As rental prices in Seoul climb, more and more residents are fleeing to the suburbs

The Hanguk Ilbo reported on June 14 that more and more people were moving out of Seoul. And the statistics bear this out—the population of the city—well, the Korean population, anyway—decreased from 10,205,000 in 2009 to 10,036,000 in 2012. In the last two years alone, the city’s population has dropped by 133,000 people.

What’s prompting this exodus? The reason is simple, actually—rental prices. As anyone living in Seoul can tell you, rental prices in the Korean capital can get exorbitant. Earlier this year, the Economist Intelligence Unit put Seoul as the 37th most expensive city in the world. Purely rental properties are still relatively rare in Korea, with many residents making use of the jeonse system, in which the resident puts up a large deposit that the property owner either invests or places in the bank to earn interest. The resident can then live in the apartment rent-free for the period of the contract. This requires families to put up a large amount of money up front—for many low- and middle-income families, this is not an easy thing to do.

Jeonse rates in Seoul are climbing. One man interviewed by the Hanguk Ilbo rented a home in Seoul’s Gangseo-gu district for KRW 90 million up front in 2006. In 2009, the jeonse had climbed to KRW 115 million, and four years later, it reached KRW 140 million—a sum that approximated the man’s earnings for an entire year.

As a result, more and more residents are leaving Seoul for cities in the surrounding province of Gyeonggi-do and beyond, where rents are much lower. According to Statistics Korea, 10,005 more people moved out of than moved into Seoul in April. In contrast, in the same month, 5,492 more people moved to Gyeonggi-do than moved from it, 2,197 more people moved to Incheon than moved from it, and 1,482 more people moved to Chungcheongnam-do than moved from it. This suggests a significant exodus—or “self-imposed exile,” as some call it—from the capital city.

This phenomenon has not been without its problems. The exodus has been led by families with lower incomes. Even after relocating outside of Seoul, their places of work usually remain in the city, meaning increasingly long commutes;  obviously, this is both physically and emotionally tiring and reduces family time.

Even worse, the trend has produced a “balloon effect” of rising rental prices in the towns and regions surrounding Seoul. For instance, while Seoul’s jeonse prices have increased 28 percent since 2008, jeonse prices in the city of Hanam, one of Seoul’s closest suburbs, have climbed 40 percent. Similar rises can be seen in other nearby cities such as Gimpo, Ilsan, and Yongin. As the rise in jeonse prices spread, some residents worry about being turned into virtual nomads, pushed further and further along the subway lines from their places of work in Seoul.

According to the Hanguk Ilbo, one in three Koreans who pay jeonse for their residence believe they won’t be able to live in their current home for more than a year due to rising jeonse costs. In fact, over the last four years, the rise in jeonse prices has been more than triple the rise in incomes—jeonse prices have climbed by KRW 32 million, while average annual incomes have climbed only KRW 6.81 million. This, in turn, has led to fear that rising jeonse prices could spark a massive explosion in household debt.

What is interesting—and extremely distressing—is that even as jeonse prices climb, house prices are actually falling due to
the sluggish real estate market. Even if property owners sell their properties, they would be unable to repay their bank loans or residents’ jeonse deposits. According to the Chosun Ilbo daily, there were 559,778 households nationwide living in apartments where the jeonse is more expensive than the apartment’s sales price. Since property owners usually shift these losses onto the renters, the pain is being felt most acutely by low-income renters. This drags down the housing market even further, causing a vicious cycle.

Written by Robert Koehler

Koreans Increasingly Turn to Closed SNS

You might think that with social network services (SNS)—otherwise known as social media—the more open, the better. In Korea, however, “closed” SNS are on the rise, and have been since the end of last year. These closed services differ from traditionally “open” services such as Twitter and Facebook in that they allow only the user and select family and friends to share and view photos and posts. Typically, you register as someone’s friend by invitation only. These services let users enjoy the benefits of deeper, unfettered communication with friends and family while at the same time providing better protection of their private lives. Closed services have proven especially popular recently, with users turned off by what some feel is the excessive openness of existing SNS.

