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Korea Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Finest chillers for summer
When summer heat calls for spine-tingling chills, three standout Korean horror films deliver the perfect temperature drop Summer in South Korea brings a peculiar cultural tradition: Everyone heads to the cinema for a good scare. It's a seasonal ritual where horror films provide an icy jolt to counter the sweltering heat, trading a cool breeze for shivers down the spine. With scorching heat waves expected, it's the perfect time to explore some home-grown horror that will make you forget just how unbearably muggy it is outside. Korean horror has carved out a distinctive niche in the genre, favoring psychological dread over jump scares and social commentary over simple frights. These three films showcase the breadth and sophistication of K-horror at its finest. "The Wailing" (2016) Na Hong-jin's sprawling supernatural thriller feels less like a traditional horror film than a fever dream that won't let go. When a mysterious illness triggers violent outbursts in a rural mountain village, bumbling cop Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won) finds himself way out of his depth, especially after his daughter falls ill. What starts as a police procedural spirals into something far stranger. A Japanese stranger living in the woods (Jun Kunimura) becomes the prime suspect, but Na keeps pulling the rug out from under us. Is this xenophobia run amok? Demonic possession? Mass hysteria? The film stubbornly refuses to offer simple answers. At 156 minutes, "The Wailing" takes its time ratcheting up the dread, layering on portents and omens until the tension reaches breaking point. When a flamboyant shaman (Hwang Jung-min) arrives in a brand-new sport utility vehicle to perform an exorcism, the film reaches a crescendo — drums pounding, swords flashing, cross-cutting between competing rituals in a sequence that will leave your ears ringing. Na doesn't just pile on the scares; he's after something more unsettling. This is horror as an existential crisis, where the real terror comes from not knowing what to believe or whom to trust. By the time the credits roll, you will be questioning everything you thought you understood. Available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV with English subtitles, Netflix in select territories. "A Tale of Two Sisters" (2003) Before the likes of "Oldboy" and "Parasite" brought Korean cinema to global prominence, Kim Jee-woon's elegant psychological thriller had been quietly drawing attention from horror aficionados worldwide. This haunted house story — or is it? — follows sisters Su-mi (Im Soo-jung) and Su-yeon (Moon Geun-young) as they return home from a mental hospital to face their icy stepmother (Yum Jung-ah). Kim takes the bones of a traditional Korean folktale that gave name to its Korean title, "Janghwa, Hongryeon," and spins it into something far more complex. The house itself becomes a character — all oppressive floral wallpaper and shadowy spaces where terrible things lurk. Or might lurk. The film plays its cards so close to the chest that you are never quite sure what is real and what is bleeding through from damaged psyches. What sets "A Tale of Two Sisters" apart is its emotional sophistication. This is not just about things going bump in the night — though when they do, they're genuinely unnerving. Kim uses horror as a vehicle for exploring grief, guilt and the ways families can destroy themselves from within. The performances, especially from Im as the fiercely protective Su-mi and Yum Jung-ah as the stepmother, ground even the most surreal moments in raw feeling. The film's deliberate pacing might test your attention span, but stick with it. When the reveals come, they land with devastating force, recontextualizing everything that came before. It is the rare horror film that becomes sadder the more you reflect on it. Available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV with English subtitles. "Three... Extremes" (2004) This anthology brings together three of Asia's most provocative directors for a horror buffet that ranges from queasy to sublime, including Korea's own auteur Park Chan-wook. Each segment pushes boundaries in its own distinctive way, making for a collection that is uneven but never boring. Fruit Chan's "Dumplings" kicks things off with a tale of vanity that will put you off dim sum for life. When an aging actress seeks out mysterious chef Aunt Mei (Bai Ling), she discovers the secret ingredient in those youth-restoring dumplings is ... let's just say it's not pork. Chan mines dark comedy from his stomach-churning premise while delivering biting satire about how the wealthy literally consume the poor's misfortunes. Park Chan-wook's "Cut" traps a film director (Lee Byung-hun) and his pianist wife (Kang Hye-jung) in their own home with a deranged extra (Lim Won-hee) who's devised an ingeniously sadistic game to punish the couple. It is quite frankly the weakest entry, but Park's visual flair — those impossible camera moves, that candy-colored production design — keeps things immersive even when the story wobbles. The surprise standout is Takashi Miike's "Box," which trades the director's usual excess for something more subtly unsettling. A woman plagued by nightmares about being buried alive (Kyoko Hasegawa) confronts memories of her circus-performer past. It is abstract, dreamlike, and achieves a kind of eerie beauty that lingers long after the over-the-top shocks fade.
