Man from Nowhere going to Hollywood

The Weinstein Brothers have announced that their Dimension Films will do a remake of The Man From Nowhere (Korean title: Ajŏshi, 아저씨), the highest grossing Korean film of 2010. It stars Won Bin, most famous to Western audiences for his role in the Korean War epic Taegŭkki Hwinallimyŏ (Brotherhood):

"We have always been huge action and martial arts fans and are getting back into the genre in a big way with 'The Man From Nowhere,'" Bob Weinstein, The Weinstein Company's co-chairman, said in a statement. "It's a slick, fast-paced action thriller anchored by a strong emotional relationship that audiences are going to love."

Metropolitician is fond of saying "ajoshis ruin everything." All I can say, considering the track record* of Korean films reworked into Hollywood pictures, I hope someone doesn't ruin Ajŏshi.

* See The Lake House, My Sassy Girl, and The Uninvited. Or don't. Only Juno, an unauthorized and unacknowledged remake of Jenny, Juno (or at least an adaptation), was arguably better than the Korean original.

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In Hawaii, yesterday was the day after tomorrow

Remember the opening of The Day After Tomorrow, the documentary feature film highlighting what could happen if the Earth warmed enough to suddenly shut off the Gulf Stream that's part of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the northern latitudes from Ice Age temperatures? Los Angeles was plagued by a sudden outburst of tornadoes, something that is unheard of in the Golden State.

Not what you usually imagine
when you think of Hawaii+ice.

Well, we in Hawaii have been having some wicked winter weather. It's been chilly and we've had some nasty thunderstorms, the cool kind that shake the ground for quite a few seconds (setting off car alarms) after lightning has struck very close to where you live. Meanwhile, the lack of sun and the excess of wind have made daytime conditions quite a bit chillier than usual.

Temperature drops into the low sixties are not that uncommon in January or February (or even March), but we've been getting three-inch hailstones and an actual tornado hitting the northeastern side of Oahu (my island). It started as a water spout (a rarity here) and went inland.

It struck Lanikai, a place where I occasionally go kayaking and biking and not far from where Hawaii-born Barack Hussein Obama often vacations. It was nothing like the horrific and deadly rash of unseasonal tornadoes that recently struck the Midwest, but it did do some damage.

If I start to see a nerdy Jake Gyllenhaal chatting up Emmy Rossum, I'm gonna be real worried.

Still, as far as Hollywood messing with Hawaii goes, I'd rather go with the Day After Tomorrow scenario than that of 2012.

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[updated] Todd Park is next brick in Korean America's wall of kyopos

The Obama administration has named Todd Park, the guy behind healthcare.gov (a site I use frequently, and so should you) as the new Chief Technology Officer.

From the White House blog (the real one, not the one that was a porn site, until 2004):

I’m very excited that President Obama today is appointing Todd Park as the new U.S. Chief Technology Officer, with the important task of applying the newest technology and latest advances to make the Federal government work better for the American people.

For nearly three years, Todd has served as CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was a hugely energetic force for positive change. He led the successful execution of an array of breakthrough initiatives, including the creation of HealthCare.gov, the first website to provide consumers with a comprehensive inventory of public and private health insurance plans available across the Nation by zip code in a single, easy-to-use tool.

On his first full day in office, President Obama created the position of “Chief Technology Officer” to help modernize a Federal government relying too heavily on 20th century technology, and to better use technological tools to address a wide range of national challenges.

If you're not sure what the nation's science officer does, just think Spock or T'Pol and occasionally Harry Kim, only in the present and for an entire country.

Here's more on Mr Park from Bloomberg:

You don’t normally find serial entrepreneurs working for the U.S. government. But Todd Park, who co-founded three companies by the time he was 36, believes he can help make Americans healthier.

Park, now 39, is the first chief technology officer hired by the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid and oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, among other agencies. He is the “entrepreneur-in-residence,” nudging the agency to open its vast stores of data to spur innovative ideas.

Park is teaching the normally plodding government agency how to think and act like a Silicon Valley startup: Get new products to market quickly, study customer reaction, and then make adjustments to find the best solution for that need. It’s right out of the entrepreneur’s handbook, except that Park has 313 million customers—the population of the U.S.

“He is not a Washington guy,” says O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Rilley, who calls Park one of the most powerful data scientists around. “He’s a technology guy who is trying to figure out how to make the health-care system work.”