Naver Band and more

One of the more successful closed social networking services is Naver’s Band. Like Twitter, this app allows for instantaneous mobile communication. Where it differs, however, is that it allows users to divide followers into different groups, each one with differing levels of access. Whereas family members may have complete access, mere “friends” may be able to see only a little. The app comes with a bulletin board, photo gallery, chat room, online schedule, and user
management menu. Each user can register up to 5,000 friends. Just 40 days after it opened last year, the app had been downloaded one million times. It now has about six million users.

Band is not Naver’s only contribution to closed SNS. Naver’s Japan office released the messaging app Line in 2011, not long after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The disaster had exposed the deficiencies of existing communication systems. Just eight months after its launch, it had 20 million users spread throughout several different countries. By June
2012, it had reached 40 million users.

Another popular closed service is Path, an American service launched in 2010. Path specializes in private messaging, keeping discussions “just between us,” as they say. Even more private is the Korean service Between, which describes itself as a “a beautiful space where you can share all your moments only with the one that matters.” Released in Nov
2011, Between recorded 2.2 million downloads within its first year.

Korean app giant Kakao has gotten into the game, too. In February, the company released Kakao Album, which allows users and their friends to create photo albums of their very own. If users would like to promote their albums further, they can share what they post via Twitter and Facebook, too.

Privacy concerns

The rise of closed SNS is related to growing concerns about the privacy protection of existing social network services. There have been numerous cases both in Korea and overseas of cyberstalking and cyberbullying by way of Facebook and Twitter. The resourceful user can mine a good deal of private information from SNS; this data can later be used in the commission of cyber crimes. In 2011, criminals hacked one of Korea’s largest social network services, Cyworld, making off
with the personal data of 35 million users.

To make matters worse, deleting a social network presence can be a difficult and timeconsuming process—and if much of your data was shared with SNS friends, it can be virtually impossible.

Korea’s gregarious Confucian culture can present additional problems to existing SNS users. What do you do when your boss wants to friend you on Facebook? Some workers feel compelled to leave comments on the Facebook posts of their workplace superiors, lest they appear disinterested. One female office worker in her 30s recently told the Dong-A Ilbo
she needed to quit Facebook due to stress—superiors at work constantly left disheartening comments on her posts, she grew tired of kissing up to her superiors by writing comments on their posts, and she was constantly forced to explain her posts to concerned coworkers.

Written by Robert Koehler

Abuses of system prompt immigration authorities to act

On April 24, the Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo broke news that Korea’s immigration authorities were planning to revise Korea’s immigration laws to ban Koreans who make under KRW 1.12 million a month from marrying a foreigner. Or, to be more precise, it would stop immigration authorities from issuing marriage immigrant visas to the prospective immigrant spouses of those making less than 120% of the minimum cost of living and those receiving support under the National Basic Livelihood Act. Authorities are even considering a plan to raise the minimum income level needed to receive a marriage immigrant visa to 80% of the minimum cost of living.

Since 2006, when the number of so-called international marriages peaked at 38,759, international marriages have been on a downward trajectory, with just 28,326 international marriages performed in 2012. The divorce rate, however, has continued to hold more or less steady at an uncomfortably high rate—in 2013, 10,887 international marriages broke apart. With an endless stream of horror stories of spousal abuse, scam marriages, broken families, and other abuses of the system, the government is finally moving to reform the system. The question is, will it be enough?

Beating the brokers

International marriage is not new to Korea. According to the 13th century history textbook Samguk Yusa, King Suro of the southern Korean kingdom Geumgwan Gaya in the second century married a northern Indian princess who sailed all the way from the subcontinent to Korea. King Gongmin of the Goryeo Dynasty was married to a Mongolian princess, as was the practice of kings of the latter part of the Goryeo Dynasty. Even Korea’s first president Syngman Rhee married Austrian Franziska Donner, who accordingly became Korea’s first First Lady.

