Two movies: Spencer and Mr. Sunshine

 Spencer -- now on Prime</p>

The theme of this movie is that the atmosphere of the royal court drove Princess Diana nuts and only when she escaped did she become the beautiful, charming good mother, Diana Spencer.  I have seen this on the big screen and I'm not impressed.  The rest of the royal family really gets a hatchet job -- and quite possibly deserved it.  But the Hollywood-style finale is really too much.</p>

Mr. Sunshine -- Korea </p>

The excellences of this 20-some series can hardly be overstated.  Well, it is perhaps too long.  Otherwise, it is an amazing feat, artistically showing much about vulnerable Joseon (Korea) at the time of the Russian-Japanese war.  The music! The costumes!  The script! The outdoor photography! The colors! The you name it!</p>

Korean romance

I have been watching South Korean TV series lately, with an emphasis on historical flicks. I quite like them. Some are movies like other movies. Some are quite excellent. Can I recommend again Mr. Sunshine/p One characteristic is the handling of romantic elements. This is often really good. Of course South Korea is famous these days for romance in music, too, so that should be no surprise. This kind of emphasis appeals to teenagers anywhere...

I am now watching Clown and King on Netflix. One of the major plots involves a young Korean king and a young queen falling in love. There are various barriers keeping them apart. Nevertheless they talk to each other and speak eloquently about what love is or should be. A couple of eloquent passages. The young queen, when asks what she expects to get out of love, says:

I am here to laugh and cry together...

The young king answers a similar question:

[I am here] to see you with a bright smile, even just once.

And the visual element is really amazing.

More rookie historians

I've finished Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung and I am very impressed with the series.  Highly recommended.

Heroic female historians in old Korea

I'm just now watching an entertaining Korean mini-series on Netflix, Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung.  It is not exactly easy to follow, but not hopelessly obscure, either.

Goo Hae-Ryung is a young noblewoman sometime in the early modern period (at a guess). She loves literature, Korean, Chinese and European.  She may also be Maehwa, the author of the latest fad in Korean romance novels. Or maybe it's the young prince second in line to the throne who is Maewha.
The Korean state at this time works like the Chinese system.  Applicants for government jobs study classic literature and write exams based on that material.  The highly-educated office holders look down on the material written in Korean alphabets, on Korean novels, and on the people who read them.  Goo Hae-Ryung is a promoter of popular literature.  Lots of teenage girls are crazy for romances and when they hear that Maehwa is going to sign copies of his/her most recent book they practically riot.
The royal councillors decide to repress this "movement" by recruiting female historians OR forbidding the recruiting of female historians.  The King, who has been the target of bureaucratic criticism, takes the opportunity to open history offices to young women...Of course the male historians resist...

I am liking this series for its cinematography and the humorous depiction of character.  The music's good, too, which you might expect at a time when South Korea is strutting on the world music stage.

If you by chance run into me in person, I'll tell you both my Korean bureacrats' story and my Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) story.

Paddy cultivation, near Kuala Lumpur, March 2012

This reminds me of my father -- a financial executive -- working in the fields in South Korea during rice transplantation time.  It was a big communal event and the only unusual thing about his participation was that he was a 6'4" white American.   From the Big Picture.

Our savage era

Over at Daily Kos, there is a diary showing excerpts from the Google Earth atlas of North Korea. (The original site is here, but I found it a little impenetrable.) Below are two images that chilled me.



"The image above depicts an area covered with mounds. It's speculated these mounds are actually mass graves for some of the more than 2 million people that starved to death in the famine of the 1990s. "

Then there is this:


"The structures in the picture are just a small portion of a North Korean prison camp called 'Camp 16.' The entire camp measures 18 miles by 16 miles (four times the size of the District of Columbia). No ground level pictures of the prison camp have ever made it out of the country."

Now you know why the pictures and films of liberated concentration camps at the end of World War II are so important.