The Old Woman with the Knife

Just finished reading this great book. It is full of references from my stay in Korea and from Korean movies, that bring back good memories.
But no Granny assassians ๐Ÿ™‚

From the amazon page for the book

The Old Woman with the Knife

by Gu Byeong-mo,  Chi-Young Kim (Translator)

The kinetic story of a sixty-five-year-old female assassin who faces an unexpected threat in the twilight of her career–this is an international bestseller and the English language debut from an award-winning South Korean author

At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age–that she’ll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin.

Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses–for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she’s known about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw’s world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.

A sensation in South Korea, and now translated into English for the first time by Chi-Young Kim, The Old Woman with the Knife is an electrifying, singular, mordantly funny novel about the expectations imposed on aging bodies and the dramatic ways in which one woman chooses to reclaim her agency.

#korea

The Handmaiden (2016)

Just finished watching the 2016 Korean film The Handmaiden.
It is a beautiful film to watch and the soundtrack is very well done, particularly: IMI ONEUN SORI (์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ) The Sound Of You Coming

The Sound Of You Coming from The Handmaiden (2016) film

IMI ONEUN SORI (์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ) The Sound Of You Coming

(Gain)
Like the sound of you coming
I hear something from somewhere
A sound that pinches my heart
(Gain)
์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ ๊ฐ™์ด
์–ด๋””์„œ ๋“ค๋ฆฌ๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ
๋‚ด ๊ฐ€์Šด์„ ์กฐ์ด๋Š” ๊ทธ ์†Œ๋ฆฌ
(Minseo & Gain)
But youโ€™re not coming, even when the night passes
My sad heart doesnโ€™t know how to stop
Just waiting for the sound of you to come
Just waiting for the sound of you to come
(Minseo & Gain)
๊ทธ๋Ÿฌ๋‚˜ ์˜ค์ง€ ์•Š๋„ค ์ด ๋ฐค์ด ์ง€๋‚˜๋„๋ก
์•ˆํƒ€๊นŒ์šด ๋‚ด ๋งˆ์Œ์€ ๊ทธ์น  ์ค„ ๋ชจ๋ฅด๊ณ 
์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ๋งŒ ๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ ค์ ธ
์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ๋งŒ ๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ ค์ ธ
(Minseo)
In my waiting heart
Joy overflows
You have found me, youโ€™re coming over there
(Minseo)
๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ฆฌ๋Š” ๋‚ด ๋งˆ์Œ์—
๊ธฐ์จ์ด ๋„˜์ณ ํ˜๋Ÿฌ๋ผ
๊ทธ๋Œ€ ๋‚˜๋ฅผ ์ฐพ์•„์„œ ์ €๊ธฐ ์˜ค๋„ค
(Minseo & Gain)
Holding onto blue dreams, holding onto happiness
My heart that is waiting is blooming
Hurry and come, Iโ€™ve been waiting
Letโ€™s dream a happy dream, just like long ago
(Minseo & Gain)
ํ‘ธ๋ฅธ ๊ฟˆ ๊ฐ€๋“ ์•ˆ๊ณ  ํ–‰๋ณต์„ ๊ฐ€๋“ ์•ˆ๊ณ 
๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ฆฌ๋Š” ๋‚ด ๋งˆ์Œ์— ๊ฝƒ์„ ํ”ผ์šฐ๋„ค
์–ด์„œ ์™€์š” ๊ทธ๋Œ€์—ฌ ๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ ธ์–ด์š”
ํ–‰๋ณตํ•œ ๊ฟˆ์„ ๊ฟ”์š” ์˜›๋‚  ๊ฐ™์ด
Holding onto blue dreams, holding onto happiness
My heart that is waiting is blooming
ํ‘ธ๋ฅธ ๊ฟˆ ๊ฐ€๋“ ์•ˆ๊ณ  ํ–‰๋ณต์„ ๊ฐ€๋“ ์•ˆ๊ณ 
๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ฆฌ๋Š” ๋‚ด ๋งˆ์Œ์— ๊ฝƒ์„ ํ”ผ์šฐ๋„ค
Just waiting for the sound of you to come
Just waiting for the sound of you to come
์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ๋งŒ ๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ ค์ ธ
์ž„์ด ์˜ค๋Š” ์†Œ๋ฆฌ๋งŒ ๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ ค์ ธ

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/imi-oneun-sori-์ž„์ด-์˜ค๋Š”-์†Œ๋ฆฌ-sound-you-coming-์ž„์ด-์˜ค๋Š”-์†Œ๋ฆฌ.html

Korean Drama

Netflix and Amazon Prime are serious impediments to productivity.

I watched Parasite a month or so ago. I really enjoyed it. One of the themes of the movie is social inequality and the lack of ability to move up in status / income.
It’s interesting that Korea’s income distribution is not too different to America’s.
But you always hear Americans talk about “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” whereas in Korean films this is not that common.

It does have Song Kang-ho in it as did 2017’s A Taxi Driver which I also liked. I will watch anything with Song Kang-Ho in it.

The Fiery Priest

It consisted of twenty 50 minute episodes. It is a typical Korean drama involving the heroes fighting corruption, but it is very slapstick.

They should have cut back on some of the slapstick because at times it became very annoying, but overall a Solid B, but not worth a repeat watch.

Ssongsak and Yo Han, two of my favourite characters

Priest Kim and Detective Goo

K-Drama

Been watch a few Korean dramas lately.

 Live ๋ผ์ด๋ธŒ poster

Firstly,ย Liveย ๋ผ์ด๋ธŒ, an 18 episode show about Police

Kingdomํ‚น๋ค poster

The second drama, Kingdomํ‚น๋ค is a mix of Korean period drama (good) and a zombie movie (very good โ€ฆ seen Train to Busan?)
It has Bae Doonna in it. Season One was worth the time, canโ€™t wait for season two.

Stranger ๋น„๋ฐ€์˜ poster

The last drama also stars Bae Doonna and is called Stranger ๋น„๋ฐ€์˜

Mogi Man

The Korean word for Mosquito is “mogi”
You will often see this happen in Korea.
The Korean government say they have eliminated Malaria from Korea. This is one of the ways they do so. Every street is visited by a car or scooter in this case spewing out a cloud of mosquito poison.
Often you will see kids running behind this very same cloud.