메밀꽃 필 무렵

한국학 학생 Korean Studies student

[memilkkot]

would anyone be interested if i scanned and shared some old north korean literature magazines?

[memilkkot]

once i'm less busy with school i'll try to scan at least the poetry magazines

[memilkkot]

would anyone be interested if i scanned and shared some old north korean literature magazines?

[memilkkot]

north korea, circa 1959 | photos recovered by martin wagner

[aja-aja-hanja]

if you'd like to support me, check out my ko-fi!

character story:

If you plant 禾 화 rice seedlings, excellent rice will 乃 내 therefore come-out/stand-out from the plants.

Study vocab here!

Vocab:

優秀 우수* excellence superior

superior x excellent

俊秀 준수* superior refined

excellent x excelllent

秀才 수재 brilliant person

excellent x talent

*can add 하다 to make a verb form

**can add 이다 to make an adjective form

[punkrorschach]

This kicks ass. Disabled activists are protesting for their rights in South Korea by literally just riding the train during rush hour.

[memilkkot]

If you wanna see how awful the rhetoric about this is, the official seoul metro twitter referred to these protests as a "propaganda war"

[thekimchibear]

Royally Pissed (Korean Slang)

A recent slang term that’s swept the internet is 킹받다. 

It was started by a Twitch streamer / webtoon artist called 침책맨. Since it’s internet slang, it’s not a BAD word, but is definitely not a formal term. 

킹받다 – Extremely frustrating / Pissed off. 

This comes from the meme of replacing the first syllable of a word with 킹 (King) and 갓 (God) aka “the highest form of something”. 

인정 (Acknowledge / Agree ) > 킹정 

합리적 의심 (Reasonable Suspicion) > 킹리적 갓심 

EXAMPLE: “티모 너무 잘 해서 킹받네” – “This Teemo is too good, I’m tilted”

[coinywords]

“In the letter, I have sealed my own obituary.”

—

Yi Sang: Selected Works

Editor: Don Mee Choi

Translator: Jack Jung etc.

[lifeinpoetry]

it’s bad for the lungs to drink the black air. in the walls of the lungs sits soot. all night long my body aches. there’s so much of it, this night. i carry it out, i bring it in, and then i forget, and then it’s morning. even in the lungs the morning switches on.

— Yi Sang, from “Morning,” published in Guernica, tr. Michael Joseph Walsh & Jae Kim

[forlackofotherwords]

“MORNING The midnight air ruins my lungs. Soot settles in. I make a fuss about my pain all night. Night comes and goes endlessly. Day breaks, when I can no longer remember what has been happening. Like a lamp inside my lungs, morning is turned on. I look around to see if anything has disappeared overnight. My habit has returned. I have ripped out many pages from my shamefully extravagant book. The early light carefully writes itself on my book’s exhausted conclusion. As if the noseless night will never return. February 1936”

— Yi Sang: Selected Works (translated by Jack Jung)

[mortalpractice]

“I secretly enter a room with a mirror. To free myself from the mirror. But with its gloomy face the I in the mirror definitely enters at the same time. The I in the mirror conveys to me that it’s sorry. Because of him it’s as if I’ve become a prison and because of me he too is a prison and trembles.”

— Yi Sang (이상), trans. Walter K. Lew, from “Poem No. XV” of “Crow’s-Eye View,” The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry

[coinywords]

“My body gets heavier because of my imprisoned suicide.”

—

Yi Sang: Selected Works

Edited by Don Mee Choi

[aavaradeactivated-deactivated20]

what is everyone currently reading🤨🤨

[memilkkot]

if i could go back in time i would beat lee hyoseok's ass for publishing bunnyeo. not every bad porn you write needs to be published in joongang

[liu-anhuaming]

just a little something i made last night

[commajade]

more info on snowdrop. as i said there is no possible way to do this story properly unless it's a very different genre and it's about the victims of the neocolonial rok government during the 70s and 80s and that is NOT going to happen.

[epiphany333]

Please educate yourself about Snowdrop's controversy, because it IS in fact far right-wing propaganda

I want to clarify, this isn't in any way an attempt to hate on Jisoo or BP or any of the actors. And this isn't knetz exaggerating to hate on them, this is actually a hurtful show related to the kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, and even murder of Korean students in the 80s protesting for their rights and demanding democracy under the pretext of them being "North Korean spies", a way for the government of the time to justify the horrors bestowed upon innocent civilians. I'm going to ask you all to NOT support or watch Snowdrop because it features historical revisionism by presenting characters based on people that were involved in the torture and murder of real-life students in a sympathetic light.

Jisoo's father in the drama was the real-life director of the torture agency that operated the horrible acts above mentioned, but in the drama he's presented as a man who is more fit to be a lit teacher who likes books and just happens to be involved in a messy situation, when in reality, this man was deeply involved in the crimes against the human rights perpetrated by his organization. It is not okay to present a far right-wing, authoritarian figure in a humanizing way, and divorce him from the crimes he was actively involved in, by making his character a soft lit boy who is uncomfortable with the agency he ran, when in reality he has never even apologized or shown any remorse for what he did. It would be like portraying Hitler in a human light, by showing his love for animals and making him feel icky about the holocaust but unable to do anything about it, do you see how messed up it is?

These last months, the far right-wing has been rising in Korea, pushing a revisionist agenda in which all the horrible things done against civilians fighting for their rights in the 80s are justified by twisting what happened as something justified. The government can't just ban a show based on its content, because it is operating as a democracy where artistic freedom is granted. They have never prohibited a show since the fall of the authoritarian regime that caused the atrocities that are being glossed over in the show. Korean citizens are trying to file complaints for it to not air, but it is important to not give it visibility internationally. Int-fans don't know about the painful history behind this show, and could easily believe its propagandistic content. It could seriously warp the idea the international community has about the dictatorship that took place at the time. it is an authoritarian regime apologist show.

I'll leave a thread written by a Korean person who was raised by victims of the 80s regime. it dates from months back, but their standing on the matter hasn't changed after watching the premiere and they have updated the thread. They explain the history the show is based on better than I could.

https://twitter.com/gatamchun/status/1471205914174967808

[memilkkot]

There are so many people outside Korea defending this drama because their favs star in it. It is disgusting propaganda and historical revisionism. Instead of supporting it by giving it publicity and watching it consider reading up on the student democratization movement, on the Gwangju uprising and on Korean democratization.

[memilkkot]

spent my afternoon and evening going through our first lesson of chinese characters. writing these is really hard! keeping the proportions and symmetry is more difficult than it seems. had enough energy to clean my room and change bedsheets so i'm very satisfied