October 2012
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June 2012
6 posts
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The End of Interracial Dating? Or Not...
by Cody Abbey
Walking through the streets of Munich on a trip to Germany this past winter, I witnessed a new phenomenon: everywhere I went, I saw interracial couples holding hands, especially Asians with non-Asians. Considering Germany’s relative homogeneity and xenophobia, this brought me to think that Europeans were possibly beginning to emulate Americans in their dating habits—in...
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May 2012
5 posts
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SMTown LA 2012 – Hit or Miss?
by Cynthia
Girls’ Generation at SMTOWN LA 2012
Earlier I wrote a post about SMTown Los Angeles 2012 at the Anaheim Center, and how skeptical I was of the whole affair, with its obscenely high prices and the last-minute notification of the concert. Well, despite my friends’ raving reviews of the concerts, it looks like I had a right to be skeptical. As much as I don’t want to...
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Illegal access to foreign media on the rise in N.... →
North Korea has always been portrayed to me as an uncanny real-life version of Orwell’s 1984. According to this BCC documentary, each family has a state radio in the kitchen, and while the volume can be lowered, they can never be turned off. Portraits of the Kim family, the leaders glorified as deities that brought peace and freedom to the people, are also found everywhere. Regardless of...
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Blackface in Korea
by Cynthia
I don’t often bring up my racial identity, but let it be known that I am a black k-pop fan. And as a Korean pop fan, I’ve been exposed to some Korean media—I’ve watched a bunch of variety shows, talk shows, interviews, and even a drama or two. A few weeks ago, one of these variety shows got into a bit of a scandal due to one of its skits, which featured two...
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Watch Your Back, Bieber: The Boy Band Is Making a... →
South Korean boyband Big Bang
“The boys are back!” the Internet cried, reinstating the relevance of all-male pop groups. Women have had a strong run dominating the Top 40 pop charts, no doubt, but thanks to some international imports, we may be about to hear a lot more harmonizing than we have in the last few years.
Korean pop and One Direction meet again! This time, in a Time...
April 2012
12 posts
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Rickshaw, the art on a cart
One of the trademarks of Dhaka city, these canvases on wheels are sure to give you a ride to remember. Rickshaws have convertible roofs as well as polythene curtains to save you from the sun and rain, and each has a bell that rings to no avail from the car owners ahead. They are everywhere and can take you anywhere at anytime. They are also affordable and green, perfect for the already...
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SMTown L.A. 2012
by Cynthia
One of the biggest Korean pop labels called SM Entertainment (often referred to as “SM”) recently released news that it was going on another “SMTown World Tour” in 2012, the first stop being Los Angeles. Excitement ensued, until the prices were released.
For those who don’t know, SMTown concerts are concerts featuring all the major artists under SM...
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Eat Drink Man Woman
by Kathy Sun
Chef Chu (Sihung Lung) and his daughter Jia-chien (Jacqueline Chien-lien Wu) share an intimate moment.
[Film Review]
Last summer, whilst in the middle of a foreign film binge, I promised Jenny that we would watch Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman together.
We never did. I decided to ‘preview’ of the film before our scheduled screening, only to unintentionally...
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'Hallyu' back: Obama catches the 'Korean Wave' →
REPORTING FROM SEOUL — On his third visit to South Korea, President Obama seems to have caught the “Korean Wave.”
The term for the surge and spread of Korean pop culture — “hallyu” in Korean — popped up in the president’s speech on Monday, along with a sprinkle of other in-the-know references intended to show he could hang with the kids of Hankuk University, the audience for...
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North Korea moves rocket into position for launch... →
Engineers are pumping fuel into a rocket that is set to carry a satellite into space, according to officials at the North Korean space agency’s central command centre…Paek Chang Ho, chief of the launch command centre, told reporters…the rocket was ready for liftoff as early as Thursday, the start of a five-day window set for the controversial launch timed to coincide with...
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Princess Mononoke -- the theme
by Jenny
[Film Review]
Japanese manga artist and director Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿) is known for his award winning anime films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Castle in the Sky. In particular, his 2001 film Spirited Away won Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, and became the most successful movie in Japanese history. As a feminist, his films oft-times...
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From Reuters - Myanmar's Suu Kyi poised to win...
Myanmar held a landmark election Sunday that was expected to send democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi into parliament for her first public office since launching her decades-long struggle against the military-dominated government.
Sunday’s by-election, to fill a few dozen vacant seats, followed months of surprising reforms by a nominally civilian government that does not relish ceding ground...
