Korean TV

In the week that I've been here so far, one of the things that has amazed me, left me dumbfounded, entertained me, made me laugh and made me cringe, is Korean television. It has everything that I could want to see, as well as nothing that I want to see. I've learned that Koreans seem to have an unhealthy appitite for western 80s action flicks. The "ajummas" staying at home can't seem to get enough soap operas in their day. Sports and wrestling are every bit as popular as back at home. Video games are way more popular than back at home, and Korea pop music is just a terrible rip-off of American pop music... which is just terrible to begin with.

Since the only entertainment that I have in my flat is TV and a handful of books, I've watched a fair bit of TV in the past week. I've been happy to find that Korean TV has relatively large repotaire of English programs to see. First off, there's CNN Asia. It's not much different from CNN America, except that it contains more news from Asia; generally catering to the American/British/Australian business man in . The "local" weather on CNN covers everything from Tel Aviv to Tokyo, and the news girl is a good looking chick white/East Indian/Asian from I-have-no-idea-where. At least she looks "ethnic", whatever that means. If I change the channel a few stations, I come to the Discovery Channel. This is something I was pleasantly surprised to find. Nothing like watching a couple of rhinos mate to help me get over my jet lag. As far as I can remember, those are the only two 100% English channels.

Just because the other channels aren't fully English, does not mean that I'm out of luck as far as English programs are concerned. There are at least four channels...I think, devoted to (mostly) western action movies. The only things that separate these channels from your average western "guy channel" is that everything is sub-titled in Korean and that there is a random German or Bruce Lee action movie thown in the mix. I can say that I've had my fill of Jean Claude Van Dam fighting his way out of a Hong Kong kumate arena. When I get sick of American action films, there's always a half-dozen Asian action movie channels to pick from. That means if I also tire of watching a Chinese Kung-Fu film over-dubbed in English or Japanese with Korean sub-titles, I can watch a Chinese Kung-Fu film over-dubbed in Korean with no sub-titles instead. Yipee!

Even more exciting than action moves (or not), are soap operas! Have you ever seen "The Young and the Restless" in Korean? I have! If I decide that I'm not interested in a western soap (and how could I not be!), I have plently of native-Korean soap operas to make my in which to make my choice from. They are more entertaining than a western soap in my opinion. The action is much more overdramatic, everyone sits on their heated floors instead of in a chair, women act bashful, while men act less bashful then the women do, and the characters do "adult things" with everyone watching! Even though I have no idea what anyone is talking about in these shows, the entertainment value is quite high.

Aside from dramatic soap operas, one thing that Asians are known for is their fighting skills. The Chinese have their Kung Fu, the Japanese have their Sumo (which is often featured on the sports channels), and the Koreans have their Tae Kwon Do. Aside from Sumo, none of those martial arts are featured on K-TV. Instead, there is boxing, Muy Thai kickboxing, ultimate fighing and... professional wrestling. At any given time during the day, there is usually at least two wrestling shows on. More often than not, the featured promotions are NWA/TNA and the WWE. Before I left for Korea, I figured that I'd get to see some Japanese or Korean pro wrestling on TV. Nope. They seem to be crazy for the same company that produced such stars as "Hulk Hogan", "Stone Cold Steve Austin" and "The Rock". Why is that? Does everyone here want to become an American redneck? I don't think so. It's that everyone here is crazy about everything English. It is was popular in an English-speaking nation within the past 20 years (ie. Jean Claude Dam), then it is popular here. I noticed this strange phenomenon today when I was getting my bank account set up. I notice a Korean guy all decked out in athetic gear with "England" written all over it. Figuring that this guy must've spend some time in England, I said hello. A blank stare ensued... Right-o.

Like wrestling, Koreas seem to like their sports just as much as anyone from an English country does. So far, soccer and basketball seem to be the prodominant sports. Every major Korean city has a professional soccer, basketball and baseball team. Since I don't think that the baseball season has begun yet, it doesn't share the television time that socer and basketball are taking up. I've watched a couple basketball games on TV, and as far as I could tell, they were every bit as good as the NBA. They even had a good number of black people playing, just like in America! Maybe the NBA will be seeing a few more Korean players soon. Anyway, being a bit curious as to what some of my students though of sports, I asked some of them what they liked. Interestingly, nobody played baseball. Most played either one of, or a combination of, soccer, basketball and volleyball. One kid plays badminton, while a couple like ping pong. Interesting.

What's also interesting, but perhaps not surprising, is how popular video games are here. I'm not even talking about the massive amount of "World of Warcraft", "Online Kart Racing" and "Maple Story" players there are in the PC Room that I'm currently in. I'm referring to TV stations devoted to video games, which there are no less than four of. Three of these don't even have video game TV shows. They just show online video games being played on TV. I'm under the impression that these are actually professional video games players having their "famous" game sessions displayed for all of Korea to see, but I could be just making that all up. As well, there is at least one other video game channel where they just talk about games and show a lot of video game advertizements and competitions. A lot of the other channels also show video game shows a fair bit. One of the most interesting one is called "Fun, Fun English Time". It's actually an educational English-learning show, disguised as a video game show. It's hilarious. They show a part of a game where there is English dialogue (today was Final Fantasy X-2 for the Playstation 2, which almost all of my students have), and then go over the grammar in it. There are two hosts, one male and the other female. The male plays the "smart" person, who explains all of the concepts in English. The female plays the "clueless" person, who pretends to not understand the English and asks all sorts of silly questions in Korean about both the grammar and the storyline in the game. The guy then explains both the story and the grammar, changing the subject of the show from the game into an English lesson; with examples not related at all to video games. It's a great ploy, and I hope to use it with my kids often.

One other area of pop culture that's shown on TV here is music. Like in the west, MTV rules. Here, it's MTV Korea. I don't have too much to say here, other than that all Korean pop is just a rip-off of American pop. The girls dress either fashionable, or like Britney Spears, and the guys all dress fashionable, or like Slim Shady. It seems that people dress a lot better here than at home. There are a lot more suits on the streets. As well, EVERY song has at least one or two English lines in the main part of their chorus'. Usually it's a bunch of Korean, followed by "I love you", followed by more Korean. Very creative (insert sarcasm)...

Gotta love that Korean televison...