Mongdori

A Pop-up Book Life

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:50:01 +0900

Here's a cute video of a girl looking for a job, who has an interesting way of making a cover letter:

Cheerleading Across Korea

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:04:15 +0900

Cheerleading group Pyrus from Ewha Women's University showing their support for Korea in the Olympics by cheering across the country:

DJ Karizma - tonight! FREE GUESTLIST

mongdori@mongdori.com (Tomek) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:04:08 +0900

hey party kids, for those of you who don't want to spend 60,000 tonight (NEED I REMIND YOU THAT JUSTICE IS HERE), here's a cheaper alternative which will also be bumpin with those deep house grooves you know you want to get down to.

TEXT ME (Tomek) AT 010-5513-6104 with your e-mail address by 3 or 4 this afternoon and I'll put you on the FREE guestlist.

http://www.partyluv.com/images/party/20080804_20080808_museum.jpg

Hal Hartley Retrospective at Cinematheque (Film News)

mongdori@mongdori.com (Tomek) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:16:46 +0900

Hal Hartley Retrospective
July 29-August 3, 2008 at Seoul Cinematheque, Seoul

As part of "Cine Seoul Summer Vacation," the Seoul Cinematheque presents a retrospective of American independent filmmaker Hal Hartley

Featured Works:

Trust (1990); Simple Men (1992,) Amateur (1994); Flirt (1995); Henry Fool (1997); The Book of Life (1998); The Girl From Monday (2005)

To get to Cinematheque, you need to find the Nagwon building, which is close to exit 5 at Jongno 3ga.

Cinematheque website

The site is in Korean, but if you scroll down you can see the PROGRAM SCHEDULE and it's pretty easy to decipher.

I watched Amateur yesterday - it was a bit obtuse but I love art films and how deliciously pretentious I feel afterwards. Also Cinematheque is the best venue for watching film in Korea. Respect!

Hey Party Kids - Justice Here Friday

mongdori@mongdori.com (Tomek) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:51:04 +0900

You guys probably know Justice from their dance anthem

Anyway, they put on a great show and will be here on Friday night. Price a little steep (50 pre-sale, 60 at the door) , but if you got some extra flow I guarantee this will be a memorable night (Apgujeong area).

[ Continued... ]

Baby Garbage Disposal Art

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:49:59 +0900

An important part of parenting is allowing your children to express themselves artistically. I'm just not sure that letting a baby use an expensive machine full of blades as their canvas is such a good idea...

Tragic Body Art

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:20:02 +0900

Here's an interesting performance art piece that's also a history lesson of recent Korean tragedies:

Korea has mainstream French house?

mongdori@mongdori.com (Tomek) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:12:18 +0900

Filter house...fuckin rad!

Uhm Jung Hwa - Disco Ft. TOP MV

Denjang Song

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:03:43 +0900

It's not often you hear a childrens' song dedicated to bean paste:

It's also never too early to have kids start worrying about their S-lines.

Hi-Potion, Korean Version

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:45:45 +0900

I've always wondered what was in those Final Fantasy potions that could constantly bring you back from the brink of death to full health...

Bubble Fighter

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:53:02 +0900

The only thing cooler than a water gun fight on a hot summer day has to be a virtual water gun fight in an air conditioned room on a hot summer day. Nexon have taken their Kart Rider characters and put them into a 3rd person water gun shooter called Bubble Fighter. The game has just started its closed beta phase. Here is the teaser video that makes me really want to remember what my old Kart Rider username and password were:

Dokdo Death Metal

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:57:18 +0900

One of the easiest ways to gain social acceptance in Korea is to agree that the island of Dokdo is Korean territory, not Japanese. But you may still wonder if Korea's rebellious and deep-voiced death metal scene also supports the popular notion the Dokdo is "우리 땅". I think this video answers that question:

Change Your Life with Phone English

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:45:01 +0900

A brief look at the glamorous life of phone English customers:

Air Conditioner Tribute

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:43:56 +0900

Here's a seasonally appropriate song by the band Doctor Fish which asks the question "Why bother buying an air conditioner if you're too cheap to use it?"

