Bits and pieces

Seeing as I've talked about development in Bucheon before, I found Joe's photos over at Paint Roller blog taken of (and from the top of) the yet-to-be-finished We've The State apartments in Bucheon to be pretty nifty. Antti's panoramic photos of Busan at Hunjangui Karuchim are well worth a look as well.

With such neighbourhoods in mind, an article over at the Hankyoreh about the disappearance of Mom and Pop stores (to be replaced by... bars?) and other small business trends is worth a read.

Mark's post about Chinese 'gold farmers' (ie people who are paid low wages to play massive multiple player online roleplaying games) and online economies over at Korea Pop Wars is fascinating. About the only knowledge I have of World of Warcraft comes from a South Park episode dealing with it. One of the scenes made me chuckle:

Kyle: "Wow, look at all these people playing right now."
Cartman: "It's bullcrap! I bet at least half of these people are Koreans."

This kind of cultural recognition is probably even less palatable than Stephen Colbert's rip on Rain...

This month is the 20th anniversary of the June 1987 democracy protests, and Kotaji is doing a great job covering them, by posting contemporary day to day reports by British newspapers. They can be read here (with the first post being at the bottom, of course).

A bit late in linking to this, but Jamie over at Two Koreas has a post about his trip to the Kaesong Industrial Complex. My camera accompanied him, but it returned without a memory stick (North Korean Immigration seemed to be concerned about photos of (likely non-military) construction sites near Kaesong; someone should have told them "Hey guys, do you have any idea how much of South Korea looks like this?). Obviously, after this outrage I turned in my North Korean Workers' Party membership card. Bastards.

Lastly, a (downloadable) full trailer for the film "May 18" can be found here. At the end of this post, I wrote, "It should be interesting to see how the uprising is portrayed now (ten years after "A Petal" and "Sandglass"), seeing how Korea, and how Kwangju is remembered, has changed quite a bit since then." I might have to change that from 'interesting' to 'painful'. Judging from the trailer, it seems someone decided that the "action melodrama" genre would be a good idea, perhaps using "Taegukgi" as a model (ugh). Not really my cup of tea, obviously, but then it's likely a younger crowd they're appealing to, and considering how little even university-aged students know about the Kwangju uprising today, that's not necessarily a bad thing. In all fairness, I suppose the film shouldn't be judged by its trailer.