Just When You Thought it's All Over ...

Let's face it; some men are naturally gorgeous. They are mouth-watering, perhaps even scrumptious; whether they have just been pulled out of a wrecked car (Connery), pulled through a hedge backwards (Depp) or just simply pulled with Elizabeth Debicki (Hiddleston). 

A moment of rare prescience which we all failed to appreciate in 1964;

Goldfinger apologises to Bond for the caddying shortcomings of his henchman Oddjob -

"Golf is not yet the national game of Korea, eh ?"

Johnny Depp, timeless as Edward Scissorhands in 1990 

2017's The Night Manager: 

Debicki and Hiddleston: "Phwoor" and "Phwoorer" 

Then at the other end of the spectrum are the guys with "the perfect face for radio". Or as a friend put it rather less charitably; "You've all the looks of a tennis ball that's been chewed by yer mutt for the best part of 30 years". Always looking for the silver lining, I interpreted this as his warmest wish that my four-pawed buddy would achieve such privileged longevity.


It has to be said there are very few of us 'tennis balls' in Korea and most of us are indeed foreigners. South Korean men and women are for the most part strikingly good looking, with each generation successively increasing the average height of the population. During the course of a normal business day in Seoul it is not unusual to meet Korean men and women-in-heels who approach 6ft in height, sporting thick, dark hair, flawless skin and very well-toned, slender, athletic physiques. Young South Koreans at least have broken out of the mould of the short, stooped, Asian shopkeeper.

Meanwhile the scarce data which exists suggests that poverty and famine have combined to such a degree that North Koreans have already fallen behind their South Korean cousins by at least 3" in only 65 years since the end of the Korean war. Exactly how much varies according to sources; anything from 3" according to Seoul's Sungkyunkwan University

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17774210

Or 6" according to Christopher Hitchens

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/kim-jong-il-s-regime-is-even-weirder-and-more-despicable-than-you-thought.html

Back to John McCain's 3"

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/short-north-koreans-and-americans/


Whichever is correct, the pursuit of movie-star looks and extended youth are powerfully fueling the economy and the media. In 2018 the Korean beauty market was estimated to be worth US$13bn, a little less than the opening cost of 2 new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Sadly there are no prizes for guessing which of these will rapidly outpace the other, much to the chagrin of the British electricity consumer.

http://www.mintel.com/press-centre/beauty-and-personal-care/a-bright-future-south-korea-ranks-among-the-top-10-beauty-markets-globally

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/11/health/korean-makeup-beauty-health-benefits/index.html


Of course beauty products are no longer aimed exclusively at the female consumer. Anything a woman can do, a man can do better, vanity not excluded. Korean men are now increasingly the target of new product launches; for example 'Boy de Chanel' which selected South Korea for its initial worldwide release.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiffanyleigh/2018/08/27/chanel-debuts-boy-de-chanel-male-makeup-collection/#6c9a4cfee3c5


In this simple move Chanel confers to the Korean men's cosmetic market the same importance as the movie industry would if it held the worldwide premier of the next Bond movie in Seoul. And not surprisingly the soundbites are just as corny as any quip by Roger Moore's 007;

"For Chanel, 

beauty is not a matter of gender; 

it is a matter of style. 

This new range allows men in their beauty routines to 

have the tools necessary to feel better about themselves. 

Moreover, men should be free to use makeup products 

to correct their appearance, 

without calling into question their masculinity." 

So all praise to Chanel for delivering unto us the tools we need to hide the zit under our chin to give us the confidence to travel under the glaring, unforgiving lighting of public transport.

With military service being compulsory in South Korea it is reassuring to know the cosmetics industry can still support with products such as; 

'Dandy Guy 4-Colour Camo Cream'

which is not only 'non-sensitive' but also 'without harsh chemicals'.

