Review 08: Faithful Magpies

Title/Cover: I’m generally a fan of magpies since they they’re basically crows that made a little more effort with their appearance, but ‘faithful magpies’ don’t really seem like a good basis for a story. On the other hand, the cover does not feature any magpies at all, but instead depicts a man being crushed to death by an enormous constricting snake. Colour me intrigued. 8/10

Plot: Like all action-packed stories, this one begins with a man leaving home to take the civil service exam. On his way, he comes upon a large snake in a tree preparing to devour a nest full of cute baby magpies, and kills the snake with an arrow. That night, just as it is beginning to get dark and he realizes he needs a place to rest, he finds a conveniently placed house deep in the wooded mountains. A lady in a white dress with what appears to be a tail offers him a room and cooks him a meal. Later, the man wakes up to find himself being crushed by a huge snake, who reveals that she is the husband of the snake he killed earlier.
The man insists that helping the magpies was the right thing to do, and the snake offers that “if the bell at the top of the mountain rings three times before dawn”, that would prove that he did the right thing, and he would be forgiven and allowed to live (I don’t see how this would prove anything, but we are dealing with shape-changing snakes that talk, so hey). Since bells at the top of mountains apparently don’t usually ring at night, the man is not optimistic. However, just before dawn breaks, the bell sounds three times, and the snake lets the man go as promised. The man heads to the bell to find that the magpies had rung it by flying head first into it. After burying the birds and reflecting on their sacrifice, the man proceeds to become “the most faithful government worker in the country.”
I feel like the civil service framing device was sort of shoehorned in there because there was no easy way to make this story about filial piety or something.5/10

Moral: Essentially, the magpie parents sacrificed themselves in order to repay the man who saved their children, and in the process left said children alone and defenseless, and they probably ended up being snake-wife’s lunch the next day. I guess if you’re trying to foster a government/corporate culture that encourages employees to neglect their families in favour of other obligations, this is a good message. 5/10

Art: Unremarkable, but serviceable. 5/10

Pedagogic Value: Pretty much this is just simple past tense and some new vocabulary. Some of the other stories in the series emphasized some particular sentence structure, but not so much in this one. “I can’t breathe!” is probably the most useful phrase from the book. 4/10

Pretty lacklustre overall, but I suppose it’s notable for introducing bureaucracy into Korean folklore.

Review 06: The Giant in the Big Pot

Title/Cover: ‘Giant’ suggest danger and destruction, which suggests the the story will be at least slightly entertaining. ‘Big pot’ is suggests cooking, which is neither here nor there. However, the cover shows a boy cooking a man alive (the man is about the same size as the boy, therefore he is probably not a giant), which suggest things will be more than just slightly entertaining, possibly even rather entertaining. 8/10

Plot: When the father of a family of three goes missing in the woods, his son decides to go and look for him. He falls asleep in the forest and a mountain spirit visits him and instructs him to gather “a sack of fleas, a sack of bedbugs, and a sack of needles”, because these will be required to save his father. The boy does as instructed and then wanders some more in the forest. He comes across a big empty house in the woods and goes inside to rest. However, the house belongs to a giant, who has captured a number of people, who he intends to eat, with the boy’s father on the menu for the following morning. The boy procedes to torture the giant with the contents of his sacks, and eventually to get some rest, the giant uses a magic spell to make himself human-sized so he can get inside a large pot (ah, so the man on the cover is the giant!). The boy somehow manages to put a large stone on top of the pot to seal the lid, and lights a fire under it. Once the giant is cooked, everybody lives happily ever after with the giant’s treasure.

I’m happy to finally encounter some full on Brothers Grimm-style nastiness in one of these books. The cooking of the giant is reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel, but the bedbugs/fleas/needles combo makes it significantly better. Sure there are a couple of plot holes, like how the boy lifted a rock his own size onto the pot, and why the giant didn’t cast another spell (I guess magic doesn’t work when you’re boiling?), but I’ll forgive these minor issues. 8/10

Moral: The multiple choice question page in the ‘after reading section at the back of the book gives three options:
a. Be clever and brave when you are in danger.
b. Be careful when you meet a giant.
c. Gather fleas, bedbugs, and needles in case of danger.
These all seem good to me. 7/10

Art: The only thing interesting about the art is the way the giant is depicted. He’s clearly warped and distorted and looks quite different from one page to the next, and it serves to make him look reasonably mean and horrific. I’m inclined to think this was intentional, rather than being a happy accident rather than the illustrator’s lack of giant-drawing skills. 5/10

Pedagogic Value: Along with the rats from the previous installment, this book adds to children’s vocabulary of various types of vermin. Other key vocabulary terms are ‘itchy’ and ‘sack’, although these aren’t used together in the story. 6/10

This is definitely the best of the bunch so far, although frankly that isn’t saying much. I’ve peered into the future, and rest assured, there is more rich, evil man/poor, good man nonsense ahead in this series. Thankfully there’s also some weird and interesting stuff, so it’s not all bad.

