Korean Folktale Book Review Corner: Faithful Magpies

One of the schools where I work has a set of 50 English-language storybook versions of Korean folktales. I’m planning to review the whole series. I will evaluate these books based on their titles, plot quality, the morals/lessons they offer, the art, and possibly their value as tools in teaching English. I’m going in order, from book one to book fifty.

Review 08: Faithful Magpies

Korean Folktale Book Review Corner: The Giant in the Big Pot

One of the schools where I work has a set of 50 English-language storybook versions of Korean folktales. I’m planning to review the whole series. I will evaluate these books based on their titles, plot quality, the morals/lessons they offer, the art, and possibly their value as tools in teaching English. I’m going in order, from book one to book fifty.

Review 06: The Giant in the Big Pot

K-Pop Fried Chicken Face-Off: T-Ara and Nene Chicken

Okay, apparently every girl group in Korea (and one or two boy bands) is currently promoting a different fried chicken chain. In the interests of learning more about Korea’s musical and culinary cultures, I’ve taken it upon myself to investigate each chicken/girl group pairing.

K-Pop Fried Chicken Face-Off 01: T-Ara and Nene Chicken

Here’s the ad:

Birdhouse

Bike racks.

Suncheon, eager as always to live up to its title as Korea’s Ecological Capital, is apparently setting up a public bicycle sharing system.

Korean Folktale Book Review Corner: The Strongest Son-In-Law

One of the schools where I work has a set of 50 English-language storybook versions of Korean folktales. I’m planning to review the whole series. I will evaluate these books based on their titles, plot quality, the morals/lessons they offer, the art, and possibly their value as tools in teaching English. I’m going in order, from book one to book fifty.

Review 05: The Strongest Son-In-Law

Guess what this is…

Korean Folktale Book Review Corner: The Red Fan and the Blue Fan

One of the schools where I work has a set of 50 English-language storybook versions of Korean folktales. I’m planning to review the whole series. I will evaluate these books based on their titles, plot quality, the morals/lessons they offer, the art, and possibly their value as tools in teaching English. I’m going in order, from book one to book fifty.

Review 04: The Red Fan and the Blue Fan
Title: Not a very goood title. Fans are just fundamentally not very interesting things. 3/10
Plot: Okay, so this is more rich greedy man/poor good man nonsense. Poor guy has a bad crop, and borrows a bag of barley (half of which happens to be sand) for the winter from the rich guy. The poor man meets a strange old dude who asks to stay at the poor guy’s house. When the poor guy wakes up, the old man is gone, but he left behind the titular red and blue fans. The poor guy feels bad about it, but it’s really hot so he borrows the fans when he goes out to collect firewood. When he fans himself with the red fan, his nose grows longer, and when he fans himself with the blue on his nose get shorter again.
The greedy man thinks this is his ticket to fabulous riches somehow, and trades his house to the poor man in exchange for the two fans. He proceeds to fan himself with the red fan, causing his nose to get so long it reaches heaven. The King of Heaven is unimpressed and ties the greedy guy’s nose to a post up in heaven. The greedy guy fans himself with the blue fan to shrink his nose, but this just pulls him up towards heaven. The King of Heaven has his goons untie the guy’s nose and he falls to a terrible death. The poor guy then distributes the rich guy’s stash of rice to the other villagers.
Overall pretty boring and predictable, but I enjoyed the King of Heaven’s sadistic streak. 4/10
Moral: The King of Heaven is an asshole. Also, uh, don’t trade your house for a pair of fans. 6/10

Art: The venial sin of repeating illustrations, first seen in Three Nyangs Everyday, continues in this volume. Otherwise, the art is decent. The squalor of the poor man’s home is well conveyed, and the barley is convincingly rendered. There is an admirable attention to detail when the rich guy has his nose tied to the post in heaven, and individual nose hairs are depicted. 7/10
Pedagogic Value: Kind of limited. Does teach the important difference between barley and sand, I suppose. 4/10

Overall this story covered the same uninteresting ground as The Golden Ax and the Silver Ax, but substituting dishonesty for greed, and axes for fans. Hopefully there aren’t too many more of these in the series.

Teamwork.

Friends/coworkers Julie and Limsoo get to work on hacking up some pork.

The Pleasures of Air Travel.

So I flew from Ottawa to Incheon yesterday via Chicago and Tokyo, topped it off with a five hour bus ride to Suncheon. Some highlights:

• Skymall. Since the 1978 ‘Airline Deregulation Act’ (PL 95-504) mandated that all air travel to, from and within the United States be “frustrating and occasionally degrading” (look it up), the Skymall catalog was created so that there would be one single redeeming feature of flying on an American airline.
• All Nippon Airlines braised freshwater eel – I think this was the first time I actually enjoyed airplane food. I thought it was good by the standards of regular food, not just airplane food.
• Security in Tokyo didn’t make me take off my shoes.
• Asiana gave me a meal on a two-hour flight from Tokyo to Incheon. Airline of the year for a reason. Seriously, is there a North American airline that will do that? Sure they might sell you half of a sub for $8, but that doesn’t count. Also, one of the on-board music channels only had Bruce Springsteen.
• I didn’t catch the swine flu.*

*probably.