Hangul Pictogram Shirts

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:46:55 +0900

One thing foreigners often complain about in Korea is how shirts sold here have English writing on them, not Hangul. Usually, this writing is completely random and meaningless, such that wearing it back home would make you look like an idiot. But you can find shirts with Hangul on them occasionally. Here is a line of shirts from Basic House that lets people know you can read Korean, as well as support the Korean olympic archery team:

So Fat

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:21:05 +0900

This summer, one of the most unavoidable songs has been the Wondergirls' "So Hot". Though not as catchy as their previous hit "Tell Me", it's still managed to obsess the youth of Korea with it's tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and has spawned an endless amount of UCC videos on the net. Here's one of them, vaguely reminding me of an old Weird Al song:

Raving Bankers

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:39:57 +0900

You know the janitor's robbing them blind when the employees of this bank in 동천동 all turn to the right:

I Am a Person in Love

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:41:09 +0900

There are a lot of interesting people in the world. One of them is 쇼리 (Showry), a hopefully soon to be rising star. In this clip, she is showing off some of her drama skills by reading scenes from a book called 내가 사랑하는 사람 (I Am a Person in Love).

Painful Habits

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:46:27 +0900

Here's an interesting animation from a series called 못 박는 남자, 못 박히는 여자, which translates to "Nail Driving Man, Nail Driven into Woman." The title of this episode is 아픈 버릇, or "Painful Habits."

A Ballad for Smokin' Women

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:59:14 +0900

Life can be difficult for a woman smoker in Korea. It's still considered bad form for a woman to smoke in public, which drives most women to smoke in bathrooms or just at home alone. But Korean women have good reasons to smoke. The biggest reason being all the drama they must face in their lives. Here is a video by singer 란 pleading for understanding of the Korean smoking female:

Site Updates: Geotagged Threads, Job Board Open API, and Trackbacks

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:43:15 +0900

Here's a breakdown of some of the latest updates to the site:

Geotagged Threads:
You may now include custom maps of Korea in your forum and job posts. You will see a link to the tool to make your maps when you post a new message. Here is an example of a map you can create:

Job Board Open API:
You can now query the job board with custom searches and receive an XML formatted document. In other words, you can be updated of things like the latest part-time jobs in and around Seoul by entering that search's RSS feed into your Google Reader.

Trackbacks:
All new threads in now have trackback addresses now. There will be a slight delay in trackbacks accepted as I'm finalizing some anti-spam measures.

I hope these updates can prove useful to some people. I had to make some underlying changes to the site to make Naver Maps work with Firefox (Naver Maps has compliance issues), but I think I've worked through all the bugs. If you notice any display issues with other browsers, please let me know.

Maxim Espresso

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:09:45 +0900

Nothing says more about a person than the coffee they drink. Only true gentlemen know the satisfaction of opening a packet of Maxim Mocha Gold Mild and breathing in the aroma of powdered milk and sugar. Now, Maxim brings the craftsmanship of their instant coffee to the realm of cans. Introducing Maxim Espresso, only for those with mature tastes:

Giant Beef-Loving Bunnies Are Multiplying

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:10:18 +0900

A while back, flavor packet company 다시다 introduced us to their carnivorous bunny mascot. It now seems that mutant bunny wasn't alone, and his kind have multiplied and congregated in their own little village. Has the unabated and unnatural feeding of beef stock to rabbits produced some sort of Mad Bunny disease?

Eraser Art

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:42:33 +0900

If you've worked as a teacher, then you've probably formed a negative opinion about eraser shavings. Students, especially the error-prone ones, always leave behind heaps of them. Furthermore, just wiping them off the desk and onto the floor where they can blend in (and add traction) proves difficult because of their sticky nature. However, there are some interesting things you can do with all those eraser scraps. Here's someone who's found a way to make art with them:

The Korean word for eraser shavings is 지우개밥, but in this video, she uses the word 지우개똥, meaning "eraser poop." A nice way to tell someone to clean up there eraser shavings would be to say "지우개밥 먹어", meaning "eat your eraser-bap!"

Sunbathing in North Korea

mongdori@mongdori.com (Mongdori) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:21:07 +0900

Here's another video showing some of the differences in vocabulary between South and North Korea. Who would have thought that you could go to the beauty salon and order a fried head, or that bell peppers would be called lion peppers?