October in Korea was the fall of Kim Ki-duk, director of the Cinemanila cult favorite Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, a copy of which we were able to purchase in Carriedo alongside a catalogue of his other works
weeks before flying to the Land of the Morning Calm. The 6-in-1 DVD was labeled Midnight Theater of the Passion, and included the director’s other critically acclaimed films The Isle, The Coast Guard, and Samaritan Girl.
Before the piracy of Kim Ki-duk, what little we knew of Korea had to do with Shin Dong-pa, kimchi, taekwondo, Sandara Park, Jewel in the Palace a.k.a. Daejanggeum. Sponsored by the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (Kofice), the exposure trip was to last for seven days and six nights, and was titled Overseas Press Coverage of the Korean Culture Industry.
Though we were much primed for the Busan film festival, that particular stop wasn’t scheduled until the last two days of the itinerary. We had to get there by way of a three and a half hour flight between countries, the hour-long taxi ride through downtown Seoul, a relaxing ferry cruise on the Han river amid the chilly breeze of evening, visits to the Munwha Broadcasting Corp., the Nanta theater of percussion and comedic cuisine, and the Korea Game Industry Agency (Kogia), photo ops at the Gyungbok Palace and Daejanggeum theme park, a walk along Cheonggye creek downtown and through the Ubiquitous Dream Hall where everything is virtual, yes, maybe even this trip to Korea, such that Kim Ki-duk and the rest of his ribald gang would have to wait in the southern port city of Busan, three hours away by bullet train from the capital.
Yet we were a ribald gang ourselves, the media delegation for the overseas coverage, consisting of representatives from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Israel and Philippines. The Thai Kittipong, Viet Trinh Le Van, Indon Amir, Malay Fong, Burmese Dr. Myint, Israeli Noam and Jusniyo (as spelled in our ubiquitous name tag) of Philippine were herded this way and that by our ever accommodating host-guides and interpreters, Geunwha Lee and Kimsam, through the winding streets of Seoul and Busan and an assortment of eats and treats, a variety of kimchi and the warmth of soju, the Korean sweet potato-based alcoholic drink that comes in green bottles, which reminded us of a scene in The Isle where the weird lead character drinks soju in the rain with her prospective lover, but we did not drink the stuff in the rain rather in an enclosed and safe room, footwear off in the manner of the locals, that helped us with our sleep on the 23rd floor of the Hotel Lotte after we had adjourned from the day’s adventures.
As it turns out, the Koreans take their drama serials seriously, as MBC, known as the kingdom of drama, chalks up around 900 hours of Koreanovelas annually. MBC also claims 50 percent of audience share of radio listeners.
According to MBC executive Song Weon-geun, if the drama is a hit in Korea, it will also make it big worldwide, citing as example Jewel in the Palace, the pride of the company. He says that South leader Roh gave a DVD of Daejanggeum to his North counterpart Kim Jong-il during the recent summit of the Koreas.
“Non-violent, but suspense,” says Song of the MBC soaps and the recipe for success.
The MBC is a long and winding, maze-like building that “only the janitor knows exactly how many rooms there are.” There are some radio shows that have been on for 30 years running, and the company gives out Golden Mouth awards to distinguished radio voices who have lasted years.
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The Korean fondness for kimchi can be seen in their theater Nanta, where vegetables are chopped to pieces by percussive knives in contrapuntal rhythm, a comedic performance that combines music, gymnastics, with an overall circus flavor.
“Each country has its own rhythm,” says Nanta manager Byung Ick-kim, explaining how the theater has been on overdrive since hitting it big at the Edinburgh festival in 1997. He says their actors, a threadbare cast of five or six with their respective understudies, are only incidental percussion players, and that they try their best to put variations into the script so the performers – and the audiences – would not get bored.
Like kimchi though, Nanta is an acquired taste.
The Korean fondness for soup can be seen in their meals, where during one lunch there was a succession of three different soups served: a cold peanut soup for starters, steaming hot noodle soup for the main course, then a small bowl of arroz caldo-like porridge to polish things off.