March 2012
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South Korea’s Greatest Export: How K-Pop’s Rocking... →
In Seoul, everybody seems to be cashing in on the K-pop boom. As the fanbase for the catchy melodies performed by polished dance groups, pop bands, and soloists is growing, the spinoff industry around their pretty ranks is growing even faster. Tours from Japan and China bring busloads of teenagers and middle-aged women to come see K-pop concerts and do some shopping while they’re at it. Fashion...
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North Korea on Sina Weibo,"Watch your mouth,... →
On March 7, Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter equivalent) got a newcomer, an account by the name of “North Korea Today”…So how well is this “old friend of China” claimed by the Chinese government received among Chinese netizens? It was welcomed wholeheartedly by surprise, contempt and ridicule. Tweets by North Korea Today received an average of 200 to 2000 comments, with...
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China and Taiwan vie for a piece of Jeremy Lin
Read more of this article on CNN (link).
The 6-foot-3-inch point guard was mostly sidelined by his New York Knicks basketball team until a recent chance opportunity on courtshot him to stardom a week and a half ago…But basketball’s latest wonderboy may now find himself caught in a competition of a different sort, as both China and Taiwan seek to claim the Asian-American as one of...
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Bringing K-Pop to the West [link] →
An interesting article written by the New York Times about the recent role of social media in the Korean Wave as well as an appraisal of K-pop’s potential success in the West and the strategies that will and won’t work.
- Cynthia
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Why Asia? An American's POV
by Cody Abbey
Cody in China, learning how to use chopsticks.
Hey readers! As this is my very first post, I decided that I would start out by briefly introducing myself and asking a very fundamental question: why Asia?
I come from a small, white town on Long Island, which I can attest is one of the most segregated suburbs in the world. The all-boys Catholic high school I attended wasn’t much...
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February 2012
15 posts
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British Invasion vs. Korean Invasion
by Cynthia Andrianjatovo
In an earlier post, I wrote about how k-pop bands are starting to edge into the American market. Well, it seems like “Popdust”, an American website dedicated to giving the latest news and music-centric analyses of pop culture, has picked up on this in their latest edition of “Pop-off”, a poll in which voters choose “this week’s most...
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NATO pulls out of Afghan ministries after Kabul... →
“NATO has withdrawn all its personnel from Afghan ministries after two senior US officers were shot dead in the interior ministry building in Kabul…
… Afghan security has signally failed to find a strategy to prevent the killing of NATO forces at the hands of Taliban infiltrators and rogue soldiers. One senior Afghan general said it was “a nightmare that refuses to go...
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The BJP at it again
“Amarnath Tewary was subjected to a prolonged assault in a public area” (BBC)
It appears that the BJP has once again struck out against those who speak out against its policies, though the target of the attack caught me by surprise. I didn’t think the BJP would have the temerity to attack a BBC journalist considering his connections with Western media. It is unfortunate, but...
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Japan Emperor to Have Heart Bypass Surgery [Link] →
Japan’s Emperor Akihito, left, along with Empress Michiko, heads to the University of Tokyo Hospital, by car, in Tokyo, Japan, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012.
Emperor Akihito assumed the throne in 1989, and serves as the head of state in Japan. Previously, Japan was an absolute monarchy and its Emperors had full governing authorities. Postwar-Japan adopted a constitutional monarchy, and under...
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Battle of the Girl Groups
by Cynthia Andrianjatovo
Girls’ Generation with Kelly Ripa on the “Live! with Kelly”
It seems as if the current trend in k-pop involves attempting to break into the American music market. Now Korean pop, originally only popular in Asia, has been making its way around the world the past few years thanks to promotion from the fans on sites like Youtube, Facebook, Tumblr, and...
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“Mongolia is being dug up and sold to China [Quote]”
– From The Economist:
Our correspondent travels to Ulaanbaatar, capital of the country likely to grow faster than any other in the next decade. Mongolia has a chance of becoming a Qatar or a Brunei: a country that has only a small population but almost all of it, in global terms, loaded.
To pay for...
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Why China fails at football: Little Red Card... →
From The Economist
The telling reasons why, at least in football, China is unlikely to rule the world in the near future…
…Solving the riddle of why Chinese football is so awful becomes, then, a subversive inquiry. It involves unravelling much of what might be wrong with China and its politics. Every Chinese citizen who cares about football participates in this subversion, each with...