Pink Villa
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Ex-TVXQ's Kim Junsu wins as extortion culprit gets 7-year imprisonment in 840 million KRW scam
A 30-something female BJ, referred to as A, was convicted of extorting large sums from K-pop artist Kim Junsu. After two trials, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison, under the Specific Economic Crimes Aggravated Punishment Act. She re-appealed the verdict, and, as per the latest updates by K-media outlet Star News on June 24, the court ultimately upheld the original sentence. Kim Junsu has now officially won the case. About Kim Junsu's extortion case The 10-1 Criminal Division (Na) of the Seoul High Court maintained the 7-year prison sentence for BJ A, on grounds of extorting around 800 million KRW (600,000 USD) from former TVXQ member Kim Junsu. She threatened to leak private conversations on as many as 101 occasions, between September 2020 and October 2023. During the second trial held last month, the court cited the punishment order to be based on evidence and severity of her crime. Among the evidence submitted by the prosecution, there was a recorded blackmail call. The duration, contents, and impact on the call on the victim's mental health, made the Supreme Court label the crime as "extremely serious." As part of the ruling, A's mobile phone was also ordered to be confiscated to prevent potential further harm. As the final verdict went against the BJ too, she reflected on herself and seeked forgiveness for her crimes. Defendant apologized for blackmailing Kim Junsu "I sincerely apologize to the victim who was hurt and suffered because of me," A said. She mentioned being "addicted to propofol" due to her severe depression, insomnia, and panic disorder, leading to her resorting to the unlawful means of money extortion. She mentioned, "I caused the victim a lot of damage mentally and financially" and wrote letters of apology to Kim Junsu. She continued, "I swear that I will never cause the same damage to the victim again, even if it means risking my life." Regarding her life after she comes out of jail, she reveals plans of getting a nursing license and helping cancer patients like her father.
New Straits Times
17-06-2025
- Business
- New Straits Times
Govt committed to upskilling workers, says Sim
PUTRAJAYA: The government is intensifying efforts to restore dignity to Malaysian workers by pushing for fair wages, safer working conditions, and greater access to upskilling, said Human Resources Minister Steven Sim. Sim said Malaysia must move away from the low-wage economic model and instead attract high-value industries that can offer better-paying jobs for local talent. "We are in a race to catch up on lost time, lost opportunities and missed progress. And indeed, when I was appointed as the minister responsible for human resources, one of the things that keeps me up at night is workers' wages. "I want our workers to receive wages that truly reflect the value of their work. But I also recognise that wages are not determined solely by the generosity of employers or the skills of workers," he said at the launch of the P10X Academy here today. He said that while wages were often viewed as the responsibility of employers or tied to workers' competency, the deeper challenge lies in the country's overall economic structure. "If the majority of our workers remain in traditional sectors such as agriculture or low-skilled manufacturing, naturally, wages will remain low." He also said Malaysia has been caught in the middle-income trap since the 1990s and must now transition towards high-value industries such as semiconductors, consulting, and advanced engineering in order to break through. To support this, Sim said the government was actively courting strategic investments from global tech giants, including Microsoft and Google, which could create high-quality jobs for Malaysians. "These are not just local companies, they are defining how the world uses the Internet and mobile technology. Together with local firms and government support, they can lift us up the value chain." He said this was aligned with the Madani Economy framework introduced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, which aims to "raise the ceiling" by increasing the value of economic output, and "raise the floor" by improving workers' wellbeing. "We cannot allow companies to rake in millions while underpaying workers or ignoring minimum wage laws. Workers must be properly compensated." Sim said the ministry was focused on three strategic priorities: improving workers' welfare, upgrading skills, and boosting productivity, which he referred to as the "3Ks" under the broader objective of "karamah insaniah" (human dignity). "Our goal is for every worker to go to work with dignity, be fairly paid, and return home safely." Among the initiatives introduced is the UP_TVET portal, which centralises applications to more than 600 public and private TVET institutions. The portal has received over 140,000 applications to date. He said the ministry had also reduced the certificate processing time for national skills accreditation from two months to two weeks, with a target of just one day in the future. To elevate the standing of technical education, he said the government was amending the National Skills Development Act (Act 652) to include Levels 6, 7, and 8, making TVET qualifications equivalent to those of a bachelor's, master's, and even PhD levels. "We want to make it clear that TVET is not a second-class option. It is a viable and prestigious pathway to career success and national development." He added that skilled Malaysian workers were increasingly in demand, especially those with certified technical qualifications. "This is why we are investing over RM10 billion this year in education and skills training. If we want high-value jobs, we must build high-value people."