Still, international marriages tended to be rare, especially in the modern era. Things began to change from the early 1990s, when women—largely ethnic Koreans from China and Southeast Asians—began coming to Korea to marry mostly rural men. The trend accelerated in the subsequent decade. By 2005, more than 40% of rural bachelors were marrying foreign women. Worried about the decreasing and increasingly elderly population, local authorities even encouraged the process by providing subsidies to international couples.

The trend was not without serious problems, though. Many of these marriages ended in failure due to cultural differences and communication barriers—not surprising, considering that many of these marriages were concluded within just a couple of days of getting introduced by brokers that prioritized profits over love. Some foreign women were duped into marrying mentally ill and/or abusive men; some wives were even killed by their husbands. Some foreign women used the system as a means to illegally immigrate to Korea, disappearing soon after their arrival and leaving their husbands heartbroken. There were plenty of sham marriages, too, in which men in need of cash “married” women wanting to come to Korea as part of a visa scam. The situation got so bad that at one point in 2010, the Cambodian government temporarily banned local women from marrying Korean men met through matchmaking brokers. Vietnam, too, banned young women from marrying Korean men over the age of 50. Hanoi also barred marriages between Korean men and Vietnamese women separated by more than 16 years of age.

Perhaps as intended, strengthened regulations have taken a toll on the matchmaking industry. According to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the number of international marriage matchmaking companies dropped from 1,390 at the end of last year to 1,276 at the end of March, a reduction of 6.9% in just three months.

Not just Korea

Korea’s regulatory revisions, if they go into effect, would affect not only low-income Koreans. The government will not give out marriage immigrant visas to Korean men lacking a stable place to live. This means Korean men living in motels or gosiwon (one-room apartments usually used by young working people) may not be issued marriage visas for their brides, nor might those living with a third person who is not a relative. Likewise, those men who have recently entered into a previous international marriage and gotten divorced will be banned from entering into another one right away. Other measures are under consideration, too, including a plan to make it mandatory for prospective foreign wives to pass Level 1 of the Test of Proficiency in Korean before they are given a marriage visa; if they fail, their visa issuance is delayed six months. Fail it twice, and they’ll need to take a government-mandated social integration class when they come to Korea. Couples who can communicate in a third language, such as English, would be excluded.

Korea is not the only country with such regulations on the books. The United States, for instance, grants marriage visas for foreign spouses only to those who make 125% of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) poverty guidelines. The United Kingdom, too, has a ￡18,600 income requirement, and you must be able to accommodate yourself and your dependents without recourse to public funds.

Written by Robert Koehler

While developed world gets fatter, Koreans remain remarkably thin

A graph of obesity rates by nation was posted on the website of a Korean online community. The graph, composed of “emoticons” that grew increasingly spherical in accordance with national obesity rates, caused quite a stir. Firmly planted at the most globular end of the graph were, naturally enough, the pleasantly plump Americans, with a national obesity rate of 31%. At the far opposite end—with an emoticon so thin you’d almost have to squint to see it—are the Koreans, with an obesity rate of just 3%.

Not only are Koreans thin, but their bodies are becoming more “Westernized.” According to a recent study by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy’s Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, middle-aged Korean men and women are growing thinner and their legs are growing longer, which the ministry attributed to changes in diet and increased exercise. As further evidence, the Shinsegae Department Store’s online store now has a section dedicated to “big-sized” bras of C-cup and over. The online store noted that while A- and B-cup sales have fallen from 92% of all bra sales in 2010 to 69% last year, C-cup sales have skyrocketed from 8% to 23%.

With obesity a growing problem in much of the developed world, why do Koreans remain so thin? What’s their secret?

Healthy diet plays its part

OECD statistics bear out the Korean miracle. In an increasingly spherical world, Korean obesity rates are shockingly low. As of 2009, Korea’s obesity rate was just 3.8%, slightly below the second thinnest nation, Japan, and rating pretty well against non-OECD states India (2.1%), Indonesia (2.4%), and China (2.9%). The data also shows that these rates have held steady over the last decade, in contrast to many other OECD states where rates have climbed (and in stark contrast to the United States, where rates have skyrocketed).