"Men have every right to protect their skin" - while they are presumably protecting their country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/korean-men-makeup-cosmetics-mainstream-1.4552761


It is important to note that the current reinvention of Korean masculinity is driven largely by female preference rather than male re-positioning and is not in any way linked to an expression of sexuality. K-Pop, TV and film have become launchpads for a softer, androgynous Korean male image which departs from previous rugged stereotypes.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/2103854/cutting-edge-beauty-male-plastic-surgery-south-korea

Yesterday's boyfriend material: ByungHun Lee as the ultimate assassin ChoBai Han.Rugged machismo with the necessary firepower to (almost) dispatch
Bruce Willis and John Malkovich in 2013's Red 2: "The Best Never Rest"

World famous BTS; with the necessary eyebrows to make your knees tremble.
Guys that nice girls dream of bringing home to meet the parents.Helping to launch a UNICEF youth campaign at the United Nations on 24 Sept;
“No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin colour, your gender identity,
just speak yourself,”

The elephant in the room is always that come the zombie apocalypse, a devastating meteor strike or having to recreate the Normandy landings for every post-Brexit shopping sortie to France, who do you want to watch your back ? Someone who can lock and load a GAU17A machine gun, someone who can jump start an amphibious military landing craft or someone who needs 3 technicians to conceal his concealer ?

Hair today, gone tomorrow
It has been known for more than a decade that metabolised products from recreational drugs can be monitored in London's Thames during the week to back-calculate the number of doses of cocaine and ecstasy used in the capital during the previous weekend.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/european-eels-on-cocaine-polluted-rivers-science-environment-animals/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1502321/River-of-cocaine.html

A similar exercise in Korea would instead show an alarming spike in black hair dye products flushed into the waterways on the last weekend of every month. As each month progresses one can clearly see small, distinguished flecks of grey, silver and white quickly sprouting in all the usual places on one's colleagues; the side burns, around the hair parting, the top of the neck, etc. These are natural signs of experience, wisdom and maturity. However suddenly, on the first Monday of the month, all will vanish completely as colleagues report for work looking 20 years younger than they looked the previous Friday. In some cases they look barely a day older than their own kids in the college graduation photos proudly displayed on their desks. Apart from the appearance of eternal youth, this is partly a response to the rapid increase of 'twilight divorces' and consequently 'second careers'.

In the 12 years to 2013 divorce rates fell by 25% in Korea but  among those married for more than 20 years rates soared 31%, now accounting for one quarter of all divorces. The trigger is typically when the husband reaches retirement age or is retired early. This is when wives have the sudden epiphany that their husband's long working hours were in fact the best feature of their marriage and that to be together all day every day will be insufferable. With recent changes in the law and favourable judgements setting legal precedents wives are now promptly filing for divorce and taking half of everything with them.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-divorce/its-never-too-late-twilight-divorce-in-south-korea-at-record-idUSKCN0T12KV20151112

http://koreabizwire.com/twilight-divorces-and-national-pension-splits-both-on-the-rise/114140

In such a climate it now becomes imperative for each husband to preserve his dashing good looks to minimise the risk of being retired early and indeed, should the worst occur, to trade on his experience to start a 'second career' as a senior consultant in a smaller company, just when you think it's all over. 


http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=252860

Anything but the quiet life.

Newsflash #2: Rodman slams North Korea Nuke Test 'Lies'

Cruising through the crowd at a dizzying 6' 7" (2.01m), the NBA's Good-Boy-Gone-Rotten Rodman normally never needs to actually do anything controversial to get noticed. After all, the spotlight naturally follows him everywhere he goes; whether he's alone, sporting dyed hair, tattoos and facial piercings or with partners bathing in his flamboyant mix of celebrity and notoriety - Madonna and Carmen Electra to name just a few.  However today Rodman eclipsed all previous scurrilous stunts combined by claiming that not only was the media wrong about North Korea's secretive nuclear weapons tests, but that Rodman even blames himself for the entire international crisis.

Rodman sending mixed messages - which until now defy decryption

Rodman 6'7" and Electra 5'3" : "How's the weather up there tonight Dinkums ?" 

