Korean Shows

As for shows made in Korea, I'm kind of baffled sometimes. There don't really seem to be that many dramas, sitcoms, or other scripted television. It mostly seems to be reality shows and game shows. And some shows that seem to be both. Whenever I watch Korean shows, it seems like they're all based around a bunch of people doing either mundane or silly shit.

One show I've seen was about a famous band consisting of four guys and a girl in their twenties (I assume). The episode I watched showed them deciding to buy a dog. So they bought a little scruffy puppy and played with it a bunch. Then they bought is some cute puppy clothes and played with it some more. Then they brought it to a dog park, where another dog tried to have sex with it. Then they brought it to a dog cafe. A dog cafe is where people bring their dogs to an indoor play area and they can eat and drink while their dogs play. People who don't have dogs can come there and play with other people's dogs. Then they brought it home and it pooped on the floor, and they fought over who would clean it up. And they showed it to the dog and hit it with a newspaper. Then they all went to bed (in the same room, on the floor, as is traditional).

There's another show I've seen a couple times that is a game show, I think. There don't seem to be any prizes, but there do seem to be teams, since only two colors are worn by about eight people. The first episode I saw, the people had to run and jump over a hurdle that kept getting higher and higher each round. Then, when it got really high, the poles holding up the hurdle started getting closer and closer, until only one really tall guy could get through cleanly because his hips were taller than the poles, and just his legs had to go through. The other episode I saw, people had to crouch down next to each other on a mat, and each contestant had to dive over them. Each round, one more person was added to the mat. They started to get scared after five people were on the mat, and they were trying to scrunch themselves up really tight. I think they got up to seven people. Some got a little bit hurt when they were landed upon.

I've seen a number of shows with young people just sitting around talking. I saw a show that challenged a bunch of tennis players (three Korean, and one Anna Kournikova, I think) to serve a ball and knock out numbered panels on a structure like 75 feet away. I saw a show that involved a famous Korean comedy group practicing a dance and song number to perform at the halftime of some sports game (I don't remember which sport), and then they ended up mostly improvising it and sucking a lot. Then the took the number to the streets.

There's also a sketch comedy show that plays a lot. It's kind of like Saturday Night Live, except I don't think it's live, and they have a lot more repetition of sketch characters. There's one sketch they do in which a guy claims to have an amazing talent, but really doesn't. Like the first episode I saw, he claimed to be an excellent origami artist. But when given a piece of paper and told to make it into a giraffe (or whatever), he just crumpled it up. When questioned, he pointed out all the parts of the animal, but of course it didn't look like a giraffe.

Another sketch they have in that show is about an old grandmother and her twin grandsons. The grandmother is played by a wicked muscular guy, and the grandmother acts generally like an old woman, but throws in a walking-on-her-hands or push-up bit every once in a while. The twins are played by really lanky guys, and they're supposed to be probably seven or eight. The grandmother beats them up a lot. It's pretty funny.

A less funny one to me is the sketch in which two sentient mannequins are being positioned in a window. I'm able to understand most of what goes on in this show because it's a lot of physical comedy, but this sketch isn't quite as such. It's funny when one mannequin gets stuck holding a bowling ball up in the air, but other than that, I can tell they're talking about how uncomfortable they are, and not much else.

Korean television uses a lot of editorial titles in their shows. Like, a lot. If you remember Blind Date and how they used titles in that, you have some idea of what I'm talking about, but Koreans use it even more. They plaster the stuff all over the screen, and I can't read it. Every once in a while I'll find a word I know, but I read extremely slowly in Korean, so even if I could understand the words, I wouldn't have time to. They also use little pictures sometimes, which I like, of course.

Pretty much the only scripted shows I've seen are what looks like an awful soap opera and cartoons. They also have a show called KPSI, which is Korean CSI. Like I said, they love that show. Someone told me the acting is terrible, though. I haven't bothered to watch it.

The cartoons seem okay, though I don't watch them much. There's one cartoon that my boss' kids watched a lot when I was there. I don't know the name of it, but it's about a little kid who has a baby brother and likes to do things his own way. It seems kind of like a less fantastic Bobby's World. And less good.

They show a lot of dubbed Japanese cartoons here, too. I was pleased to catch Pokemon the other day, but displeased to not understand Korean well enough for it to be worth it. It seems to be a new generation of Pokemon, anyway. Ash and Brock are still around, but Misty has been replaced by some other chick. Or maybe not; I'm not sure if either of the girls in that episode are regulars. I don't like their not-American voices, anyway.

There is one food show that I've seen a few minutes of a few times that stars really cute blond boy who speaks perfect Korean. I have no idea what he's saying, but I find it very hard to change the channel...

I've noticed that the very few white people who make it onto Korean shows are all blond. It makes me wonder if they find that most attractive because it's most different from what they look like here.

Korean Television

TV is here is really... something. I watched a fair amount of it while I was staying with my boss my first two weeks here, and I still sometimes watch short spurts of it. It's pretty entertaining.

The channels are set up in a pretty user friendly way in that they're grouped by category. So if you want to watch cartoons or movies or sports or whatever, you don't have to flip all over the dial to find them. It makes channel surfing a lot easier, I've noticed.

They don't just have the "normal" cartoon, movie, sports, drama, sitcom, news channels, though. They also have channels where you watch people play video games, channels where you watch people play Korean chess (the rules which I haven't figured out yet by watching), channels that teach English, channels that teach math, and infomercial channels. At I'Park, the apartment series that my boss lives in, there's even a channel that's connected to four video cameras over the playground, so parents can watch their kids from home. Creepy.

