Kim Ki-Duk

Cinema is a big a thing here in Korea. In 2012 for the first time the number of viewers was more than 100 millions, numbers analogue to countries like USA, China and India. A middle aged korean watched more than 3 movies per year. However, I was not one of them, as both I and Dorothea never go to the cinema since when we moved to Seoul. This despite quite a number of cinemas in Seoul are showing movies with english subtitles. The problem is that to go to the cinema we should pay a nanny for 3-4 hours so, in such a case, we choose to have a romantic dinner. Furthermore watching movies at home offers more freedom. For example you can see Marlen singing using her toe as a microphone (while imitating Lucio Dalla). This is something that you cannot do in a theater. 

However in 2012 also something else happened: for the first time a korean movie won the first price at one of the main three international festivals (Cannes, Venice, Berlin). Kim Ki Duk, with his movie Pieta, won the the Golden Lion in Venice. When the price was assigned, last summer, I was in Europe, and I have heard that it triggered much controversy as many critics say that this was not his best movie. A friend of mine who has seen most of Kim Ki-Duk's production, however, just commented that a good Kim Ki-Duk is just better than all the stuff of an average international festival. I admit my ignorance, I had never seen one movie of him, and I did not hear about him either, so now that I have been alone for almost three weeks in Seoul, waiting for Dorothea to come back from Switzerland, I decided to recuperate. 

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

In the last weeks I have seen six movies of Kim Ki-Duk in this order: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring; 3-Iron; Samaritan Girl (Samaria); Dream; The Isle; Crocodile which is almost the opposite order in which they have been made, being Crocodile his first movie. This is only a small portion of his production (18 movies directed in 16 years, plus a number of production, scripts, etc). In fact Kim Ki-Duk is famous for making a movie in one month.

I found them on youtube, at a very limited resolution and quality, mostly with english subtitles (but sometimes in italian or spanish). I feel that I am not infringing copyrights, in fact I would immediately pay the ticket to go to a cinema to watch most of them in all their beauty. Anyway they appear and disappear on YouTube quickly, so the link of this post might not work anymore when you read this.

3-Iron

Both 3-Iron and Samaria were made in 2004. Kim Ki-Duk won the Silver Bear in Berlin with Samaria and the Silver Lion in Venice with 3-Iron. Probably they are his greatest films. Very modestly in an interview he says that each artist's creativity follows a parabola, and his peak was 2004. When he received the Silver Lion he immediately ran in front of the older and more famous other korean director Im Kwon-Taek, who was present in the hall, and bowed many times in front of him (5:00). In fact in Korea to show that you are better than an elder person is offensive, while to be humble, or even shy, is considered an important value. Although this exists in our culture as well, it is so amplified here that it is hard to imagine for somebody who always lived in the west. When I arrived in Korea, I had some problems at work as my manners were seen as a form of arrogance. Even when I was very respectful, that was nothing compared to korean standards. I think that my friends in Italy are laughing now reading about my "arrogance" and me being "too outspoken", as they know me as such a shy and introverse person. Every culture has its standards.

Samaritan Girl (Samaria)

3-Iron (Bin Jip) is technically almost perfect. Filmed in only 25 days, the protagonists remain mute during the entire movie. Written like that, it might seem boring, but as closing the eyes and meditate in silence empowers the senses, the lack of verbal expression allows the rest to emerge. The beauty of the photography and the communicative power of every scene is amplified ten times. This requires a great aesthetic art, and the ability to insert magic moments on a dull background. And in Bin Jip Kim Ki-Duk does it magisterially.

However the movie that touched me most has been Samaria. I don't know exactly why I loved it so much, whether because it depicts in such a straight way our irrational behavior, or because I feel personally touched. Maybe it is the story of the relationship between a father and his daughter. Or it is the loss of reference points in the adolescent protagonist when she remains orphan of her mother. But whatever it is, Samaria is objectively a great movie, with one of the most moving ending that I have ever watched. The Silver Bear is also there to confirm that.