Cynics claim that since 2013, Rodman's unsanctioned, self-styled, booze and basketball-fueled train-wreck diplomacy has almost come off the rails during several high-profile visits to the one of the world's most oppressive regimes.  Rodman himself maintains that North Korea's diminutive Kim Jong-Un (5'1") is largely misunderstood, unfairly demonised and is simply doing a difficult job in hard times.  However even those who subscribe to Rodman's rose-tinted views found this week's claims more than a little unlikely. Rodman insisted that September's sensational media reports of NK's fifth nuclear test were wildly inaccurate and instead offered a seemingly innocent explanation.  

"I count Kim as my good friend for life; he's cool and like, I can read the man." explained Rodman, "Sure, back in 2013 I made some mistakes and accidentally shat on his mat a little.  How did I know that confirming our kinship by referring to Kim as my 'brother from another mother' could be taken so seriously ? Seems it was nothing short of heresy to imply that I was an offspring of the Kim dynasty. I mean like, as if, huh ? Anyway, it took a while but we got past that and now Kim and I have been in a good place since then."

Rodman explained that a dramatic 'near miss' during a recent visit gave some warning of the inevitable fall-out to come. "We spent much of the last basketball tour going through some like new techniques, sharing our best moves and stuff. The Koreans were really like getting into it. We also took quite a lot of quality time out deep underground in Kim's very own big-ass mancave. He's got like a lot of stuff fitted out down there but see, it's so deep underground and what with the rocks 'n' stuff, you just can't get no decent tv reception.  I mean back in the day you were happy to like twiddle around with a coat hanger thing to watch Star Trek on some black and white portable stuff but today it's gotta be like super HD or it ain't worth watching, am I right ? "

"So we had no choice; we broke out some of the new smartphones that we'd brought with us and uplinked into Kim's mancave wi-fi. It has got to be the world's coolest hangout; chillin' with the team streaming South Korean K-Pop down into like Kim's own crib. It was a real cool party; endless food, open bar, huge hot tub, karaoke in the sauna, stern-looking chicks wearing starched uniforms while toting guns an' ammo; I mean, what's not to like, huh ?  I'd go back there tomorrow." 

South Korea's party girls - no respectable North Korean mancave is complete without K-Pop

North Korea's party girls - no respectable party leader is complete without armed ballerinas

"And that's when it happened the first time," continued Rodman, "We left Kim's crib to return to the surface to warm up for the day's exhibition match.  We rode the elevator for like hundreds of metres back up to the sports hall and had just started our routine when there was like a massive blast from below.  The elevator doors were blown right out and there was smoke and rock dust and stuff everywhere, you know; it really wasn't cool. Of course the army piled in followed by people in biohazard suits, it was pretty chaotic for a while there and I already had some bad feeling that we were going to be held somehow responsible. However Kim's guys got the situation pretty much under control quite quickly and identified the cause of the blast."

"See, it's known all across Korea that the flaming hot kimchi stuff that they eat everyday is more or less like weapons grade material when stored in large quantities. Pound for pound it's proven to pack an explosive yield ten times higher than uranium or plutonium, which is why every Korean always stores kimchi at very low temperatures in fridges at home. Now see, at room temperature kimchi has to be handled in small quantities, which is why it's always served in those small side dishes at the table. Well anyways Kim's guys told us that one of the new smartphones that we'd left in his crib had set up some kinda 'electro-magnetic resonance' with the entire contents of Kim's massive personal kimchi coldstore. Within just a few minutes the phone, acting like a detonator, had started a chain reaction in the kimchi which then went super critical and blew the whole place sky high like a Bond movie. I mean, I apologised to Kim right there and then in front of everyone. After all we wrecked his crib outright; his manspace was violated, I felt bad for the man. But you know, like I keep telling everyone, Kim is cool, he saw it for what it was, an honest mistake. But this just shows that you gotta handle kimchi with the utmost respect and you gotta be even more careful with that new bad-ass Galaxy Note 007. There's simply no tellin' what those things are capable of."

License to kill: The Galaxy Note 007 -Now standard issue to all agents on Her Majesty's Secret Service and all reputable intelligence services worldwide

When failure is not an option, nobody does it better.
The Galaxy Note 007 - the ultimate 'fireball in your pocket' for discerning agents everywhere.