Mind you, the news wasn’t entirely good. While obesity rates are extremely low, 30.5% of Koreans were “overweight.” That’s still a good number compared to other OECD nations, but it is considerably higher than Japan, where just 24.9% of the population was overweight. Korea’s obesity rate for girls (16.2%) was also higher than that for girls in several other OECD nations such as Turkey, Norway, and France, albeit still better than most of the rest, and nowhere near as bad as the United States (35.0%) and Greece (45.0%).

Visitors to Korea often remark on how thin Koreans—and Korean women in particular—are. And indeed, Koreans can be quite vicious in their standards. In a post at popular K-pop blog allkpop entitled “What Koreans Consider ‘Fat’,” poster Freyja posts pictures of “chubby” entertainers such as Shin Ae, Solbi, and Song Hye-kyo, none of whom are likely to star on The Biggest Loser anytime soon.

Certainly genetics play their part. Koreans—like other Asians—tend toward ectomorphic body types, which is to say, thinner, lighter builds often accompanied by higher rates of metabolism. Lifestyle and culture, however, play very important roles, too. Although the Korean diet is changing—a fact much bemoaned in some quarters of the Korean press—Koreans still eat more vegetables and less fat than other peoples around the world. In his 2010 book The Five Factor World Diet, celebrity trainer and author Harley Pasternak praised Korean cuisine as one of the healthiest in the world—it’s low in fat and high in tofu, noodles, fish, and fermented vegetables, most notably Korea’s signature dish, kimchi. In her Korean Diet Tips posted at eHow, Lane Cummings also notes that Koreans eat relatively little meat (the popularity of galbi and bulgogi notwithstanding) and consume little added sugar, with the most popular form of carbohydrate being gluten-free and sugar-free rice.

Too skinny, perhaps?

Social pressure also helps keep Koreans thin, especially if you’re a woman. A 2009 report by the Ministry of Health found that two in ten Korean women suffered from undernourishment. Just to put that into perspective, that’s roughly the same rate of undernourishment as Sudan, according to a 2009 UN study. Unlike Sudan, however, female undernourishment in Korea is largely voluntary. Young women suffer especially high rates of undernourishment—a 2012 report in the Korea Times noted that extreme dieting was common among Korean women; advertisers and media promote body images some consider unrealistic, and society encourages young women to lose weight. Korea Times cited a report by the National Youth Policy Institute which warned that 70% of young Korean women have been on a diet, in contrast to countries such as China, Japan, and the United States, where the rates were just 48%, 46% and 33%, respectively. Citing a report by Y.H. Khang and S.C. Yun, Harvard University’s Tess Hellgren noted statistically significant rises in “underweight” BMIs in women aged 20 to 39, a remarkable trend given global trends towards greater obesity.

Written by Robert Koehler

As competition in the dating market heats up, many men are opting out

The Dong-A Ilbo, one of Korea’s largest newspapers, recently relayed the tale of Mr. Lee, a shy 28-year-old man who, at first glance, seems to be living the dream. He’s got three girlfriends— one is an English instructor at a kindergarten, one is a graduate student studying art, and the other works at a foreign financial firm. All of them look like models. He takes them out to clubs, art galleries, and film sets, depending on what each one is into.

There’s just one catch—none of these girlfriends are real. They are online personalities Lee met through a cyber dating service. The women at the service look and act like real girlfriends whose moods change depending on the date location and topic of conversation. The service uses lesser known actors for its video services. And business is good— about 40,000 users signed up within just 10 days of the service’s launch. About 80% of them are men in their 20s and 30s.

At Afreeca, a popular personal Internet TV site, there are men spending hundreds of thousands of won for online women to call out their online nicknames on their video channels. These “BJs” (broadcasting jockeys) earn their keep by getting men to send them “star balloons,” online tokens that cost 70 won each. The most popular women can earn millions of won a night. One of the best has 50 million viewers.

