Pushy Pusan


Ronnie Mac gets overwhelmed by pushy Pusan teenagers eager to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars at the Pusan International Film Festival.


The girl everyone went berserk for - can't remember her name but she is huge. One boy asked me to take a picture of her - "just her" - because I was taller than everyone else there.


Andrew and Jueun try hard to look natural on a bus on the way to an outdoor movie. Their kindness in putting me up at their house will never be forgotten.


The huge outdoor screen on which trippy graphics were played while a string/rock fusion group played a medley of cinema music. The film, "The Two Brothers", was eminently forgettable. But the occasion wasn't.


A car covered with the distinctive calling cards of Korean call girls forms the centrepiece of a demonstration to mark the first anniversary of the Sex Trade Prevention Act organised by Sallim, a supporting NGO for women victims of sex trafficking. The area where the Film Festival was being held is notorious for prostitution.


My favourite image from Korea so far: a close-up of a mural on a wall next to the Pusan municipal history museum in Nampodong.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to PC Bangs!

Hello, welcome to the PC Bangs website and my apologies for the delay in getting things started. I have now been in Seoul for what seems like an eternity but which has actually only been two weeks. Over time, I hope to describe some of the aspects of Korea's unique 'PC Bang' culture. Here, 'bang' is a word that means something like 'room' so 'PC Bang' translates roughly as 'computer room' or, more helpfully, 'internet cafe'. Over the course of the next four months I'll be visiting various examples of the PC Bang phenomenon and hopefully taking some pictures of the really cool signwork they have here (you can see an example on the top right of this page). First things first, though. I arrived at Incheon International on Saturday 27 August on a hot and muggy day. The only thing that I can really remember about the airport is seeing a sign reading "Gateway To Asia" and thinking - hang on, isn't that Darwin's claim ...
Read more

Who'll Come And Waltz With My Tilda?

As part of my Australian Culture course here at Sogang University (in which I now teach approximately 40 students), we spent some time learning the basics about Australia: the capital city, the system of government, what the flag and coat of arms mean and, naturally, the national anthem. I think I mentioned in a previous post that I sang the first verse of "Advance Australia Fair" a capella and pointed out that the original version of the song in fact contains six verses only two are printed on John Howard's website). I used this as an example of the way in which history in Australia seems to be "buried" deep in obscurity; a little like the phrase 'the tip of the iceberg'. I then sang both versions of "Waltzing Matilda", and related to my students that for some people, this is their preferred national anthem. This song, too, contains layers of meaning - while the song is called "Waltzing Matilda", the swagman within the song is also s...
Read more