Metrosexual Koreans were hogging for New Cosmetics

High-end foreign cosmetics brand SK-II recently introduced a skincare line for men in Korea, its first such foray in any country. The decision came after liquid essence for men, which hit local stores last October and costs W160,000 (US$1=1,120) a bottle, saw a month's worth of inventory sell out in just four days.

"Korea accounts for 40 percent of the world's high-end cosmetics market for men, and Korean men are often considered in the industry as test beds for new products," a sales associate of SK-II said.

Men are quickly forming the main ranks of cosmetics shoppers, with the domestic market for men's beauty products growing 15 percent each year. Industry watchers expect the market will surpass W1 trillion this year.



/Yonhap

In Korea, concealers, products that minimize pores and whitening products have seen higher sales growth than basic skincare products such as lotions or skin conditioners among men. Meanwhile, domestic cosmetics brand Amore Pacific opened a make-up store for men in the trendy Hongik University area in northern Seoul and it attracts 300 customers a day on average.

The same holds true for apparel. Sales of women's clothing at Lotte Department Store nationwide fell 5 percent in January compared to a year earlier, but increased 7 percent over the same period for men's clothing. Shinsegae Department Store became the first retailer in the industry to open a section last year specializing only in men's fashion and sales have already risen 450 percent since it opened.

Domestic retailers say Korean men in their 20s and 30s have grown up watching popular men's dance groups since the late 1990s and are used to spending money on personal grooming. For example, many online shopping sites saw a surge in sales of men's undergarments that make the wearer look more muscular. Sales of body shaping or padded underwear rose 170 percent in February from one year earlier, according to popular online shopping mall 11st.

Have you ever heard about North Korean Rock Star "Ree"

If there was a punk rocker in North Korea, what would he be like? What would he sing about and where would he perform? Oh Do-ham and Park Jun-chul, members of rock band Pablov, turned these questions into an art show and invited 10 local artists to impersonate their versions of a fictitious rock star named Rhee Sung-wung at the Art Sonje Center in Jongno, central Seoul.

“North Korean Punk Rocker Rhee Sung-wung” is a combination of a concert and an art exhibition. It showcases a stage for the participating bands as installation pieces. On three nights — March 23, March 27 and April 13 — the musicians will perform.



Oh and Park won the Center’s Open Call 2012, an annual competition that allows the finalist to direct a show. “We have never curated an exhibition before. We were drunk and couldn’t stop talking about a rock musician in North Korea,” said Oh, “We wanted to give him the coolest and the most heroic name ever, thus the name Rhee Sung-wung.” Despite their flimsy description, two performances at the press preview on Thursday spoke volumes.

Ryu Ji-won of blues duo the Alligators sang “Fell in Love on Guard Duty” on a piano. As Rhee, Ryu lamented about the memory of making love to a girl for the first time at a mandatory military camp. “I asked a defector who helped us through this project, and he confessed that a lot of adolescents hook up during guard duty at the camp,” Ryu explained. Rhyming about erections and guard duty, this mellow version of Rhee garnered enthusiastic applause as he bounced across the piano on his behind and continued to bounce off the stage.



Dan Pyeong-son, a solo rocker, roared “The Day I Become Human” in a black “hanbok,” or Korean traditional attire for mourning. “You-know-who passed away and so I thought I would hold a funeral at the opening tomorrow wearing this,” mumbled the nonchalant musician with long hair.

Other pieces or performances tell interesting narratives as well. Bam Sun Pirates, a punk duo, will perform in a jailhouse with objects such as “Kim Jong-il’s car sex” video or t-shirts ridiculing the deceased former leader displayed as prosecutors’ exhibits. “These musicians believe Rhee would end up behind bars for singing songs and making props ridiculing the ‘Dear Leader,’” Park explained. The story brings to mind the recent incident when Park Jeong-keun, a photographer, was arrested for retweeting or reposting messages of the communist regime’s Twitter account.