And work fast. Ninety days after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Park and a team launched healthcare.gov, a website that helps consumers find health coverage plans from a database of all public and private plans by Zip Code (other sites are not comprehensive).

“It is possible to be entrepreneurial in the U.S. government,” says Park, who has been at HHS for two and a half years. “It’s possible for government to execute major projects at Silicon Valley speed.”

Nerdocracy will save America.

This succinct email (originally) was sent from my iPhone.

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Roundup of iPad 3 rumors

We don't know if it will be called the iPad3 or the iPad2S or (thanks to a lawsuit from a Chinese manufacturer claiming they'd trademarked the name "iPad") the iSlice1, so for the purpose of succinct discussion, we're going to call it the iPadX.

It is not enough for the iPadX to have a retina screen, since its competitors are already on their tail. No, the iPadX will with shrinking-man-retina displays, where the screen's resolution will be so sharp that you cannot detect individual pixels at a distance about the length of your extended hand even if you were inadvertently shrunken in an industrial shrinking accident where you found yourself sitting on top of an iPadX. (This is important because Apple has bought out some company's shrink ray process and is considering incorporating in future post-Siri hardware, just as soon as they can get enough Chinese workers to volunteer for a certain assignment and teach them all English.) Scientists may not agree on what exactly a "retina display" is at that level, but it's something like 1,028,000x960,000.

Apple was roundly criticized for ripping off its customers by calling the iPhone5 the iPhone4S, even though the iPhone4 was called the iPhone 3Gs and no one bitched about that. Apple wants to avoid this problem altogether, so the new iPadX will be called the iPad7. Or iPadπ.

iPads will come in colors. It helps you reveal who you are.

Apple was also also criticized for coming out with an iPhone 4S that looked exactly like the iPhone 4. If it looks exactly the same, the hipsters groused, how will people know we're cool and hip if we buy one? (Samsung wisely picked up on this and made it a theme of their commercials, even though I had the idea first. Samsung is nothing if not derivative.) Sure, it's a flat tablet and the design of the iPad2 is already a work of art, but if the iPadX looks the same, proverbially heads will explode. Consequently, the iPadX will have fins. Though they initially appear to be just ornamental, Apple insists they have a functional purpose; they don't yet know what it is, but after millions buy them and do God knows what with them, one of them will figure it out.

All this extra stuff will be heavy, so efforts must be made to lighten the load. In the past, Apple has gone with titanium, which they replaced with aluminum. My sources in Shanghai say the iPad3 will be made from helium.

Apple is also working on the next-next generation of iPad. My sources say they are currently working on a two-piece iPad that consists of glasses that contain a tiny screen in the lower half of the lens, plus a Bluetooth trackpad you keep in your pocket. It will be released to consumers as soon as they can figure out how to make users look like they're not masturbating in public.

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Useful ideologues

Christine Ahn, Pyongyang's man at the Huffington Post, has penned another piece on the Korean Peninsula. This one talks about the prospect of a "Korean spring," which is also its title.

Now, one might think that's it's all about the prospect of North Koreans throwing off their yokes and taking down the government (something I surmised is much more possible ever since the botched currency reform of two years ago). But she dismisses that right away, owing to the regime's survivability through transfers of power and difficult global and local conditions.

No, this "Korean spring" is primarily about the south. And she talks up opposition to the base on Cheju-do (which someone else at the HuffPo called "imperialism") as a sign of that impending Korean spring.

Owing to a work assignment, I didn't have time for an eloquent fisking, so I left a note that hinted at a general "Christine Ahn is a Pyongyang plant on the take" kind of comment:

Christine Ahn seems to have missed the southern half's "Korean spring." It was 1987.

Ms Ahn's either incredibly naïve about the Pyongyang regime or she's carrying water for them. I'm not sure which is worse from someone trying influence HuffPost readers' opinionsabout a geopolitically important region they may not be so familiar with.

It'd take hours to school Ms Ahn on why she's wrong, but at least I'll say that what happens in South Korea doesn't so much affect North Korea as much as it provides a pretext: North Korea needs a constant adversary as its raison d'être, and if it didn't have it with the South, the US, or Japan, it would invent it. In fact, it often does.