One of the oddest things I've noticed about Korean television is the commercial breaks. Some breaks are three commercials long, and some are five minutes long, and some are ten minutes long. When they end a program, but can't start the next one until twenty minutes later, they play twenty minutes of commercials. If an American show is playing and it clearly states "now it is time for a commercial break," they don't go to commercial. They just play the outro and intro to the show back to back. Then they cut away in some awkward place. Or they don't have any commercials at all. I don't get it.

Another weird thing about Korean television that I've noticed is that they don't have the same schedule adherence that we have. Each channel seems to have its own schedule, but things don't always start on the hour or half hour. At first I thought shows just started... whenever, but I've come to realize that there's a little more order than I thought. It's very inconvenient, I gotta tell ya. If you sit down at 8 or 9 o'clock, you expect there to be a number of shows and movies starting, since that's prime time. But no matter what time I turn on my tv, there's almost never something starting right then. You have no idea how many half movies I've seen since I got here.

Luckily for me, my cable package has a few movie channels that play a fair lot of American movies (with Korean subtitles). They also play a lot of CSI. They really must love that show here. At first I was getting really frustrated by the whole scheduling thing, but I've managed to find the websites of four of the channels I watch, so I can check to see which movies are on in advance. Yea.

The movie channels put the title of what's playing in the upper corner of the screen, so if I'm just channel surfing, that helps me figure out what it is. It's not in English, though, it's in Korean. But it's not translated, which I find hilarious. They just transfer the sounds from the English words into Korean letters. So if the channel is showing The Matrix, the title is "meh-ee-teu-ri-jeu' (they don't have an "x" or "ks" sound). If the movie is The Bourne Identity, the title is "bone ah-ee-den-tee-tee." It's pretty funny, and makes for a fun game. Sometimes I have to say it out loud because they've mutilated the words so badly. The only movie I've seen them actually translate is The Mummy. It took me a minute to realize they had done that when I saw it, since I wasn't expecting it.

White Day

March 14 in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is called White Day, or as I like to call it, Valentine's Day, Part II. This tradition, according to Wikipedia, was started in Japan in 1978. Apparently, on Valentine's Day, women give men chocolate and gifts, and on White Day, men give women gifts. This is supposed to be an answer to all the stuff women do for men on V Day.

I got a different story from all the kids I talked to today about it, so that's why I looked it up. According to the kids, chocolate is given on V Day, and candy is given on White Day. But that sucks. What woman prefers candy to chocolate? I also heard a couple kids say that year to year, which day is for candy and which is for chocolate switches. I ended up coming to an understanding with some kids that everyone pretty much does what they want on either day. But I didn't see candy one a month ago, nor did I see chocolate one today, so I guess it's still mostly traditional to keep to one confection on each day.

They've confused me over here about how they celebrate, though. Generally, Valentine's Day for us (if I recall correctly) is all about the women getting stuff and the man being chivalrous and gentlemanly. But here, the whole reason for White Day is evidently because women are the ones doing all the work the first holiday. And then they have a whole month to get dumped if the guy doesn't want to get her a gift, haha.

I'm not sure if they do cards here. I didn't see any. Maybe they just come with the gifts, not the candy.

The Grocery Store and Customer Service

Actually, as in many countries, they don't use the term "grocery store." It's a supermarket. There's a GS Supermarket just up the street a piece from me, so I go there a couple times a week. If I go after 9pm, I can get many things on sale. That's convenient, because I get out of work at 9, and except for weekends, it's pretty much the only time I can go shopping.

Korean stores (even Targetesque superstores, but not retail stores) encourage you to bring your own bags, which is cool. If you don't bring your own bags, you have to pay 50 won (about a nickel) for each one. The bags are big. I usually don't use more than one.

In Korean stores, there are a wicked lot of employees hanging around. They have to stand watch over certain areas, like the produce section, the fishery, the gift box section, and other random places. At retail stores, there is at least one employee for every section. They always have to greet you kindly, and I think, say something purchase-encouraging, even if you clearly don't speak the language. I usually just say hi back (in Korean) and look like I don't understand the rest, which I don't. They don't blame me.

There are more things in grocery stores in Korea than in the states. They have the gift box section, like I mentioned. This is where you can get nice looking sets of fruits, chocolates, and other typical food-item gifts. They also have Spam gift boxes. Spam is big here. They don't get the joke. Fish gift baskets are also big, although I don't think they have those at GS. They have them at the posh grocery stores, though, which are located at the department stores. It's like six whole, unblemished fish, delicately arranged in a box, with molded plastic over them. Weird.

The gift box employees have to wear traditional Korean clothes, called Han-bok.

They also have jewelry stores in the grocery stores, and underwear and small clothing sections. They don't seem to have flower shops in the grocery stores like we do. The fish sections are way bigger than we're used to. They smell bad. Free samples are also more common.

Customer service is hardcore here. The amount of employees in each store is kind of shocking. As you enter a retail store, an employee stands by the entrance and bows. The employees around the store don't bow as much, but then in the parking structures, there are a million parking attendants, and as you pass each one in your car, they give you a full-on 90 degree bow. They bow fast, though. It's kind of funny.

One final note on grocery stores in department stores: they sell fruit for like 140,000 won apiece (about $150). I went into the Hyundai Department Store to buy groceries once with my boss' parents, and I was shocked at the prices. I'm not sure why we were shopping there, actually. There was plenty of food there that wasn't make-me-throw-up expensive, but it was still pricier than the GS Supermarket, which is like four blocks from their house.