Dream is a more mature movie. While initially it seems only to explore the unconscious mind, during the development of the story it appears that the real theme is the human passion and the frightening and possibly fatal potential that it includes. Although I could not find in its end the force and originality of the others, it is still a great movie, with a wonderful photography.

Dream

The filmography of Kim Ki-Duk is controversial for completely different reasons in both the west and in Korea, something foreseeable from his personal history. Before beginning to make movies he worked since the age of 16 in a factory, for 6 years. After he entered in the korean marine corp where he spent 5 years. Finally he went to Paris for three years, without speaking french, learning painting until he returned to Korea to write scripts for movies, which eventually gave him the chance to direct his first one, Crocodile. He self-learned to write scripts and to film movies, without following any school. Obviously when such a guy finally manages to express himself, it will be inevitably different from the mainstream. 

Besides the occasionally displayed shocking violence, Kim Ki-Duk is controversially famous in the west for the animal cruelty used while filming his movies. The Isle is plenty of cruelty on fishes. Cruelty that was really done while recording the scenes. Different animals are harmed in other movies. In Korea this is seen as a silly point, but not so in America and Europe, where the respect for animals is a serious topic (for example 1, 2, 3, 4). Kim Ki-Duk offered his viewpoint few years ago as:"We cooked all the fish we used in the film and ate them, expressing our appreciation. I've done a lot of cruelty on animals in my films. And I will have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life." And even more clearly "In America you eat beef, pork, and kill all these animals. And the people who eat these animals are not concerned with their slaughter. Animals are part of this cycle of consumption. It looks more cruel onscreen, but I don’t see the difference". I have been living in Korea for two years, and I have seen cruelty on animals, and sometimes psychological brutality on humans (also a frequent topic in his movies). The way I see it is that his filming is like a documentary. The cruelty that has been employed by Kim Ki-Duk's is real, and it is something that one gets used while living here. He must have seen it, and done it, so often in his life that he developed an exterior insensibility to it that he shamelessly expresses. Somehow he follows the principle that showing the violence is always better than hiding it. This will remain an unpopular viewpoint in the west and I respect him for not following our morality just for selling a bit more.

The Isle

The reasons for Kim Ki-Duk being controversial in Korea are more complex and, as a foreigner, I might just have a naive understanding of it. Still I want to write it down, waiting to be  rectified. Korea is an education-centered country. Most parents devote their time, their money, simply their all life, to give the best possible education to their children and to send them to the best university. I work in such a university and I perceive from what the students have emerged. Korean students are also trained to focus on competition, for example by hanging a graded list on the wall, or forcing the students to rival in velocity while solving an exercise on the board. Under such pressure obviously there is little space for adolescent dreams and passions. And here it comes this guy, with no education whatsoever, who does not care about the consequences of his art, nor about money, or about anything except his interior desire of describing Korean society as he saw it, ignoring societal tabu. A guy who recklessly expresses himself and reaches the greatest worldwide success ever for a korean director, filming 15 years old prostitutes, women destroying them-selves through abuse of plastic surgery, people in extreme poverty, accustomed to violence, where raping or self-inflicting physical pain is normal. I can understand that many koreans simply feel humiliated both by what he shows and by his international prestige. 

Crocodile

The Isle and Crocodile, among the first in his production, are very different from later movies. If you violence disturbs you, do not watch them. It is not like to see a movie from Tarantino, who shows violence for fun. This is violence like it happens in the real life. It represents the strong against the weak, and the weak against him- or her-self. One of the actress who worked with him just declared that Kim Ki-Duk likes to show the sufferance and pain of the korean population.

Crocodile has been his first movie, and for this it deserves to be watched. Many of the themes that will be developed in other movies are present here, although the powerful silences in much of his production are not there yet. His talent is here still hidden but his vision of the society and what he wants to express is clear, as well as his temerity in showing violence and self-destruction.  