All bands recorded their numbers for the show, and Oh and Park plan to smuggle the CDs across the Yalu River come June when the water level is high and the security lax. “We actually wanted to release the CDs this month, but the North tightened up security after the death (of Kim Jong-il).” They will get help from a defector who has been selling bootleg DVDs of South Korean dramas across the Tumen River.

RESTORING CLASSICS

Moviegoers today are accustomed to glossy, high-definition images that indiscriminately reveal slight skin blemishes of actors known for flawless complexions. Bass-heavy, surround-sound audio has also become the norm.

The cinematic experience is more than about whether the plotline is appealing. The technical aspects of the audiovisuals often determine the overall aesthetics, of how one perceives the content. Sometimes the film itself is deliberately produced to capture the nostalgia of the past. Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist” (2011) pays direct homage to early 20th-century silent movies while Quentin Tarantino’s signature visual style displays an adoration of old, dust-streaked images. In 2008, Ryu Seung-wan experimented with old-fashioned dubbing for his retro action flick “Dachimawa Lee.”

There is something quaintly charming about decades-old movies. They are, moreover, an important part of cultural heritage.

“According to FIAF’s (International Federation of Film Archive) code of ethics, archives are responsible for showing movies to people and to protect and pass on this heritage to the next generation — in the best possible representation of the works of their original creators,” said Kim Bong-young, head of the Korean Film Archive’s (KOFA) Film Conservation Center in Sangam-dong, northwestern Seoul.

“Flawless visuals are great, but I believe there is also something beautiful about tainted, moldy films,” said Kim Kiho, an archivist at the center. Here, fans can enjoy old films on the big screen or at personal screening stations. But before introducing works available for viewing, The Korea Times took a peek into the art of film restoration.

Art of conservation

Damaged films are like patients awaiting treatment at the hospital, or in this case the conservation lab.

A tour of the venue revealed rooms filled with various machines, from a super-sized vacuum cleaner that eliminates dust to manually operated appliances resembling sewing machines where archivists mend broken perforations (the hole-punched edge along celluloid film).

Restoration and digitization — converting analogue film to digital format — are complex procedures: removing foreign material from the film, stabilizing shakiness or reducing scratches, noise and dust, as well as altering the color.

“We archivists must make a lot of tricky decisions. A lot of early films were made under poor lighting conditions, where night scenes were shot during the day and such. Often more than two types film were patched up for a given movie and thus different portions of the film are tarnished to varying degrees over time,” said Kim Kiho.

Color grading, or color correction as it’s more commonly known, requires weighing various factors. Sometimes the film’s original cinematographers may be available for consultation, but they may want the archivist to change the color according to how they may have wanted it to look like rather than how it originally was.



“It takes a lot of trial and error, and digital restoration of old movies is still relatively new in Korea. We hope people can value the importance of old movies as a cultural heritage and that they can take interest in watching them, in the spirit of enjoying a more diverse audiovisual experience,” said Kim.

After undergoing careful restoration, films are catalogued and stored at temperature- and humidity-controlled, safe-lock chambers. Thousands of round tin cans storing films (about five are devoted to a single full-length feature film) occupy the space.

Most films are kept at 15 degrees Celsius while original copies and/or material requiring special attention are stored at 5 degrees Celsius.

There is a separate room designated for “exclusive material” — North Korean pictures. Those wanting access to these films must file a written request, which, if approved, can be seen at KOFA’s viewing room.

Importance of heritage

KOFA, a state-supported organization, restores and digitizes some 30 films per year. It is also devoted to collecting lost or rare Korean films scattered overseas. Most notably, Shin Sang-ok’s “Bound by Chastity Rules” (1962) was found in Taiwan several years ago while Kim Ki-young’s “The Boxes of Death” (1955) found its way back home from the United States last year.

