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.

If you go down in the woods today ... you'd better go in disguise

There are many things you might reasonably expect to see while walking a small dog around a modest park in the middle of a huge city. Definitely other small dogs and large dogs even - with civic-minded owners bagging up generous handfuls of poop.  Noisy toddlers, hi-tech prams, the occasional roller-blader or powered skateboarder. However a forest populated by small groups of elfin anime characters would almost certainly make you look twice ... and then some. Indeed, to the uninitiated, a visit to Yangjae Citizen's Forest might leave you thinking you have just entered The Twilight Zone...

Beware of the forest, don't stray from the path

Yangjae Citizen's Forest is a small parcel of land in the south of Seoul hemmed in by a major trunk road, a large flower market and two looming high-rise offices of Hyundai and Kia. Frankly it is very easy to overlook, the forest being altogether too small to attract significant numbers of people. 

A girl in elaborate anime costume poses for photographs on a bridge into Yangjae Citizen's Forest

However with a few grassy areas, some curious looking monuments, lots of leafy tree cover and a stream with bridges, it serves perfectly as an unlikely outdoor photographic studio where cosplayers can pay homage to their favourite comic hero, or perhaps their partner's favourite comic crush. For uninformed dog-walkers a cosplayer is a person who dresses up as a character from an comic series, movie, cartoon or video game. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-cosplay-2013-10

As always, Korean cosplayers take their obsessions very seriously.
For anime characters there is an ill-defined grey zone between
fandom, fetish and role-play

The background to all of this is Korea's insatiable fascination with anime comics and movies. A quick glimpse around the subway carriage in the morning shows an approx equal split between commuters playing video games, watching TV and those reading a (sometimes too) graphic novel of one genre or another. 

A model waits patiently while photographers assemble cameras, lights, reflectors

While some suggest that anime is helping to support Japan through a time of declining economic influence ...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/09/07/reference/anime-makes-japan-superpower/#.WaJmkigjGUk

... others claim that the home-grown Korean animation is finally ready to step into the limelight and define its own place in the market after many years of producing work outsourced from the Japanese animation studios;

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/jan/22/south-korean-animation-king-pigs

http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=112698

Either way, the market for anime is reportedly worth US$ 14bn in Japan and more than twice that in China, so competition is fierce.

http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/buzz-about-multibillion-dollar-anime-biz

Consumer interest in Korea is such that Seoul and the southern port city of Busan take it in turns to alternately hold anime comic conventions at least every two months - usually every month during the summer.  

Busan Comic World

These conventions give fans a chance to show show off new costumes and pose as their alter ego in a highly charged, media intense, bustling setting.  By comparison the Citizen's Forest at Yangjae allows them to quietly mellow out and enjoy the fun in a quiet, relaxing, semi-secluded environment.

Say "Kimchi"

Note the axes - as much work goes into the props as the costumes

It's not unusual to see a group of 3 or more brightly wigged and costumed cosplayers surrounded by a crew of 5 or more taking photos or video, holding lights, reflectors or flash umbrellas, fixing props such as swords and axes and making fine adjustments to make-up, headgear and capes. All in all you could be forgiven for thinking you and your mutt had blindly wandered onto a film rehearsal studio.

Just a final note of interest; while the western fan base of animated material and comic conventions is (stereo-typically at least) nerdy young men - exemplified by Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory: Flash, Flash, Flash and Flash

By comparison the Asian fan base is, if anything, overwhelmingly female.



 PS: Inspirational leaders through the ages

47BC: I came, I saw, I conquered

2017 AD: I came, I scored, I squandered, bigly