I'm all for waiting to see where North Korea will go with Kim Jong-un at the helm, but let's not pretend it's already arrived at a happy place, or even that it's well on the way. The same regime that kills its own people in untold numbers so that the elite can maintain power is not likely to change overnight.

In the meantime, South Korea must stay strong. It needs a strong military deterrent, which is the purpose of the Cheju-do base. Yeah, it sucks that we have to keep standing militaries, but the alternative when one can't defend their own borders is far worse. We've seen that in 1950-53, when Ms Ahn's poor, misunderstood North Koreans started a war whose casualties were in the millions.

Yes, you've heard me say this before. But that's because you've heard Christine say that before.

Really, the HuffPo needs some new Korea experts.

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Random mention of Korea in American entertainment media of the day

That could be anything.

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[UPDATED with video] Orange County crime Story of the Day: Saehan Bank incident

In an upscale part of Buena Park (the buena part of Buena Park), near Fullerton which has become a tony Korean-American enclave, a branch of Saehan Bank was held up at gunpoint by a kyopo man, although everyone except one bank employee was allowed to leave.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Police identified the gunman who was critically wounded during a hostage standoff at an Orange County bank as 55-year-old Myung Jae Kim, according to KNBC-TV Channel 4.

Kim appears to have targeted the bank’s manager, Michelle Kwon, taking her as a hostage instead of trying to commit robbery, police said.

Kim reportedly entered Buena Park’s Saehan Bank late Thursday morning, brandishing a weapon pointed to the ground. He ordered all of the employees and six customers out of the bank, but had Kwon stay behind, police said.

A tense standoff began, with police using a robot to deliver a phone so negotiators could talk to Kim.

At about 3 p.m., police shot Kim when he appeared in front of a glass door with a gun pointed at Kwon. He apparently went to the door trying to retrieve an item that he demanded from police, who refused to say what the item was. Kim was critically wounded and taken to the UC Irvine trauma center. Kwon escaped unharmed.

Good to see the robots are good for something other than putting English teachers out of work. Anyway, somewhere else they were saying that this particular gunman knew that particular bank employee and wanted her to compensate for the $240K that was supposedly taken from his safe deposit box at Hanmi Bank in Garden Grove (what we in OC call Koreatown). That is what triggered this violent act.

[UPDATE: The safe deposit box stuff is being reported in Korean-language media, but I haven't seen it in the actual articles in English-language media, only here and there in the comments sections.]

Anyway, things like this (or that nastiness in Atlanta) may be an indictator of what we should expect initially if guns were ever made widely available in Korea.

Note: I was nodding off when I originally wrote all this; I'm pleased that it generally makes sense.

What's that? SWAT's that!

UPDATE 2:
I've added video from Los Angeles ABC affiliation KABC:



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What's in a nameplate?

Over at ROK Drop, GI Korea has presented a photo of the new Chevrolet Tattoo. As I wrote there, that seems an odd name for a car in Korea, given the negative associations with body art (particularly associations with gangsters, as well as the illegality of using them to evade military service).

I had thought about driving home the point with an analogy, that it would be like calling some vehicle the Jeep Tramp Stamp or the Buick Bong. And then I remembered Korea already had a line of vehicles starting with bong.

If the "Tattoo" name idea came from Detroit, all I can say is someone seems to have dropped the ball on that one. Then again, it could be from Korea-based GM Daewoo itself, the folks who brought you the Daewoo Impact in the 1990s. Yeah, the name sounds cool at first, until you realize you're driving a safety-impaired metal box named for what happens when you forcibly smash into another object.

Then again, poor name choices seem the order of the day. Kia is trotting out its new luxury vehicle. Continuing with the K3 (Forte), K5 (Optima), and K7 (Cadenza), we now have... wait for it... the K9.

Yeah, in addition to sounding like it's a police car with an angry Rottweiler inside, how wise is it for a Korean car maker to make the name of its flagship model sound like the same thing mindless bigots and unclever comedians associate with Koreans eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Anyway, the grille is supposed to be more feline (it's a tiger's mouth) than canine.

Anyway, in other car news, Hyundai and Kia have both been riding a wave of good fortune in the American car market, up 18 percent and a whopping 37 percent from the previous February, respectively.

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In Korea, March 1 is Groundhog Day

As in the Bill Murray movie. Or so it would seem.