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

Here’s the ad:

Advertisement: You Jae-suk (of every TV show in Korea) is a 7-star chef (I guess that’s good?) and the girls of T-Ara ask him a few questions about the chicken, to which he replies “Ne ne”, which is “good good”. Then he answers a giant phone, saying “This is Nene Chicken,” and the girls are surprised since presuably it was too tasty to be delivery fried chicken. They remark that the chicken has the “same crunch” (as what?) but is “deceptively moist”, do a little dance, and we’re out. Verdict: not particularly good, slightly misleading (see below). 4/10

Chicken: Nene’s big selling point is that rather than frying up a whole chicken and cutting it up, they just fry up boneless pieces instead. This is probably a bonus unless you’re planning on making soup stock with the leftovers. It’s both crunchy and moist, but I wouldn’t say deceptively so. In the ad, one of the girls asks if the batter isn’t greasy, and Chef Yoo confirms that it is not. Unfortunately, this is fried chicken, and yes, it’s totally greasy. Verdict: still tasty, despite the misleading advertising. 7/10

Girl Group: T-Ara – 처음 처럼 (Like the First Time)

[note: I'm only going to look at each group's most recent single, since really, you're only as good as your last track - pop is a tough game.] T-Ara is definitely a second-tier act, with one minor success back in the summer and a new album out in the last couple of weeks. From what I can gather, this is one of two singles that T-Ara is currently pushing – the other, Bo Peep Bo Peep is really not worth listening to after the first 30 seconds, so click on that link at your own risk. This one has a decent Sebastien Tellier sound to it, and the melody is pleasant enough. I could do without the rap derailing the song three minutes in, but that’s pretty much a K-Pop prerequisite so I guess I’ll let it slide. Verdict: pretty solid – I’d probably not change the channel if this came on TV, but it’s not like it’s good enough to be my ringtone or anything. 7/10

Overall: the chicken’s pretty good, the girl group is decent, the advertising needs an upgrade.

Review 05: The Strongest Son-In-Law

Title: This seems pretty boring, but at least it doesn’t suggest there will be another poor man/greedy man or honest man/dishonest man scenario. 5/10
Plot: Father Rat and Mother Rat live together with their daughter, who is a nice piece of tail of marriageable age. A young handsome rat visits them one day asks for their daughter’s hand in marriage. The parental rats decide that their daughter is too special for him, and Father Rat goes off to find the strongest husband he can for his daughter.

First, he goes to the sun, reasoning that it is “the strongest in the world” and asks it to marry his daughter. The sun, not wanting to be chained down by some dirty rat of a wife, cleverly suggests that Mr. Cloud is stronger, since he can cover the sun. Upon finding Mr. Cloud, Father Rat is told that Mr. Wind is stronger, since he is capable of driving Mr. Cloud away. Mr. Wind in turn suggests that Mr. Stone Buddha is the strongest, since he cannot be blown away by Mr. Wind. Mr. Stone Buddha is apparently not blown away by the prospect of marrying a rat either, since he gives some flimsy explanation that rats are stronger, because if they dig up the ground, Mr. Stone Buddha can’t stand firmly. Having been tricked by the elements, Father Rat returns home and lets Bachelor Rat marry Daughter Rat.
Actually, I’m being dishonest. The sun, cloud, wind and stone Buddha actually answer honestly that they are not the strongest in the world, rather than misleading Father Rat. This is not particularly interesting. Even with the various natural forces trying to pawn Daughter Rat off on each other, it’s still not all that interesting. 5+2 (for not having a greedy/dishonest man who is punished by a diety for his wickedness) = 7/10
Moral: Don’t try to marry outside of your class/species. 6/10
Art: The art is actually pretty interesting in this one. The character designs are kind of strange and awkward, which is typical for the series, but there’s some mxed media stuff going on, with some of the clothing being actual fabric that’s been partially painted over for shading and highlighting, and some seemingly random blocks of English text used for the roads and other parts of the backgrounds. Mr. Stone Buddha looks pretty good. 7/10
Pedagogic Value: There are a lot of comparatives and superlatives in the book, which are good to know. No particularly interesting vocabulary. 5/10

One thing that troubles me about this story is the role (or lack thereof) of the daughter. She doesn’t speak in the story, and she isn’t mentioned on the character section of the pre-reading page. As the title implies, the goal of Father Rat’s journey seems to be to find himself a son-in-law, rather than to find a husband for his daughter. Now I’m not going to suggest something crazy like letting the daughter have some (any?) input into who is going to become her husband, but can we at least pretend that the wife/husband relationship is more important than the son-in-law/father-in-law relationship?

Anyway, it’s apparently good for stamina (but what isn’t?). Unfortunately applying said stamina will be difficult, since your breath will reek of fermented seal penis.

Cheers!

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.

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

I went to the Jeonnam University fall festival in Gwangju the other day, had some dirty 3,500 won samgyeopsal.¹ I’m pretty sure I had samgyeopsal about twice a week during my first year in Korea, but that’s dropped off to about once every couple of months these days. Fried chicken has also gone from being a dietary staple to basically a nonexistent part of my life.

I feel like losing interest in spectacularly fatty foods is yet another sign that I’m getting old (not necessarily becoming an adult, which is something entirely different) and boring. But at least I’m not getting old, boring and fat.
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¹Uncured barbequed bacon, essentially.

• 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.