The smartphone has also made online “dating” easier. Korean app developers have come up with many adroit messaging apps with which the lonely can connect with members of the opposite sex, real or not. Apps like Doki Doki Postbox, Whispering Sailors, and Fav Talk bill themselves as online pen pal services connecting users with similar interests such as K-pop, but in fact, the desperate use these to communicate with multiple members of the opposite sex. This has also led, unfortunately, to the appearance of cyber con artists who make their living financially exploiting lonely men online.

Enter the Herbivores | 초식남

Why is it that more and more men are avoiding real-world relationships with the opposite sex in favor of online relationships?

According to experts, this is connected with the rise in Korea of the chosiknam, or “herbivore man.” The term was first coined about 10 years ago in Japan, where this phenomenon first appeared. Tired of the uber-competitive nature of Japanese society, where men were expected, in the words of Slate’s Alexandra Harney, to “live like characters on Mad Men, chasing secretaries, drinking with the boys, and splurging on watches, golf, and new cars,” the bulk of Japan’s young manhood decided to opt out to pursue their own hobbies and, more importantly, not pursue women. Instead, they found their satisfaction elsewhere, such as anime and pornography. Japan’s political and media establishment was horrified, blaming the trend for Japan’s plummeting birth rates.

It wasn’t long before this trend arrived on Korean shores. As in Japan, Korea’s herbivore men are the product of Korean society’s notorious competitiveness, especially in the dating market, where women value—some argue excessively—a man’s job, education, and family background above all else. Feeling unable or unwilling to play the game, many men are opting out, content to pursue online sources of romantic satisfaction. Some would be unable to perform even if they found themselves with a member of the opposite sex—in 2009, at the start of this phenomenon, a urologist wrote in the Weekly Dong-A magazine that more and more men in their 20s were suffering from sexual dysfunction that presented itself only—oddly enough—-when they were in the presence of a woman.

Korea’s gender imbalance plays a role, too. As of 2010, there were 113.7 men for every 100 women in the 20–24 age bracket. For those aged 25–29, there were 103.8 men for every 100 women, and for those aged 30–34, there were 102.0 men for every 100 women. As if the

dating market weren’t tough enough.

Dried Fish Women | 건어물녀

Women, too, are experiencing romantic—or unromantic, as it were— trends of their own. As more and more women rise to prominence in the workforce, some are abandoning love and marriage all together to focus on their careers. These women are called “dried fish women,” or geoneomulnyeo. Like the herbivore man, it’s a term that came from Japan, where this trend began. Polite, smartly dressed, and good at their jobs, they let themselves go on the weekend, too tired to dress up, clean their home, or go out. Content with a can of beer and some dried fish snacks, the love of their lives is most often their pets. When they’re not sleeping, they can be found watching TV or reading comics. If these women marry, it is often in their late 30s.

Suffice it to say, neither of these trends have helped Korea’s birthrate, which—despite impressive improvements over the last three years—is still one of the lowest in the world. A 2011 poll by international pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly found Korean couples were the least sexually active in the world. With young men and women now swearing one another off, it does not bode well for the future of Korea’s aging society.

Written by Robert Koehler

Korean singles looking for stability

Are you a catch in Korea?

According to a December poll by popular Korean matchmaking service Duo, more single people are looking for mates with stable jobs like civil servants and teachers.

This is probably due to ongoing economic uncertainty.

In the survey conducted with 1,000 unmarried men and women in their 20s and 30s, 13% said their ideal spouse would be a civil servant or public worker. This was the most commonly asked-for profession for nine years running, and was followed by office worker, financial worker, and teacher. There was some differences between the sexes. Men tended to want teachers (13.2%) over civil servants (12.4%), followed by office workers and pharmacists.

The most important factor in choosing a spouse was personality, cited by 63% of men and 55.6% of women. Whether you choose to believe those numbers is a complete different matter.