Every Independence Day (삼일절) in South Korea, the country and its political leaders look back on the colonial past with a sense of victory, owing to the nation's progress since liberation, along with a feeling of unresolved resentment and even bitterness (han, if you will) over the less than full-throated contrition by the brutal colonizing power itself (i.e., Japan).

You can go to Wikipedia and see a "list of Japanese war apology statementss," but that politically motivated entry doesn't include the, "but, but, but..." remarks that so often come with the actual apologies, or the statements of the right-wing parliamentarians falling over themselves to insist that PM Murayama's or PM Hosokawa's truly heartfelt and sincere apologies are just their own, or the later declarations by people in the ruling elite that the Comfort Women sex slaves were mostly prostitutes or that colonization was actually good for Korea. (The aforementioned list also lumps mealymouthed "statements of regret" in with actual apologies.)

No, from that self-serving litany, one wouldn't get the sense that any official Japanese apology, thus far, comes with an asterisk.

Anyway, on his last Independence Day as president of the Republic of Korea, Japan-born President Lee Myungbak decided to take on the issue. In a Marmot's Hole post well worth the read, President Lee is quoted as having said this:

For the two countries [Korea and Japan] to intimately cooperate as true companions, the true courage and wisdom not to avoid the historical truth is necessary above all. In particular, among many current issues, the Comfort Women issue is a humanitarian issue that needs to be concluded quickly. The grandmothers, who carried their pain in their hearts, are well past their late 80s. If they pass away without resolving the burden of their hearts while they were alive, it is not the case that all problems will disappear; rather, Japan will forever lose the opportunity to resolve this issue. This is why I urge the Japanese government to take a more active posture.

There is nothing I can find there with which I disagree. To many in the commentariat, however, their knee-jerk position is to do whatever is the antithesis of what most Koreans believe in, which prompted The Korean to write this:

The commentariat response on this issue, time and time again, never ceases to amaze me. It is as if they have no moral compass. This is one of the most heinous war crimes in World War II, and they think Korea is the bad guy.

Indeed, taking the Korean view and going the opposite way is, at best, an amoral compass. Sure, there are their oft-repeated justifications for taking the contrarian view — "They signed a treaty!", "Korea's post-war prosperity was built with Japanese money!", "This issue is nothing more than a cynical ploy to marshall support by corrupt politicians!", "South Koreans have sex slaves today!" — but the fact is that there are women living today who experienced the hell of brutal, unending, and often deadly sex slavery at the hands of the Japanese Imperial military and government.

I'm sure for those women and those close to them, it's a bit difficult to "get over it and move on." But thinking about this stuff in human terms is just so bothersome. Wouldn't it be easier if they just died and stopped protesting? Then we'd have the convenience of this truly being "all in the past," to which many have already relegated it because, essentially, the plaintiffs are Korean.

I'm not 100.0% in agreement with The Korean, though. As I've noted in past posts (like here and especially here), I do think the South Korean government owes money to those women as well, even if I don't think that lets Japan off the hook. In 1965, Tokyo was trying to do an end-run on its victims by working with a pro-Japan former officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, Park Chunghee, an iron-fisted ruler of South Korea who used the grants and loans (see, it wasn't all a gift, as some have made it out to be) and used them for regional and national development instead of compensation for Japan's direct victims.

The Korean describes Park Chunghee and the 1965 Basic Treaty thus:

You mean, the contract that flatly contravenes jus cogens, negotiated and entered into by an illegitimate dictator who was formerly an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, who did not even know the existence of the Comfort Women issue, without the consent of the people whose rights he signed away for less than a penny on a dollar?

The Korean, by the way, writes his own post on his own blog regarding the Comfort Women issue, also worth a read.

We'll have to see if President Lee gets anywhere with this. Expect it to be played out again in August, around Liberation Day.

In the meantime, another commenter, Yuna, pointed to what the Comfort Women survivors themselves are looking for, lest one think, as the nattering nabobs of uri nara naysaying say, that no apology will ever be good enough:

1. Acknowlege the war crime
2. Reveal the truth in its entirety about the crimes of military sexual slavery
3. Make an official apology
4. Make legal reparations
5. Punish those responsible for the war crime
6. Accuraely record the crime in history textbooks
7. Erect a memorial for the victims of the military sexual salvery and establish a historical museum

All told, doesn't sound terribly unreasonable (though guidance should be given for what constitutes an "official apology" and by whom under what authority). But if your counterpart's goal is to whitewash history and deal with a painful past by rationalizing it or just ignoring it, it might be a tall order. There are a lot of good people in Japan who recognize this as wrong (or would if they knew better about the issue), but there are those in power who are beholden to a sanitized view of the past where Japan was the victim of World War II, not the instigator.

