Daegu, Korea.

“The huge salaries and bonuses, we are told, are essential if we are to prevent this tiny percentage of selfish, hoarding arseholes from moving overseas. Imagine if they flew to Singapore and started selfishly hoarding things over there instead. Drained of their expertise and reassuring presence, how would Britain cope? Within days we’d be walking on all fours and devouring our offspring for food.

I don’t want to panic you, but that’s the reality. Never mind weeping over the size of their bonuses: we should be dropping to our knees and giving them blowjobs, tearfully imploring them to remain seated each time we come up for air. Treble their wages. Form a human ring around Britain’s airports to prevent them from leaving. And for God’s sake don’t ask them to share anything. That kind of talk merely angers them.”

I shall shed no tears when the American newspaper industry finally implodes on itself in a cloud of outdated business models and a desperately obsequious drive to let people know that every time a Republican calls Obama a Kenyan socialist terrorist sympathizer, we must remember that Al Gore and Michael Moore are fat and so both sides do it.

Just let The Guardian and Al-jazeera and the BBC cover American politics and breaking news.  They already do a much better job of it.

Not to mention it’s barely a cut above prostitution in terms of how it exploits women.

That said, the piece does a good job of putting the entirety of the “Korean Wave” in a political context (e.g., it’s highly subsidized by the South Korean government itself as a form of regional “soft-power”).

(Also, don’t miss Korean Robert Smith at 24:00.)

“It’s dangerous to be an artist. That’s what we talk about in Naked Lunch — and it’s dangerous on many different levels. Politically it can be dangerous, but psychologically it can be quite dangerous too. You make yourself very vulnerable. You put yourself out there and of course you open yourself up to criticism and attack. And so you have to be strong if you’re going to make movies. But once you accept that movies can come from anywhere, that a movie can come from a dream or a conversation or a newspaper article, or it could be based on real people, you can expand that and say it could come from a work of art that someone has already done. It could be a play, it could be a novel, it could be a remake of another movie, and of course I’ve done all those things, and in each case the satisfaction comes from making a good movie; not from where the movie comes from. I don’t have to question it if I find the story interesting.”

Winter is not a season you associate with a port and beach town like Busan, but it was still relatively active for the Lunar New Year.

These eels weren’t too happy about the situation.

One of the bonuses about South Korea is that you’re never far from some sort of hot food.  Here’s, it’s twigim, the generic term for deep-fried snacks (similar to what the Japanese would call tempura).  It’s just about the least healthy type of Korean food in a cuisine that’s relatively low in fat.

There’s plenty of fresh (often still living) seafood, everywhere.  This is Busan, of course.

Yeah, I’m the kind of guy who could watch stuff like this all day.

Busan Museum of Art.

Korea usually does a pretty good job with museums.  Seoul has a ton of them, and the mixture of public space and potential educational value makes them a popular government investment outside the capital as well.  Also, many of them are free.  What’s not to like?

The permanent collection leans towards 20th century painters, with a few galleries focused solely on landscapes of Busan.  There was a cool exhibition of contemporary Korean artists as well, very heavy on the video art.  (The legacy of Nam June Paik?)

Also, the Okin art collective is pretty rad.

Finally, a warning about Busan cabbies: If you’re a foreigner they will try and rip you off.  I was staying at Haeundae Beach, and the ride to the BMA is pretty short.  So my older cabbie took it upon himself to try and do a few loops around it with the meter turned off.  Don’t hesitate to call these guys on their bullshit (“Mee-ta ga ob-so-yo?  Way-o?”) or pull the “foreigner is getting angry” card.

Haeundae Beach, Busan.

Even in the middle of winter, without being able to go swimming in the ocean and enjoying the sight of throngs of tourists from within and without Korea flocking to the raw fish restaurants, the odeng stalls (Busan has the best odeng, and they sell most of it to Japan! Shock!), and, ahem, the many incredibly drunk people of all nationalities, there’s a vibe here that’s more welcoming than in the rest of the country.

Of course, Busan is a port city, and ports have always been where worlds collide.

An older Korean friend of mine claimed that Busanites are the smartest Koreans.  I quickly responded that I’d been told Seoulites were.  He went on to say that even before liberation from Japan in 1945, international shipping and radio waves from Japan had made Busanites the most open to foreigners, and the most internationally minded.  (Mind you, resentment against Japan remains high to this day, but attitudes towards the more modern and open world view that Japan represented is a bit different, albeit complicated.)

Going back centuries, Busan was the first Korean city that allowed for foreigners to trade with the natives.  And while they were hardly embraced, it was a far cry from the attitudes towards foreigners throughout the rest of the peninsula (overland trade with China to the north being a notable exception).

Pretentious navel gazing on my part?  Probably.  But if I didn’t enjoy my current job in Daegu so much I’d definitely be looking to find work here, in South Korea’s most international of cities.

Also, parts of it are gorgeous.

I’m packing for a trip tomorrow to Busan.  No real plan beyond wanting to see a current exhibit at the Busan Museum of Art and maybe checking out one of the city’s two casinos (no regular Hold’em game, wtf?).

It’s the year of the dragon, so if you’re turning 12, 24, 36, 48, etc. this year, dream big.