Due to the financial crisis and global economic downturn, expectations in regards to income have been falling, but with the up-tick in optimism this year, desired incomes have begun to rise again. Women want a man who makes between 30 million and 40 million won a year (27.3%), although many also want men who make between 40 million and 50 million (21.4%). Men, on the other hand, said they were generally unconcerned about the income of their potential wives (37.9%), presumably due to their fixation on personality. A good many, however, did expect their wives to chip into the family coffers to the tune of 30 to 40 million won a year (21.6%).

What about assets? Over half of men and women responded that assets weren’t important. Of those who did think assets were important, 12.2% of men said they wanted potential wives to bring at least 50 million to 70 million won to the table. Women, on the other hand, wanted potential husbands to havebetween 100 and 150 million won (15.9%).

Education proved much more important to women than to men. Nearly 60% of women wanted men with at least four-year degrees, while 42% of men said the education level of potential wives did not matter. No doubt this was also due to the great importance men placed on personality.

Men still preferred slightly younger wives, while women preferred slightly older husbands. Interestingly, the desired age gap grew with older men, but decreased with older women. Overall, men wanted wives 2.17 years younger than themselves, while women wanted men 2.07 years older than themselves.

Finally, in the all-important height category, men wanted wives in the 160–165cm height range, while women wanted men in the 175–180cm height range.

 

Poll suggests perceptions of Korea differ according to region

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange conducted a poll of 3,600 individuals in nine countries—China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, Brazil, France, the United Kingdom, and Russia—to determine what the people of the world think of when they think of “Korea.”

The results were rather interesting, and differed wildly according to region.

In Western Europe, the first image to come to mind most often was “the Korean War.” According to the ministry, this was most likely due to recent inter-Korean issues like the nuclear issue coming to the fore both within Korea and internationally.

Outside of Western Europe, however, popular imagery focused on cultural items. Overall, the most commonly cited images were, in order from top to bottom, Korean food, Korean dramas, Korean pop music, and electronic goods. In the case of Asia, Korean dramas and Korean pop music topped the list, while in the Americas, Korean food and electronic goods took top billing. Non-Asian regions showed relatively more interest in Korean traditional culture than Asian regions.

The factors behind the popularity of Korean Wave cultural content differed from region to region, too. In Asia, respondents were likely to cite the “attractive appearance” of Korean singers and actors. In the Americas and Europe, respondents were likely to cite the “new and unique” character of Korean culture.

According to the Ministry of Culture, this is because in many cases, Asian respondents want to look like their favorite Korean Wave stars. In non-Asian regions, where respondents largely looked significantly different from Koreans, more emphasis was placed on the quality of cultural content.

The responses set off alarms, too. Less that 50% of respondents felt Korean Wave cultural content possessed “professionalism” or “outstanding product quality.” In fact, the percentage of respondent who felt that way dropped from the time the first poll was given last year.

Some 66% of respondents felt the Korean Wave would fold within four years, a 6-point jump from the previous poll. Most worrying, a full 41% of Japanese respondents felt the KoreanWave was already done. The Japanese have been one of the biggest consumers of Korean cultural content over the years.

As for the doubts as to the sustainability of the Korean Wave, respondents typically cited the uniformity of cultural content and excessive commercialization. Europeans, meanwhile, expressed difficulty in understanding Korean culture.

Korean actors, directors make their presence felt on the global stage in a big way

Is Korean talent finally getting its Hollywood due?

As actress Bae Doo-na garners praise for her starring role as Sonmi-451 in the Wachowskis’ blockbuster “Cloud Atlas,” journalists ask if 2013 might be Korea’s breakout year in Hollywood. With actors Bae and Lee Byung-hun starring in Hollywood productions this year and a troika of Korean directors set to release major US productions, some speculate that a Korean film industry ambition to expand its global reach and an American film industry desperate for new ideas and talent may be coming together in unprecedented ways.