Some day in the near future, it would be wonderful if we could stop replaying this issue as if March 1 really were Groundhog Day. That would take an effort on both sides, but the ball is clearly in Japan's (imperial) court.

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iOS is trying to sabotage my friendships

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Hines Ward released from Pittsburg Steelers

I brought this up before when it was a mere rumor, but now it looks like it's really happening:

In a move that will play well with the finances but probably not the fans, the Pittsburgh Steelers announced Wednesday that they will release All-Pro receiver Hines Ward.

"We had a conversation today with Hines Ward and informed him that we plan to release him of his contract prior to the start of the 2012 NFL calendar year," Steelers President Art Rooney II told Steelers.com. "Hines has been an integral part of our success since we drafted him in 1998, and we will forever be grateful for what he has helped us achieve.

"He has meant so much to this organization both on and off the field, and we appreciate his efforts over the past 14 years. Hines' accomplishments are numerous, and he will always be thought of as one of the all-time great Steelers. We wish him nothing but the best."

The guy is thirty-six now, which is ancient by NFL standards, so there's a question of whether he'll try to get on another team.

As I suggested before, I wouldn't mind seeing him head back to Korea and try to get "American football" to take off. If anyone is in a position to do so, it's him. Hines Ward is the most famous Korean in the NFL ever, and SoKos were steeped in Hinesanity long before there was any Linsanity. See how I did that?

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Would most Chinese oppose their government on North Korean policies?

If they knew about them, that is (a big if). Judging by this pice in this post in Tea Leaf Nation, perhaps the answer is yes (HT to commenter Jeremy at OFK):

A strong majority of netizens on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, alternately begged and demanded that China’s government let the North Korean defectors stay, or at least not repatriate them to a “hell” that means “certain death.” @而而特退热 commented, “I saw a video of North Korea; how scary.” Voicing a common sentiment, @复活的愤怒小马 wrote, “These people will be shot as soon as they are repatriated; how can you take your disdain for human life to this level?”

Such brave viewpoints — the post starts with one netizen calling it "international murder" — are in sharp contrast with China's official view. As Beijing walks the fine line between maintaining a tight grip and not squeezing so hard that they turn the people against them, one wonders how this issue will turn out, or if it will soften Beijing's actions against North Korea defectors in the future.

I'm not holding my breath.

Today, by the way, is March 1, a national holiday called March First Movement Day (depending on how you translate it), though some like me prefer to call it Independence Day. See here for a rundown on what it means. Given the overbearing role China has been taking toward South Korea, and its control of North Korea as a virtual vassal state, today might not be a bad day to go and demonstrate downtown. The weather's nice.

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Stop me if you've heard this one

The Puk-mi talks between Washington and Pyongyang appear to have come to some fruition, with North Korea agreeing to put the brakes on its nuclear development program, for now at least.

I'm highlighting the "curbed nukes story" from the New York Times, since the Los Angeles Times looks like it's about to go into "paid premium" mode:

North Korea agreed to suspend nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors to monitor activities at its main nuclear complex, the North’s official news agency and the State Department announced on Wednesday. The promises could end years of a standoff that has allowed the North’s nuclear program to continue with no international oversight and are part of a deal that included an American pledge to ship food aid to the isolated, impoverished nation.

Although the Obama administration called the steps “important, if limited,” they signaled a potential breakthrough in the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program following the death late last year of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il.

The US's apparent decision to start connecting food aid to progress on the nuke talks (mentioned in the top story here) may have had something to do with forcing North Korea's hand.

On the other hand, maybe this is what it looks like when a new regime is walking a fine line between trying to reach out to past adversaries without looking like a wuss (to external players or internal factions).  

Like anything with North Korean promises, I'll believe it when I see it (Puk-mi indeed!). In the meantime, while I'm happy we may have slowed or stopped production of uranium, I'm less thrilled about the moratorium on nuclear tests, since I'd like to see North Korea deliberately and purposefully test their entire arsenal away.

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