nanoomi

This Korea Herald article the other day had some interesting statistics:

The reservation rate for a single ticket is steadily increasing at CGV. It was 20.3 percent in the second quarter of 2008 but rose to 24 percent last year.[...]

The situation is similar for musicals and plays. According to Interpark, an online ticket seller, single tickets for various performances stood at about 96,000 in 2006 but increased to 141,000 in 2007 and 214,000 in 2008.
…
According to Statistics Korea, one-fifth of the households in Korea are one-person households.
…
Home meal replacement products such as instant lasagna or galbitang, or beef rib soup, are [popular, as] the sales of such products increased 60 percent this year, according to E-mart.

The statistic on the number of single tickets being reserved at CGV movie theatres was something I found interesting, especially considering the number of times I’ve been told that people in Korea never go to movies alone. Things are obviously changing, especially if “one-fifth of the households in Korea are one-person households.” One wonders how many of these people are in the ranks of the elderly.

Korea Beat also translated an article about students’ attitudes towards marriage:

A study of 1,039 middle and high school students nationwide conducted by the Korean Association of Retired Persons (한국은퇴자협회) found that three out of four male students said “I absolutely want to get married” (76.4 percent) but just half as many (55.6 percent) of female students said they plan to marry. 69.5 percent of male students said “if I get married I absolutely want to have children” but just 59.7 percent of female students agreed. The male students gave economic reasons as the primary reason not to get married, while female students mentioned the burdens of childrearing and housekeeping.

Clearly, changes are afoot. While it could be said that the self-centeredness that has grown out of (North) American individualism is not the best thing that could be exported here, on the other hand, with the adoption of apartment blocks as the place of choice to live for the middle class in Korea, the community found in the golmok (alley) neighborhoods of the past has already been under assault (figuratively and literally) for decades. The construction of so many officetels over the past 10 years has clearly had an effect on the makeup of households noted above.

http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2010/05/singles-going-steady.html

Yesterday I mentioned Robert Neff’s post at the Marmot’s Hole quoting from (and showing a photo from) a 1958 article about the future covering-up of Cheonggyecheon. At the time I remembered some films from the past featuring the stream, including Homeless Angels (1941), which I wrote about here. In that post, I showed this photo and wrote:

Perhaps the stream above is Cheonggyecheon, but it’s worth remembering that there were dozens of streams in Seoul that were covered up in the 20th century by both the Japanese and Korean governments.

Choi In-kyu, the director, went on to direct several other (less “pro-Japanese”) films before being kidnapped off to North Korea during the Korean War, including “Hurrah for Freedom” (1946), the first DVD put out by the Korean Film Archive. It includes a scene in which the main character, an independence fighter, has rescued his friend from a Japanese police officer (I guess we’re assuming he wasn’t Korean) by stabbing the officer, and flees over (and then under) a bridge crossing Cheonggyecheon. I’m quite certain this is the same bridge (Gwanggyo) seen in the post at the Marmot’s Hole, which is now the second bridge to be seen along the restored stream when walking from its source. Thanks to panorama software and a screenshots of a pan across the bridge, we can see almost the full length of the bridge.

Here’s a shot of what it looked like underneath:

What really prompted me to post these was a comment by Sperwer at the Marmot’s Hole mentioning the fact that Obaltan, (The Aimless Bullet), a 1961 film by Yu Hyeon-mok considered a classic today, features a scene in which one of the main characters flees the police after a robbery by running through Cheonggyecheon – under the then-ongoing construction which was covering the stream:

(Due to it being a panorama made from screenshots taken from a pan, both people seen above are the same person)

Very cool. I watched the film when the DVD came out back in 2002, but did not know anything about Cheonggyecheon at the time (it was later that year that it became mentioned more often in the English-language press), so it was fascinating to watch it again, knowing where this scene took place.

http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2010/05/cheonggyecheon-in-films.html