Filming for Korean Morning TV show

We were on a morning TV show here called Morning Wide. In this video we show you the segment and talk about the experience of filming, when we’d only been back in Korea for a few days. Filming can be pretty difficult and we had to travel as well. But one of the reasons why we wanted to do it was because the audience of this show tends to be older people and we want to show the positives of being multicultural. If we can change someone’s mind who previously had a negative opinion, than it’s worth it.

It also happened to be Seollal, Lunar New Year, so the show tied in with their New Year programming. Hugh’s parents got Yul this very cute hanbok. I’m so grateful they did because in the rush of travelling from Australia to Korea I had not thought about getting him one for Seollal. It was great to see him in this style of one.

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There’s been some typhoon-y weather lately but no damage around here. This comic idea is actually from Sara from SeoulSarang, who imagined Hugh saying “Typhoon is coming” in a Game of Thrones way. I decided the logical conclusion was to go put a rain jacket on.

I really hope they do it right…

I’ve talked before about de-sexualisation of Asian men in Western media. We shouldn’t have to wait until a live-action version of Mulan to have a romantic lead who is Asian and it would be even more disturbing if they cast a white actor in the role of Shang. I really hope this movie isn’t white-washed.

Hugh told me about how growing up in Korea that he could watch many Korean and Asian movies where the lead males are Asian. Of course it’s normal for the romantic lead to be a Korean man because it’s in Korea. But slowly as he grew up, there is a gradual realisation that there is never an Asian man as a romantic lead in Hollywood movies. He has talked about the assumption Asian men then have that other women have no interest in them, because they are never shown as a love interest in the media. Western women definitely absorb what movies are telling them as well. I’ve had many well meaning friends say things like, “Your husband is good looking for an Asian guy”.

In fact, there are so many negative stereotypes about them that in movies they are usually only represented as the silly side-kick, the bad guys, or very occasionally an action hero in action movies. Hugh has talked about the impact Western media can have on self esteem and confidence, especially when interacting with people in other countries. If you’d like him to talk about it more, we could make a video discussing this topic. Let us know!

The live-action version of Mulan won’t be out for several years so I hope that by then that there is better representation of Asian men in movies. I really like Mulan, so I hope they do it well. Hugh has already said that if they cast white actors, he won’t be seeing it.

Because Australian internet is so bad, it’s hard to upload many videos while we are here. We won’t be able to upload much until we go back to Korea in 2 weeks.

We all love Harry Potter in my family. I really love fantasy novels (as does my father and one of my brothers), but Harry Potter was what got our whole family obsessed. Well, except my mother who watched the movies but didn’t read the books I think. On the way to the cinema to see one of the last movies as a family, my mother had asked, “Okay, what do I need to know?” to which my smartarse sister replied, “Well you see, Harry… he is a wizard…” haha.

We read the books over the years, waiting for the next one to come out. They fueled many animated discussions in our family and sometimes fights, especially when a new book had just been released and we only had 1 copy and we got sneaky in our ways to steal the book from each other. There were definitely times where someone was reading at a table, and got up to get a cup of tea, and came back to find the book vanished.

So Harry Potter is not only a great series, but is something that holds many memories for me. Mr Gwon had just casually watched the movies and is not as invested in the Harry Potter world as I am. So it was time for him to be sorted. Now I’m not sure it was such a good idea…

Late night Les Misérables singing. Obviously I’m really good at remembering lyrics.

And here is the vlog of the day on our vlogging channel.

Or “80’s Dance Party Llama” judging from that picture. R and L is the same letter in Korean so it’s not surprising that he made that mistake. It’s just hilarious that he wrote it as two separate words and made it sound like a space-age llama.

Continuing on from the theme of yesterday about TV shows I really like and grew up with but he is less familiar with – he is probably more familiar with Futurama than The Simpsons and has watched a lot of it with me.

Okay I had my “man boob” mistake but now it’s his turn with thinking the new Hunger Games movie was called “The Monkey King”. He thought there would be a lot of monkeys in it…

I’m sorry there wasn’t a comic yesterday, I was busy finishing a painting for a commission. I posted it on the social media here.

We’ve seen this happen before right? He will be really disdainful about something I like, sometimes even making fun of me. And then at some point he realises actually it’s really good! Then he starts liking it even more than me.

He was really dismissive when I was watching ‘WIN: Who is next?’ last year. For those that don’t know, that TV show was YG Entertainment trainees put into 2 teams to compete against each other. The winning team became WINNER, the group who have just debuted. Bobby was in Team B which is the team that didn’t win. So I’ve liked him since then, but Mr Gwon has suddenly become a fan since he has been on ‘Show Me the Money’. He didn’t care about him at first because like others, he just dismissed him as an Kpop idol who can’t rap…….but he was wrong.

He listens to his songs from Show Me the Money over and over again. Like so much that I’m kinda sick of them now.

He was referencing a quote in the book and movie ‘The Fault in Our Stars’. I dragged him to see it because I’ve been waiting so long to see it (Korea got it so late) but of course he loved it!

Now onto terrible Korean pasta. We’ve been a little bit spoilt. We found an awesome pizza and pasta place in Jinju, so after going there a few times we forgot how bad most Italian food in Korea is. We didn’t have time to go across town to the good Italian place so we tried a new place. Most Italian food places in Korea have crappy Koreanized pasta – but some are not too bad. I can stomach it as long as it’s pasta. This was horrendous though! I posted a few photos on Instagram for those that want to get an idea about what I mean. I asked for some salt and pepper to try and make the plastic pasta taste better and the waitress was very confused and finally brought me a 2 plates with a pile of cooking salt and pepper on them. We both felt sick afterwards.  Mr Gwon even said that he could easily make better pasta than this place and he isn’t even very good at cooking. Not only was it terrible because it was nothing like Italian food at all, but whatever type of fusion they were trying to achieve failed miserably. We laughed through our tears. I actually really hope that place shuts down so other people aren’t subjected to that. It’s likely to simply because businesses spring up quickly in Korea with not much planning or research and shut down again quickly. Nothing is very long term.

Actually I was very homesick today, which is why there wasn’t a comic earlier. That pasta just made me feel a lot worse. The Fault in Our Stars didn’t make me feel worse though! Of course it made me feel sad, but it made me feel better about things.