One of the most talked-about movies of last year’s Busan International Film Festival, featuring a tragic, real-life story about a Samsung employee, is getting a theater release next month. The film, funded solely by donations and crowd funding from more than 7,000 individuals, recounts the life of Hwang Yu-mi, a factory worker who died of leukemia at age 23 in 2007 after working for four years at a Samsung memory chip factory. Titled “Another Promise” (previously “Another Family,” equivalent to

Film Jan. 23, 2014

The memoir “12 Years a Slave” was published in 1853, a year after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”Now Solomon Northup’s personal narrative is a bestseller ― 161 years after it first came out ― through a tie-in to the celebrated movie version of his memoir. And it is likely to get a big boost from the many Oscar nominations the film has received.The antebellum drama is one of several films this year that have given their namesake books a second life.For years the slim volume

Books Jan. 23, 2014

In this reflection on six great alcoholic American writers ― John Cheever, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Berryman and Tennessee Williams ― Olivia Laing emerges as a kind of British Susan Orlean, combining nonfiction narrative, travel writing, literary criticism and a touch of memoir in a personable style. While it’s rare to quote blurbs in a book review (with good reason), Hilary Mantel, of “Wolf Hall” fame, says something on the book’s back cover that is worth repe

Books Jan. 23, 2014

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of MindBy Scott Stossel(Alfred A. Knopf)“No sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused as anxiety does, which never lets him escape, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work nor at play, neither by day nor by night,” the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed. Many of you will know exactly what he means. (Trust me, I do: I’m a freelancer.) Some 40 million Americans suffer from the gnawing unease of

Books Jan. 23, 2014

In November, a man in his 50s committed suicide in his house in Incheon. He was a “goose father,” one of about 200,000 Korean dads who send their families abroad for their kids’ education, while remaining in Korea to work.The electrical engineer had sent his kids and wife to the U.S. in 2009. But shortly after they left, the man lost his job. He lived off unemployment benefits and savings, sending most of it to his family in the U.S. His wife worked at a restaurant there to support the children.

National Jan. 22, 2014

Filmmaker Park Moon-chil was alone with his mother in a car in 2006 when she broke the shocking news to him: His unmarried sister was pregnant.“My mother said something like, ‘It looks like you are going to be an uncle soon,’” Park told The Korea Herald during an interview in Seoul on Tuesday. “I literally did not understand at first. I thought she was talking about a relative having a baby or something.”Park’s latest documentary, “My Place,” is a deeply personal account of his own family, espec

Film Jan. 22, 2014

Renowned poet Ko Un has been selected as the 2014 winner of the Golden Wreath, one of the most prestigious awards for poets given by Struga Poetry Evenings, an international poetry festival held annually in Struga, Republic of Macedonia.The festival was first founded in 1962, and the Golden Wreath international award was established in 1966. The first recipient was Soviet poet Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky (1932-1994), who is considered one of the pioneers of poetry in the former Soviet Union.

Books Jan. 21, 2014

“Frozen,” a 3-D animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, topped the Korean box office chart this weekend, beating the local megahit court drama “The Attorney.”“The Attorney,” inspired by the early years of the late President Roh Moo-hyun, had remained No. 1 on the local chart for four consecutive weeks until Jan. 16. Last weekend, it became the ninth Korean movie and 10th overall to draw more than 10 million spectators in Korea.Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s f

Film Jan. 20, 2014

 DanceA scene from “Full Moon” (LG Arts Center)“Full Moon” by Pina Bausch: It’s been almost five years since Germany’s legendary choreographer Pina Bausch died, but her works are still as popular as ever. Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal is returning to Seoul this year with her 2006 work “Vollmond (Full Moon).” The troupe last performed in Korea in 2010. The dance is well-known for using a giant rock and deep water that take up a large part of the stage, while its themes include the celebration of

Performance Jan. 17, 2014

The latest character to be fed into the Coen brothers’ metaphorical wood chipper is a 1960s Greenwich Village folk singer. Yet their bleak, bittersweet comedy of frustration, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” is surprisingly empathetic toward its embattled title character. To a rare degree, the Coens encourage our emotional identification with Llewyn. He’s a gifted, pompous, sensitive, arrogant, sympathetic cad, played without a false note by Oscar Isaac.Sure, Llewyn endures an avalanche of abuse, most of

Performance Jan. 17, 2014

An original reel of a film from the 1960s dealing with the history of Korean pop music has been discovered, the Korean Film Archive announced on Wednesday.Titled “A Half Century of Korean Pop Songs,” the flick is said to chronicle Korea’s popular music history from the 1920s to the late 1960s. The archive will hold a special screening of the film for music specialists in March and show it to the public in May.  Directed by Kim Gwang-soo in 1968, the documentary film features color footage of som

Film Jan. 16, 2014

Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi spend their days in Santa Monica, sitting side by side at a shared desk in identical chairs in their backyard office, wearing headphones, working at their laptops. Across a cool green expanse sits their Spanish-style house, hidden behind a vine-covered wall.“I really loved books about secret worlds, like ‘The Secret Garden’ and the ‘Bridge to Terabithia,’” says Riggs, whose young adult novel “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” was a bestseller in 2011. “St

Books Jan. 16, 2014

For decades, finding Spanish-language books in the U.S. was like tilting at windmills.Booksellers stocked few titles in the language of Cervantes, and those they carried came at a hefty premium. A paperback copy of “Don Quijote” in the original Spanish could easily cost triple the price of a deluxe hard-bound translation in English ― if it could be found at all.Retailers blamed the expense of importing books printed in Spain and Latin America. And U.S. publishers lost faith in the market after b

Books Jan. 16, 2014

Prominent actor Hwang Jung-min is back with his latest romance “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a typical Korean tearjerker in many ways. There is a gangster, a terminal illness and a betrayal. And tears. A lot of them. “When a Man Loves a Woman” is produced by the same producers of last year’s successful noir “New World,” which earned Hwang the best actor prize at the Blue Dragon Awards for his performance as Jung Chung, the powerful, charismatic gangster. In spite of his impressive acting, the new

Film Jan. 15, 2014

“The Attorney,” a local film inspired by the early years of late President Roh Moo-hyun, drew more than 9 million viewers in the 25 days after its release, its distributor NEW announced. It has topped the local box office chart for four consecutive weeks, and is expected to break the 10 million viewer mark this weekend. According to the Korean Film Council, the directorial debut by webtoon artist Yang Woo-seok was watched by 9.26 million people as of Sunday, far outnumbering “The Suspect” and “T

Film Jan. 13, 2014