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kristi Noem pressed Pete Hegseth to have the military arrest civilians
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tried to get a jump start on using the military to arrest protesters in Los Angeles, according to a newly unearthed letter. The letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle — got out in front of the White House in seeking to have the Pentagon order the U.S. Marines deployed in the city to arrest protesters who are opposed to the Trump administration's anti-immigrant raids. (CBS News has also confirmed the contents of the letter.) According to the Chronicle: A letter sent Sunday from Noem to Hegseth, obtained by the Chronicle, requested that the Pentagon give 'Direction to DoD forces to either detain, just as they would at any federal facility guarded by military, lawbreakers under Title 18 until they can be arrested and processed by federal law enforcement, or arrest them.' Even the Los Angeles Police Department, echoing statements by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, has expressed its view that the military isn't necessary to handle the demonstrations. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said he was confident the LAPD could handle the protests on its own, and that any failure to notify the department of the troop deployment would cause issues. 'The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles absent clear coordination presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city,' he said, adding: 'The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively.' The Chronicle reported that the administration provided two separate responses to news of the leaked letter: The first defended Noem's attempt to sic the military on civilians, and then the administration sent a second it said should replace the first. The second statement said, 'This letter was sent days ago, prior to the Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary of Defense meeting with the President. The posture of our brave troops has not changed. This is a whole-of-government approach to restore law and order. We are grateful to our military members and law enforcement who have acted with patriotism in the face of assault, taunts, and violence.' For the record, although the Trump administration has sought to portray violence and destruction at the protests as widespread, these demonstrations — like many others — appear largely peaceful, with only isolated incidents of destroyed property. But Noem's letter speaks to a growing thirst within the Trump administration to blur the line between the U.S. military and local law enforcement in ways that are alarming and potentially threaten civil liberties. Even now, the question of the military's rules of engagement for encounters with civilians seems hazy. The major general leading Trump's deployment of more than 2,000 National Guard troops and several hundred Marines told Reuters that service members are not authorized to conduct arrests, but he did suggest troops will be able to 'detain' people 'temporarily' — just as Noem requested. A layman might struggle to see the difference between the two. Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, offered up the most succinct response in a social media thread that lays out the threat posed by an administration that's deploying the military against its own citizens. 'The line between military and civilian government is one of the most critical protections for democracy,' she wrote. 'An army turned inward can quickly become an instrument of tyranny. That's why domestic deployment should be an absolute last resort.' This article was originally published on
Los Angeles Times
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Trump detests the very thing we love about L.A.
LITTLE TOKYO — On a Tuesday morning on downtown Los Angeles' 1st Street, the immigrants are out in force. I mean, they are everywhere: Sweeping, scrubbing graffiti off walls, opening their shops, grabbing lattes on the way to work. Send in the Marines! Here in the heart of Little Tokyo, where immigration protesters swept through Monday night, it's the white faces that stand out — the way it has been for decades all over downtown. With its gritty streets and sometimes gritty history, these urban blocks with their cheaper rents and welcoming enclaves have long been where people migrate when they cross borders into the United States. Which — though I certainly don't want to speculate on the inner workings of Stephen Miller's brain — probably means blocks like this one were on President Trump immigration czar's mind when he posted this on social media: '[H]uge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations. A ruptured, balkanized society of strangers.' That, 'Eddie' told me, is bunk. Eddie is a 'Dreamer,' with semi-legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who emigrated from Mexico as a kid and didn't want to share his last name because he fears the current immigration sweeps. For the past two years, he's lived in an upstairs apartment that overlooks this block of hotels, boutiques and restaurants. I met him on the sidewalk in front of his place, his palms stained black with soot from picking up burned lights and banners from the night before. Eddie, who dreams about someday running for public office, said people such as himself are in 'a very vulnerable' situation right now, so though he's always been involved in civic issues, he doesn't feel safe going to protests that have turned downtown Los Angeles into a national spectacle, and have offered President Trump an excuse to flout law and history by calling in the military. Instead, Eddie is cleaning up — because he doesn't want people to drive by and think this neighborhood is a mess. 