Their fondness for water can be seen in the Han river and Cheonggye creek, the first of which halves the city, and the second running through downtown Seoul. It is also evident in the films of Kim Ki-duk, where bodies of water are a central motif, as amorphous and undeniable as the changing of the seasons.
Their love for e-sports can be seen in their lead spot in online gaming, and the Kogia’s setting up counseling centers to help those who may possibly feel the pangs of encroaching addiction, “yet players are aware if they already spend more than two hours before the computer,” an agency spokesman says.
Their fondness for ginseng can be tasted in the delecteble dish ginseng chicken, which is nilagang manok cooked in the energizing herbal broth, with chestnuts and other recado and some glutinous rice stuffed inside the fowl, served to us during our first lunch in Busan for the film festival.
The Korean predilection for ceremony we experienced during the dinner hosted by Kofice, a stroll away from their second floor office in Seoul, where we drank a special wine served to APEC leaders at the APEC summit in Busan 2005. It was here we learned that it’s bad manners to fill out one’s wine glass by oneself, because it should be filled by a companion at table. And no sipping before toasts.
The Korean obsession with telenovelas can be glimpsed at the Daejanggeum theme park on the outskirts of the capital in Yangju City, where the series was shot on location and where the delegation posed for photos with lifesize cardboard cutouts of the lead actress Lee Yong-ae, who had won best actress last year in the Cinemanila film festival for the Kill Bill takeoff, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.
Their love for song can be heard in the yearly Asia Song Festival, held last September where the Philippine entry was new mom Barbi Almalbis, shadowed by her hubby like a coup plotter. The words Korea and karaoke are almost like anagrams.
Their love for film can be gleaned in the Busan Film Festival, easily Asia’s biggest and a melting pot of filmmakers and other indie spirits. Kofice chairman Hyuntaik Shin says their office is keen on film collaborations and exchanges between and among Koreans and Filipinos, as well as other Asian nationals.
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A Kofice staffer said that in Korea, people either love or hate Kim Ki-duk. No middle ground for him.
This I remember while walking along the beach in Busan, after the hearty ginseng chicken meal, watching the other promenaders and occasional sunbather at past noon, killing time before the screening of the closing film of the festival, the anime Evangelion 1.0.
“Lust awakens the desire to possess, and that awakens the intent to murder,” the old monk advises the angry young man in ”Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.
Those words occurred to me like a mantra while trying to find my way back to the Lotte Hotel one night in Seoul, after buying a couple of beers at a 7-Eleven some blocks away, and a streetwalker at a bus stop calls out to me. She is chewing gum and looks maybe in her early 40s.
“Do you like Kim Ki-duk? I find his films difficult,” our guide Geunwha says over coffee at KFC at the pier, while waiting for the Han river ferry on our first night there.
It seems ironic now that what little we know of Kim Ki-duk comes from a 6-in-1 pirated DVD purchased in Carriedo, while in Busan where he is something of a folk hero among the independent filmmakers, there were banners everywhere declaring “No piracy allowed in Korea,” against which backdrop us Southeast Asian delegates posed for posterity to take photos back to our country where piracy runs rampant.
There were four Filipino films listed in this year’s Busan film fest, two of them by Brillante Mendoza. However, his Foster Child failed to make it to the first screening due to Customs problems coming from the Eurasia festival, but fortunately made it for the second screening.
The others in the catalogue were Mendoza’s Slingshot (Tirador), and the other two from this year’s Cinemalaya, Tribe (Tribu) by Jim Libiran, and Philippine Science (Pisay) by Auraeus Solito.
We were able to watch two other films aside from the Japanese anime, the French documentary Her Name is Sabine and the Malaysian post-romantic noir, Waiting for Love, after which it was a 10,000 won taxi ride back to the Hotel Lotte, through a tunnel and a long bridge and many a winding road, lugging a couple of beers for a good night’s sleep before the train ride back to Seoul the next day, where it somehow felt like going through fall, winter, spring and summer in a week, all the four seasons in seven days, six nights in Korea, land of the calmest mornings.
(correction in Michiko article on Oct. 14: the scriptwriter’s trip to Japan last May was sponsored by Japan Foundation, not DAWN. Our apologies to the foundation).