The protagonist of The Isle is a women who does not speak, like in 3-Iron, but here the sufferance associated with her condition is much more pronounced and clear than in the following films. This was the first movie of Kim Ki-Duk that reached international festivals and, compared to Crocodile, it is evident that he gained a much greater ability to display a profound psychological condition of sufferance. It became also famous because apparently some spectators felt sick and even fainted during the projection in Venice, due to the brutality of some scene. I found the worse scenes acceptable, however I had seen several movies of Kim Ki-Duk already.  

Overall, after watching many of Kim Ki-Duk movies, and reading that they are all in some way autobiographical, I feel to know him a some way, and I am grateful that he has let me see such a remote and secret portion of korean society, mostly hidden to a scholar like me. Now that we live in the same city, I would like to meet him once and give him a hug. 

P.S. while I was writing this post his last movie Pieta appeared on YouTube, subtitled in english. This is the movie that he made after living 3 years in seclusion growing his own food. Although not so original as his 2004 movies, it is still a great Kim Ki-Duk. 

The posts that I did not write in 2012

I am in Schaffhausen visiting Dorothea's family, and while I am trying to evaluate all I have done last year, and trying to make a reasonable plan for the next one, my mind fills up with the memory of the posts that I did not write in 2012, many ideas that I did not succeed to put down. Some nice ones are difficult to let go, therefore I have decided to write a summary post. I can always recover them later, but probably something new will pop up.

I started this blog update our friends and family about our life in Korea. While we discover many things of this country and we mature a new comprehension, it becomes harder to convey my new feelings in this blog. Still, I want to write about what we see, and hope that our new awareness will emerge from this blog.

This year we saw a lanterne parade and a lanterne festival. They were both great, located in the north of the city, the ancient center of Seoul. The parade is held in spring. It is classic and spectacular. I post only two photos here, but there would be much more to show!

The lanterne festival is instead held in late fall. It is based on installations along the river. Luckily the weather was great when we visited it. The leaves on the trees composed a wonderful mixture of colours that day. The last photos show the modernity of the style of the lanterne.

During this year I wanted to blog about the zoos and places where children can see, and sometimes touch, animals in Seoul. If you have small children you know what I mean. Children need animals as much as they need to play and to sleep. It is the best cure against the magnetic attraction of the TV. Apparently there is no toy or book that can win watching a short Pororo movie, but the idea to visit the zoo is invincible.

The official zoo of Seoul is fantastic, one of the largest and most impressive in the world, but also one of the less known. Before or later I will write about it. Plus, there are some other cool places dedicated to children, the Children Gran Park, the horse race course, whose center has been transformed in a divertissement park, and several farms (e.g. Baedagol) where children can enter in contact with the animals. First some photos of the Zoo.

the children gran park

and the farm, famous for the variety of fishes and for the little fishes that eat small pieces of (dead?) skin, but where we also met some cute friends...

In spring we did one of the most wonderful trips of our life. It was very short, three days and half, that we almost entirely spent Kyoto. We went there invited by Rustam, a Kyrgyz friend who lives in Japan, and his family and we were amazed. In Italy many people say "see Naples and then die", because it will be your ultimate experience but I have to say that "see Kyoto and then die" would be fair as well. It is really one of the most wonderful city in the world. I think that our joy to be there transpires even from just these four pictures.

In June, before leaving for Europe, we discovered a great place in the south of Seoul called Anyang. It is a former amusement park, now officially transformed in an "art park". The art there is minimal but the environment is very pleasant and different from the usual rush and crowd in Seoul. It is possible to take a bath between nice flower-like decorations on the riverside. The arboretum of the Seoul National University is at the end of the valley, but we never matched the narrow opening time-schedule. Two of the nicest spots are shown in the last pictures, one along a narrow a torrent where many restaurants have their terraces, and a second one a unique restaurant where you can have your meal with your feet immersed in a shallow pool of water (only in summer, of course!).