“Chastity Rules” proved to be a successful first-time venture for local archivists in 2006-2007, ever since the concept of digital film restoration was introduced here in the mid-1990s. A partially restored copy of the movie premiered at the Busan Film Festival in 2006 before being invited to the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.



Internationally renowned auteur Martin Scorsese also helped put classic Korean films on the map. He was on the frontline of introducing Kim Ki-young’s 1960 erotic thriller “The Housemaid” to the world via Cannes in 2008. The “Taxi Driver” director helped KOFA receive funding from the World Cinema Fund (WCF) for the complex digital restoration process, even though Korea was not a supported member nation.

“That this intensely, even passionately claustrophobic film is known only to the most devoted film lovers in the West is one of the great accidents of film history,” says Scorsese, who ranks “The Housemaid” among the top three films of all time. In 2009, Shin’s 1961 “Prince Yeonsan” was also screened at the prestigious French festival.

“Korean films have a well-established reputation in the world cinema scene and interest in contemporary Korean works has encouraged film experts and fans to look back at older Korean movies. I hope to see more classic Korean films at film festivals,” Julietta Sichel, former program director of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, previously told The Korea Times.

Posters and brochures of local movies are also kept at KOFA. The oldest poster that is stored there after undergoing deoxidation is for the 1932 “A Ferry Boat That Has No Owner” by Lee Gyu-hwan.

Films from the 1940s are being screened at KOFA’s Cinematheque through March 23, including Choi In-kyu’s “Angels on the Streets” (1941) today; An Seok-young’s “Volunteer” (1941) on March 20; Lee Byung-il’s “Spring of Korean Peninsula” (1941) on March 21; Ko Jeon-yeom’s “Suicide Squad of the Watchtower” (1943) on March 22; and Park Gi-chae’s “Straits of Joseon” (1943) on March 23. All screenings are at 2 p.m.

It also runs an online video-on-demand service that allows access to 400 early Korean films, 36 animations and 37 independent works. This month, 11 films by Kim Ki-young, including his iconic “Housemaid,” are available for free. Visit www.kmdb.or.kr/vod (Korean only). Several Korean cultural centers overseas such as the one in New York offer this Internet service.

In May, KOFA plans on hosting a film festival of restored films at its Cinematheque. The same month, some 70 early English-subtitled Korean movies will become available on video-sharing site YouTube. For more information, visit www.koreafilm.or.kr (Korean and English).

Korean indie films

Local independent cinema has not seen many blockbuster hits like 2009’s “Old Partner” lately but smaller films have slowly yet surely been receiving wider exposure. This month sees a particularly strong lineup of low-budget movies in theaters across the country, including international film fest-verified pictures.

Indie flick enthusiasts and moviegoers looking for alternatives to mainstream fare can appreciate this genre, not only in local arthouses, but also at larger venues.

Multiplex giant CGV has been operating Movie Collage, a program that devotes a number of screens to low-budget works, and is hosting an independent film showcase through March 31. Select CGV theaters around the country housing the project will feature premieres as well as past works.




“We feel that an increasing number of moviegoers want more diversity, and Movie Collage does just this. We lose about 3 billion won a year running the program but we see it as a long-term investment. And last year we had a record number of over 3 billion moviegoers visiting Movie Collage theaters,” said CGV’s head of PR Yi Sang-kyu.

“Choked,” which was invited to the Berlin and Miami International Film Festivals recently, opened last week at CGV Daehangno, under a section focusing on works by Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) graduates.

The film, also to be screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival later this month, is the first feature by Kim Joong-hyun. A young man’s life is turned upside down when creditors summon him over his missing mother’s debt. The work has been acclaimed for making incisive observations of contemporary Korean society while exuding a sense of compassion.



“Romance Joe,” a collection of intertwined stories involving a suicidal assistant director, has also been released in select theaters around the country.

