Hansel and Gretel (2007)

I have to start off by admitting to not watching a lot of Korean produced media... this actually might be the first one I've watched, so that's where I'm coming from.

So the story takes its main elements from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, but some of the details are kind of twisted around. The main character is a guy with a sick mother and a pregnant girlfriend. He's on the road to visit his mother in the hospital when he has a fight with his girlfriend on the phone and ends up flipping his car over the side of the road into the forest. When he wakes up it's night-time and he has pretty bad cuts on his head, a strange girl also discovers him and leads him back to her house where he can rest for the night. When he gets to the house in the woods (called the house of happy children or something) he meets a very weird family consisting of a mother, a father, and three children. They all seem creepily happy, but there's something a little bit off. The parents show subtle signs of great anxiety bordering on fear, and the children seem to be almost acting out what they feel a happy family should be like. Another weird thing about this place is that his requests to be lead out of a mysteriously confusing forest are always pushed aside or ignored. Then one day the parents 'go out' for the day and never come back. A different couple is found walking through the woods, are brought back to the house, and seem to eerily fill the place the parents did. The guy, who they now refer to as uncle, watches in horror as all of this happens. As he wanders around the house and interacts with the kids a little more, he begins to uncover some disturbing secrets, confirming that these kids aren't at all what they seem to be, and neither is the place he's stuck in. The kids in turn also seem to grow more and more attached to him, making the possibility of his ever escaping them seem slimmer by the day. Will he ever find his way out!?

It's supposed to be a horror, but it is more suspenseful than anything else. There are some deviations from the original story. The main character is some 20-something guy instead of the children, and it is he that gets lost in the forest, not they. In fact it is the children and only the children who seem to be able to find their way around the forest, everyone else get's lost and always ends up back at the house. Also, there is no witch in the traditional sense. There is magic which is being manipulated, but it's not by any old woman. Breadcrumbs are used though, and there is some abuse. All in all it was actually pretty well done and is worth the watch.

I actually watched this whole thing on YouTube, it might be amongst the suggested videos listed with the trailer.

 

The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi

I enjoyed this book. I was in the book store one day and it caught my eye so I flipped through it, and I'm glad I did. 

It's about a little girl who comes from Korea and moved to North America. She goes to school and doesn't want to tell the class her name because it is different. She says she doesn't have a name, so her classmates make a name jar for her and put in names that she can use. Then she gets a letter from her grandmother who is still in Korea saying how much she loves her and in the letter was a seal with her name on it. After getting this she is once again proud of her name and goes back to school and tells her class mates her real name and what it means (I apologize if I got some of the details mixed up it was a while back that I read it). This book was a tear jerker for me. I'm not Korean, nor have I had major problem with my name (though people often mispronounce it when reading it), but the struggle for the acceptance of one's self and one's own difference in comparison to others is something we all go through, and this story successfully displays that struggle and overcoming that struggle in a simple way. I think its a good way to get children to understand that though they are different, they will be accepted by someone, and opens them up to other cultures at the same time. Worth the read.

The Legend of Chun Hyang by Clamp

This manga is based off of an old Korean folk tale about a girl who stands up against the corrupt leaders of the villages she goes to, kind of like a Zorro idea.

It's only one volume long, which kind of sucks. The story has a lot of potential and the characters could definitely been expanded upon, and the ending is somewhat unsatisfying because it ends with the mother hinting at and a possible continuation of the story, one that we'll never know about. Also, Chun Hyang and the guy only went up against two corrupt village leaders, and it was stated in the beginning of the chapter that they would later get married, which was mentioned because she was a peasant and he was some higher up the social scale guy, but that relationship was barely touched upon besides a mild flirtation. The story could continue in so many ways, and should because what they give you is a beginning to a story, an introduction, but it doesn't follow through with the substantial plot it hints at becoming. But then again there are many manga plot lines that drag on and on... so I guess it could be seen as an OK thing that they didn't let that happen...

Overall, a good story, but an unfinished one in my eyes.