restaurant terraces and restaurant with feet in cold water

I have written of the trip with my friends Fabio and Manuele, crossing Korea from Busan to Seoul. I wanted to write more about our visit in Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Silla Empire, of our visit to a small village where the houses have been preserved (or rebuilt?), of the endless phallic wooden statues seen everywhere, of the "largest cave in Asia" that we visited on the way (with paths funnily displayed by neon lights), of a wonderful neo-confucian temple that we casually encountered, of my friends swallowing the infamous stinking worm moths that I never managed to eat, of the desert beaches and the cloudy mountains near Sokcho, and the giant statues of Buddha that we saw there. Finally I wanted to talk of our impression watching a living fish decapitated and sliced as quickly as possible for serving us with the freshest sashimi that we have ever had. But I did not manage to write all that, so I will show you only a glimpse of it.

the interior of the cave 

the temple and manuele and fabio in front of the plate full of moths

the beaches in Sokcho and the mountains nearby 

The Buddha and the last instants of life of our fish

In October we went to the "Hi Seoul!" festival. We were curious about it, but we did not expect very much. Instead we could admire one of the most spectacular parades of our life. It was fantastic. Here I show only few photos of the plays for children organized before the parade. From the parade I remember the giant puppets, the mechanical dinosaurus, the enormous birds made of tissue, and a scene from the dramatic show representing some ancient korean story of kings, ghosts and magicians. Certainly this deserves a post on its own.

Almost at anytime of the year it is worth climbing the mountains of Seoul. Finally enough time has passed since Renee`s birth: Dorothea is fit again, Renee is still light enough to carry on my back and Marlen is strong enough to hike herself (with a proper incentive, like a chocolate bar or the perspective of an icecream on the top!). This year we hiked several times Gwanak-san but also went to the Bukhan-san National park, the mountains in the north of Seoul. I really would like to write a nice post on the treks in Seoul, as it is one of the most friendly cities in the world for mountain-lovers. Maybe I will manage this year, but for now, here few pictures.

October 25 was Renee`s first birthday. Despite the late Autumn time, we were lucky enough to pick a sunny and warm day for her party so we could spend a fantastic afternoon on a field in the campus. I would like to post about all the people who came, but for now this is Renee, at her first year party!

During the entire year, as well as before, we have been surrounded by a special attention by koreans. It is just amazing to see the effect that our little ones make to them. A feeling or warmth that we just do not receive anywhere else. I am not 100% sure that Marlen and Renee are fine with it. Mainly for the little one it can be scary and for Marlen, I fear she might start to think that she is a star (when people treat you as such, the doubt arises!), but overall I think that it is just a lot of fun. These two photos should give the idea: it happened the same so many times! They were taken in December, in Insadong.

Overall it was an amazing year. I still remember our arrival in Seoul, that was truly a cultural shock. Doro was in her early pregnancy and Marlen was 2 years old. We expected to arrive and find an apartment ready for us, a place in the international childcare for Marlen, a job for Doro and a neatly set working position for me. Truly, none of our expectations was matched by the real world and the reason why we did not escape within two weeks was the support of our friends, who explained us how to manage and get things done here in Seoul. It was not easy, but we stayed.

However now that almost two years have passed, I can say that Korea was a surprise. Of course we had to accept many compromises, but I now believe that it was the most interesting place where I have been living since I left Italy, 12 year ago. I still remember, few months after we arrived, some korean colleagues asked me and Doro why we liked it here. Apparently many koreans see their own country under a negative light. We told them that Korea is cool and, after one year, I can confirm that.

This does not mean that we will remain forever here. Besides the language barrier that would take many years to be fully overcome, many of the cultural obstacles are still clear in front of us. The main one for me the assimilation within my working environment. This is in fact a very complex inter-cultural story and would deserve a separate post, or many posts, so I will drop it here.

Marlen and Renee grow up quickly and we need to stabilize somewhere. Our little girls need to be in one place where they can go to school, establish solid and long term friendships, grow up together and not leave again. And Dorothea needs to go back to work, which will be hard if not in Switzerland, therefore we need to stay in place to find the right solutions. The new year, 2013, will most probably be the time of the big decisions.