The film is considered one of the most anticipated of the season among critics, as it already won a Citizens’ Choice Award at the Busan Festival and competed earlier this year in Rotterdam, which is considered a rite of passage of sorts for promising new directors. It marks the feature debut of Lee Kwang-kuk, the longtime assistant to minimal-realist auteur Hong Sang-soo. The Rotterdam Festival organizers described Lee as playing “the storytelling game with unmistakable pleasure in this elegantly shot first feature.”

Fans will be seeing more films that have been invited to Rotterdam including most notably “Stateless Things,” the second picture by Kim Kyung-mook to be shown at the Dutch event.



The film is about two outsiders — a North Korean refugee and a gay prostitute — trying to find their niche. Audience members will be able to converse with the filmmaker himself and lead cast members following the 7:40 p.m. screening on Friday at Sangsang Madang Cinema in Hongdae and the 7:20 p.m. screening on Saturday at Indieplus in Sinsa-dong.

On Thursday, moviegoers can see the re-opening of multiple award-winning auteur Jeon Soo-il’s stark drama “Pink,” about a traumatized woman finding refuge at an obscure port city bar. The film, which had premiered last October, explores the nature of implosive violence and psychosexuality. As typical of Jeon’s works, it features long shots that ebb and flow like a series of still life photographs, accompanied by lilting music by rocker Kang San-eh.

The CGV Movie Collage Korean Independent Film Festival also presents past works that have come to define the local genre, such as Yang Ik-june’s “Breathless” and last year’s decidedly adult animation “King of Pigs.”

Abovementioned films are/will be shown at arthouses and Movie Collage theaters around the country including CGV Apgujeong, Gangbyeon, Sangam, Guro and Daehangno in Seoul; CGV Dong (East) Suwon, Ori and Icheon in Gyeonggi Province; and CGV Seomyeon in Busan.

Visit www.cgv.co.kr for more information.

Source: The Korea Times

Envoy builds on multiculturalism

Paraguayan envoy here has lent a helping hand to Korea becoming a multicultural country by donating national cultural items from his South American homeland for display at Seoul’s only museum dedicated to promoting multiculturalism.

Paraguayan Ambassador to Korea Ceferino Valdez donated numerous Paraguayan cultural items, including nanduti, to the eponymous Multiculture Museum, Wednesday.

Whether “melting pot” or “salad bowl,” Korea has been, over the past decade or so, opening up to the world. In existence for about three years, the Multiculture Museum opened in Bulgwang-dong last year.

“I think it is very important what he is doing with this museum, teaching the Korean public about multiculturalism, about many people from all over the world,” Valdez said.

The museum is the brainchild of Kim Yoon-tae, the museum’s director. He saw a need for a center that would help raise awareness of the peoples and cultures around the world in Korea.

As Kim saw it, people from dozens of countries are coming here to live, work and study, and but the public lacked sufficient understanding of the larger world.

The museum builds what Kim and Valdez believe is needed understanding through culture multicultural classes for children at the museum and by sending “multicultural emissaries,” usually foreign students here, to local schools to present tutorials, and by having special luncheons.

“I met Mr. Kim through Paraguyan students because he hired them to raise awareness about Paraguayan culture among the Korean public,” Valdez said at the museum when he donated the Paraguayan cultural items. “Then I visited the museum with my wife.”

The Guampa and bombilla were donated by the Valdez. A Guampa is a traditional drinking vessel made from cow horns and handcrafted silver om which to drink yerba mate through the straw-like bombilla. Yerba mate is a delicious caffeinated tea wildly enjoyed in Paraguay.

The museum will now also have Paraguayan currency to display, donated by Veronica Lopez, student in Korea and sister of Adriana. Valdez also donated a pancho, children’s books and a statue of kurupi, an important figure in Guarani mythology well known for his his enormous prehensile male appendage.

“The most important thing is that he is teaching children here about cultures of people around the world,” Valdez said.

