZED at how far that country has come since I left, even out in the boondocks where they often go.
You have no idea what kind of memories that photo triggers for me. No idea.
You know what they say about family businesses... 1st generation build it, spoiled 2nd generation spends it, 3rd generation loses it.
They are in the middle of gen 2. lol
They weren’t really even a Democratic country until late 80’s or early 90’s.
Poor obama: soul music and soul food died on his watch, only to be replaced with Seoul music (gangham) and Seoul food (kim chee).
Let’s pray the Koreans can repeat their performance during the Rodney King riots by mowing down rap and hip hop.
in the 80's I think
The real question is..... why does everyone want to live in Seoul??
Can they get any more crowded, those high-rise apartments should be blue and say SPAM
I really hope so. Even their “spoiled” generation obsessed with drama and pop “idols” seem like pretty hard workers.
The article says they train for a year before they’re even introduced to the public. What American “boy band” would put up with that?
Something between the first and second photo was mostly what I experienced, depending on the place, of course. Because Seoul is D.C., New York City, Dallas, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Tokyo, Hollywood, Detroit (in the good sense), Pittsburgh, Austin and Beverly Hills all rolled into one.
My father fought in the Korean War. My 25 year old son travels there for business.
I think if my father were alive today, he would get a kick out of it.
I got lost driving in Seoul. Had to find an import customs house. City of 16 million and I had to find one building without an address.
My dental hygienist said they don’t have car seats for their babies in Korea, so they should be prepared for their adopted son to have a tantrum when he’s put in one here!
That answer is simple.
Park Bom!
With SNSD in close second
ok, that sounds a bit strange
Some of them train for a lot more than a year, in S Korea they literally have their life run by these management companies. Young and aspiring boy and girl bands will commonly share tiny apartments.
Heck, Exo-K are superstars and they share a little apartment. They don’t make nearly the big bucks that stars can in the US.
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