Bae Doo-na leading the way

With the dramatic growth of the local Korean film industry since the 1990s and the subsequent development of the so-called “Korean Wave,” observers in both Korea and overseas have long wondered when Korean film talent would cross over to Hollywood. And to be sure, talent has been been crossing over, although this exchange was initially confined to American production companies purchasing the rights to remake successful Korean films using Western directors and actors. Attempts by Korean actors to break through—for instance, Rain’s starring role in the Wachowskis’ “Ninja Assassin” (2009) and Jang Dong-gun’s “The Warrior’s Way” (2010)—met with limited critical and commercial success.

Veteran actress Bae Doo-na’s “Cloud Atlas,” however, may mark a turning point. Bae not only stars as part of an ensemble cast that includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon and Jim Sturgess, but she excels in doing so—Entertainment Weekly even called her performance the most impressive of the bunch. American broadcaster CBS, in fact, included Bae on a list of high-profile snubs (Samantha Barks and Amanda Seyfried in “Les Miserables”; Emily Blunt in “Looper”; Judi Dench in “Skyfall” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, etc.) for Best Supporting Actress in this year’s Oscars.

Bae isn’t the only one going Hollywood, though. Lee Byung-hun—who turned in an impressive performance as Storm Shadow in the 2009 blockbuster “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”— will be reprising his role in the upcoming sequal “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” set for release in the United States in March. His co-star, Bruce Willis, was apparently impressed with his work, and so brought Lee into “RED 2,” to be released this summer.

Not to be forgotten, Korean actress Park Si-yeon and veteran actor Ahn Sung-ki will be joining Clive Owen and Morgan Freeman for the medieval epic “The Last Knights,” which began filming on Nov 5 of last year.

Korean directors go global

It’s not just actors getting the nod. Korean directors—who for years have been garnering critical acclaim for stylish and tightly directed works like “Oldboy” and “Mother”—are finally getting their chance to work their directorial magic on overseas shores. This year, three Korean directors will be releasing foreign films. Perhaps the most anticipated is “Stoker,” a Gothic horror directed by Korean horror master Park Chan-wook and produced by Ridley Scott and Michael Costigan. Based on a screenplay written by Prison Break star Wentworth Miller, the film—set to debut on March 1—stars Australian actresses Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman and British actor Matthew Goode. It’s Park’s first English-language film.

Park is joined overseas by his fellow Korean New Wave director Bong Joon-ho, director of “The Host” and “Mother.” Bong’s latest offering, “Snowpiercer,” is a post-apocalyptic thriller based on the French graphic novel “Le Transperceneige.” Telling the tale of the last survivors of a future Ice Age who travel the world in a perpetually moving train, the Korean— American—French co-production features an ensemble cast that includes Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris and Korea’s very own Song Kang-ho.

Finally, there’s Kim Ji-woon, he of “A Tale of Two Sisters,” “The Good, the Bad, the Weird” and “I Saw the Devil.” For his US debut, Kim brings us former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and “Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville in the action drama “The Last Stand.” Now, one might view any film that stars Schwarzenegger and Knoxville with a degree of skepticism, but it’s also got Harry Dean Stanton, about whom Roger Ebert once said, “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.” It’s got Peter Stormare, too, about whom this writer would apply the same rule.

Why now? What’s behind this Korean invasion?

For starters, the Korean and American film industries may be looking towards one another to satisfy their respective needs. According to the Korean daily Hanguk Gyeongje, “It’s a product of Hollywood, which due to an exhaustion of material is looking in Asia for talent and stories, and the challenge of Korean filmakers, who are looking to expand the horizons of Korean cinema, coming together.”

Perhaps the most important factor, however, has been the growing global respect for Korean fi lm. Talking to the Hanguk Ilbo, Bae Doo-na said the flood of Korean actors and directors heading to Hollywood was “due to people having greater interest in and watching more Korean films since they’ve grown well-known globally.” In an interview with the Chosun Ilbo, Bae revealed that when she asked the Wachowskis how they even knew who she was, they responded with a list of Korean and Japanese films they’d seen her in. Even the poster for Park’s “Stoker”—which proudly reads “From the director of Oldboy”—reveals this growing awareness of Korean film.

Written by Robert Koehler