Nanduti is a traditional Paraguayan embroidered lacework. The examples of Nanduti that the museum will display were donated by Adriana Lopez, 2nd secretary at the Paraguayan Embassy. The name means “spider web” in Guarani, the official, indigenous language of Paraguay. Multicultural classes are available for children daily at the museum.

Today a class on Japanese culture is offered. Tuesday French, Wednesday Nigerian Thursday Colombia and Friday Polish. Class subject are subject to change. For more information about the classes and the museum, check out www.multiculturemuseum.com.

Korean make-up go ga-ga over the world

First there were TV dramas and K-pop, and now Korean makeup style is becoming a global fad. Already the makeup styles of Korean actresses and young pop groups influence fashions in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, where the Korean Wave first started, but recently American and European women, too, have been learning the techniques on YouTube, which features hundreds of videos promising to reveal Korean "beauty secrets."

◆ What Is the Appeal?

Beauty expert Lee Kyung-sun says the videos started being uploaded from all over the world about three years ago. In the early stages it was mostly Malaysian, Filipino, Thai and Taiwanese women who posted videos on how to make up like Kim Yu-na, Song Hye-kyo and Kara, but now the trend is expanding to the U.S. and Europe.

Another beauty consultant said, "What foreigners are especially interested is Korean women's natural-looking skin and one-point technique that highlights just one part of the face. They want to emulate the Korean style of light makeup that leaves the skin looking natural, rather than slathering thick makeup all over the face."


◆ From Test Market to Trend Leader

U.S. channel WNBC's program "Extra" reported in September last year that Korean makeup techniques were embraced by many Hollywood stars. Now, large cosmetics companies in the U.S. and Europe are recognizing Korea as a leader in beauty trends, a shift from the country's traditional image as a test market. A spokesman of cosmetics brand MAC said, "Until two or three years ago, Korea was simply regarded as a country where we test new products before the official launch as it has a huge demand for cosmetics goods, but now things have changed and we think that we should read trends in Korea first."

MAC's Studio Fix Fluid Foundation N18 and Behave Yourself Lipstick were launched after studying the reaction from Korean women. Beauty consultant Pi Hyun-jeong said, "Wherever in the world I go, I get questions about the secrets of Korean women's natural-looking beauty. I think Korea can look to the position of a global beauty trend leader like Paris and New York."

Domestic cosmetics brands have been riding the wave of this popularity, holding promotional events and makeup demonstrations in China, Japan and several Southeast Asian regions, while planning to launch or expand new branches in U.S. and Europe.

Korean Stars Boost Korea brand at overseas

The Korean Wave has proven to be of tremendous help for exporters in finding new overseas markets and boosting shipments. Companies who hire popular stars like girl group Kara and actor Jang Keun-suk as their models are seeing their overseas sales rise dramatically.

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry surveyed 300 companies in the service and manufacturing industries and found that 51.9 percent said their sales increased due to the Korean Wave, it said on Wednesday. Some 83 percent believed the spread of the Korean Wave has boosted the image of Korea and its products.



In the service industry, 87 percent of culture-related businesses were found to have benefited, followed by travel agencies (86 percent) and retailers (75 percent).

In manufacturing, food (45 percent), electronics (43 percent), cosmetics (36 percent), automobiles (28 percent) and clothing (23 percent) were found to have benefited strongly from the positive impact of the Korean Wave in overseas markets.

Food company Daesang hired girl group Kara in August last year to advertise its beverage drinking Hongcho, a kind of fermented apple vinegar. Sales of the product in Japan rose from a mere W1.4 billion in 2010 to W50 billion (US$1=W1,119) last year, a 35-fold increase.

Lotte Liquor turned to actor Jang Keun-suk to model for its traditional rice wine or makgeolli, and sales totaled 36 million bottles last year, twice the amount it had originally targeted.

The KCCI said, "The Korean Wave is not only helping our businesses enter foreign markets but also boosting domestic consumption by attracting foreign tourists. We need to expand the benefits to encompass fashion, medical services and other areas."