Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
“Crash Course in Romance” is about an elite hagwon math tutor who is so popular that mothers line up at all hours to get their children seats at his lectures. By chance, he encounters a former national handball player who gave up her dreams of competing on an international level to care for her niece, who was abandoned by her mother.
The “Green Mothers’ Club” revolves around a group of moms whose lives are spent pushing their young children to academic excess. They spend money they don’t have on after-school hagwons for extra tutoring. And they clique together and take turns turning on whichever mom has been deemed the weakest for that week. Ultimately, the young lives they’re trying to elevate are the ones who suffer.
“I am obsessed with Greece,” said “My Unorthodox Life” star Robert Brotherton. “The food, the vibe, the people – it is a beautiful place to visit and I always come home feeling refreshed, even after a debaucherous August jaunt to Mykonos!”
The hit reality show “Physical: 100” had a ho-hum ending that highlights what could’ve been if the competition were more fair and strategic.
Currently co-starring as Père Renaud opposite Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in the Paramount+ series “1923,” Sebastian Roché – whose credits also include – “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Beowulf,” “We Love You, Sally Carmichael!” – talked to us about his unorthodox upbringing, making his theater debut with Al Pacino and filming “1923” in Montana.
The early episodes of “Payback” held promise for a truly compelling thriller with the always great Lee Sun-kyung in the lead role. Lee plays Eung Yong, an ambitious man with a photographic memory when it comes to numbers. But the storylines get progressively more convoluted as the show progresses.
“Physical: 100” is riding high on the assumption that this athletic reality series is the real-life version of “Squid Game.” But as everyone knows by now, reality is a concept used to sell unscripted shows that are at least partially scripted to tell a certain story. Is this series fun to watch? At times. Is it novel? Not really. Anyone who remembers “American Gladiators” will recognize the cheese factor that drives these programs.
In an unusual cinematic coincidence, two critically acclaimed films about South Korean adoption were released in December depicting different sides of the adoption story. Broker focuses on a teenage girl who leaves her infant at a church’s safe haven baby box, while Return to Seoul tells the story of a French woman who reunites with her birth family just days after arriving in Korea. To better understand how these films speak to real-life adoptees, I talked to Korean academics, human rights experts, and adoptees. My reported piece for MASHABLE.
In Korean folk-lore, 구미호 — which literally translates into nine-tailed foxes — are cunning creatures who live to be about 100. As they age, they grow an extra tail. 구미호 are usually young women who seduce men to eat their livers or hearts. But in the K-drama “Tale of the Nine Tailed,” the alpha fox is Lee Yeon. Once the mountain God of Baekdudaegan, he was kicked out for a variety of reasons that revolved around his love for a human woman named Ah-eum.
At just 19, Jacob Buster’s resume includes playing a vampire on Showtime’s “Let the Right One In” and portraying the high school protagonist searching for his family in “Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out,” which had its premiere recently at the Sundance Film Festival.
답답해. That’s the first feeling that comes to mind when I think of the K-drama “The Interest of Love.” The entire series is about a group of broken people who can’t articulate how they feel and are in a constant state of unhappiness because of this.
The conceit of “May I Help You?” revolves around a young woman who is working as a funeral director. Dong-ju is smart with a sunny disposition, but no one believes that handling dead people is a suitable career for her. But she has been gifted with a special power to talk to the deceased and grant them their final wish.
There’s a lot going on in this second season of “Alchemy of Souls.” The spineless King from the first season returns with a greed for power; the real Queen battles her soul-shifting nemesis; the Crown Prince — who had previously been smitten with Mu-deok — is attracted to Bu-yeon (and rescues a turtle to please her); and Jin Mu — the half brother of Jinyowon’s leader, Jin Ho-gyeong, enforces a reign of terror on everyone, including his sister.
At just 21 years old, actor, singer and content creator La’Ron Hines has won a NAACP Image Award, released a music video for his latest single “Web of Lies,” and has gone viral on TikTok for his “Are You Smarter Than a Preschooler?” videos filmed at his family’s Mississippi daycare center. His latest project is a Snapchat series called “La’Ron In a Million.”
A year ago, Tablo wasn’t sure there would be another Epik High album. Now the Korean hip-hop star is ready to talk about it all — from their new EP, ‘Strawberry,’ to the trauma he faced from an online troll campaign, to his next collaboration with BTS’ RM. My exclusive interview for Rolling Stone.
“Skull Water” author Heinz Insu Fenkl recalled what it was like traveling around parts of the U.S. in the 1970s. “We weren’t allowed to enter diners in the South because we were taken for Native American,” he said. “It made my father furious that we would all have to sit in the station wagon to eat. It was also very hard for us to find motels that would allow a white man with a Korean wife and four mixed-race children to stay.”
“I am absolutely obsessed with Bermuda, which is just a short two-hour flight from the East Coast,” said HUGZ founder Lexi Hensler. “Growing up, I had heard about the Bermuda Triangle and did not think that I could ever travel there.”
“The Sense of Wonder” is a revelatory book that takes a humorous look at pop culture, while also pointing out the inherent racism that pigeonholes minorities into what they can and cannot be. Matthew Salesses’ latest novel incorporates two of his interests: basketball and K-dramas.
“Midnight” is a fast-paced thriller that hits all the jump scares: A mother and daughter who cannot hear or speak are stalked by an insatiable serial killer. The film is a testament to the strength of the powerless and their will to survive.
“If everyone decides to corroborate a lie, then it becomes the truth.” One of the characters in the K-drama “Revenge of Others” says this near the end of the series. And in many ways, it sums up the thesis of this high school revenge series, which is a murder mystery with twists and turns. And though I guessed early on who the murderer was, I didn’t anticipate the why.