Hi readers. I saw the entire movie, Attack the Gas Station 2, on Netflix and found it fascinating. It ain’t the same Korea I spent 14 months in back in 1963-’64. Hell, it ain’t even a 3rd world country anymore.
When this photo was taken near Camp Howze, Korea [Pong Il Chon], I can say with authority there was a rice paddy somewhere nearby where people toiled from daybreak to dark. Somewhere nearby men were carrying a-frames loaded with firewood several times their own weight. Probably somewhere in Korea there was affluence staying well hidden, but the ‘average’ Korean made a few dollars per month and most would never expect to be able to afford a bicycle anytime during their lives.
Secondly, the kids are easily as stupid as US kids, but it’s a higher quality stupidity. I suppose it hasn’t had time to mature, to become as decadent as US kids manifest constantly in public. Stupidity of Korean kids has the quality of an over-ripe apple that hasn’t yet begun to rot.
And thirdly, the amazing wealth. Look at that gas station, the cars and the people driving them. The motorcycles those kids are riding and the clothes they’re wearing. Observe the body-fat. Those people might well be Americans in the better neighborhoods.
By comparison, consider another Netflix foreign film, this one from Russia. The Suit. Some Russian youngsters fall in love with a Gucci suit in a store window and the adventures they go through to acquire it. And what happens once they have it in their possession.
The Suit is a damned eye-opening good movie, well done and fun to watch, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Attack the Gas Station 2. The Russian kids are smarter, incidently, and not so wealthy.
Anyone who tells you different is wrong.
Old Jules
Great pic. Will check it out.
Thanks wesley. J
Must check these out.
Tess: Please do. J
😀
I’ve not seen a bad Korean film yet – I watch the horror/science fiction ones. The US film industry got so jealous they remade one recently. It sucked, of course.
The Suit – it sounds like a short story I’ve read. It was based in S America somewhere… The Ice Cream Suit I think it was called? Four guys buy it together, and share it… and it doesn’t go well of course.
heretherebespiders: Thanks. I just watched The Good, The Bad, The Weird, and found it to be as fine as the others, great photography. The Suit you describe is the same movie as the one I watched thinking it was made in Russia. Guess I needed to pay more attention to geography. Gracias, J
I just saw a movie sot of like that called The Drummer, or something. It was about gang warfare in Korea and drumming.
Azure James. Thanks, I’ll scoop it up if it’s on Netflix. Gracias, J
“… an over-ripe apple that hasn’t yet begun to rot.”
I’m gonna steal that one of these days.
You now have to read all my stuff to figure out when and where.
I promise, however, to preface it with “Like Ol’ Jules said….”
Fair enough?
Harris
Hi Harris: Mi casa su casa and that sort of thing amigo. Since I don’t actually have a casa these days, mi blog su blog. I’ve no pride of ownership. I tried again a little while ago to get emails when you post your blog entries, but I don’t know whether it ‘took’. I get a number of blogs I enjoy by email and it’s one of the ways I can remember to read them, compared to others I’d probably enjoy but never managed to have sent to my email account – not from lack of trying. Incidently. In passing. Unrelated, or only tenuously related to your comment. Anyway “Like Old Jules said . . .” might be a way to assure and reinforce meaninglessness, Old Jules merely being a person I was reincarnated from. I doubt he ever actually said that particular thing. Though he might have if he’d thought of it. Gracias, J
Gotcha.
“As a friend who used to be Ol’ Jules says….”
That should cover it.
Harris
Harris: As my self in a previous life would say, “Mumble mumble mumble.” I think you’ve got it covered. Gracias, J