'It's not representative, you know,' he says of the charred heap in front of him. 'So I'm out here.' Eddie said he loves it here, because 'it's one of the few communities where, like, it's close knit. I see people that I'm for sure were here in 1945 and I love them, and I know that they know of my existence, and I'm thankful for theirs.' Before we can talk much more, we're interrupted by Alex Gerwer, a Long Beach resident who has come out for the day to help scrub away the graffiti that some rogue protesters left behind. Folks, not going to lie, 'F— ICE' is everywhere. I mean, everywhere — there's got to be a spray paint shortage at this point.' Gerwer, the son of two concentration camp survivors, is here with the political group 5051, which has been staging anti-Trump rallies across the country. Gerwer said he and his group decided they wanted to do something more proactive than just protest, so here they are. 'We want to clean that off and show Trump, the National Guard, you know the folks from the Marines, that this is clearly political theater,' Gerwer said. 'And I feel sorry for all these law enforcement people, because many of them, they're in a position where they're being put between the Constitution and a tyrannical president.' Down the block, I met Misael Santos in front of the ramen restaurant where he works as a manager. He was asking the folks at the Japanese American National Museum on the corner whether they had any surveillance footage, because lights and a tent had been stolen off the restaurant's patio the night before. They didn't. Santos, a Mexican immigrant, told me he didn't like the stealing and vandalism. 'I understand the protests, but that is no excuse to destroy public property,' he said. Earlier, Mayor Karen Bass had tweeted, 'Let me be clear: ANYONE who vandalized Downtown or looted stores does not care about our immigrant communities,' and Santos agreed with that. 'Immigrants work hard,' he told me. Which is why, he said, many of the Asian-owned business around here hire Latinos. He said that this neighborhood, with its mix of ethnicities, is 'comfortable and safe,' but lately, his employees are also fearful. They don't want to come to work because they fear raids, but 'we have to work,' he said with a resigned shrug. But let me get back to Stephen Miller, since he's driving a lot of this chaos. Replying to Bass' tweet about vandals, Miller said on social media, 'By 'immigrant communities,' Mayor Bass actually means 'illegal alien communities.' She is demonstrating again her sole objective here is to shield illegals from deportation, at any cost.' That kind of rhetoric hearkens to the dark days of this neighborhood, William T Fujioka, chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum, told me, when I finally made it down to his patch of this neighborhood. Fujioka and I talked in the plaza where buses pulled up after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to transport Japanese Americans to prison camps. His own grandfather, he said, was imprisoned in such a camp. Protesters had defaced the museum, a nearby Buddhist temple and a public art sculpture called the OOMA cube, meant to symbolize human oneness. Fujioka called the vandalism 'heartbreaking,' but also said it was not representative of most protesters. 'We're strong supporters of peaceful protests and also immigration rights because of what happened to our community,' he told me. 'Our community is a community of immigrants.' Fujioka told me how one of his grandfathers immigrated legally in 1905, but the other wasn't so lucky. They wouldn't let him land in L.A., he said, so he 'was dropped off in Mexico and crossed the Rio Grande. He walked from Mexico with 300 other men up to Texas, across the Rio Grande and New Mexico, Arizona and California.' Fujioka grew up not far from this plaza in Boyle Heights, were so many people with journeys similar to that of his grandfather wind up, then and now. Boyle Heights, he said, 'is the ultimate melting pot. In Boyle Heights before the war, you had Japanese, Latinos, African Americans, you had Jews, you had Italians, and you had Russians who fled communist Russia. And we all grew up together, and we didn't care who anyone was. All we cared about is, if you're from the neighborhood.' Just behind Fujioka, I saw that Gerwer had found his group and was busy scrubbing the museum's windows. One of those with him, S.A. Griffin, had been at the protests downtown this week. He said they were mostly peaceful, except for the 'idiots' who covered their faces and incited violence as the sun went down. 'It's the vampires that come out at night,' Griffin said. And that's really the all of it. There will always be agitators, especially at night. But daylight brings clarity. Across the street, I met 88-year-old Maruko Bridgewater, walking with half brothers Colin McQuade and Indigo Rosen-Lopez. The men consider Bridgewater their grandmother, though she's really their maternal grandmother's best friend. They were walking Bridgewater back to her nearby apartment and said they were worried about her during the protests and even in the aftermath — she had just stepped over broken glass from a nearby shop. 'It's really scary to see her walk around by herself,' McQuade told me. These 'grandkids' may worry, but let me tell you, may the Lord above make me half as sharp and stylish as Bridgewater at that age. She came to the United States through New York in 1976. I asked her whether she liked Trump's crackdown on immigrants and she told me, 'Not really, but not Biden either.' But this trio, walking on a clear June morning when the gloom has burned away, are everything that is good and right with immigrant communities. Between the three, they represent Hungarian, Bulgarian, Native American, Irish, Scottish and Japanese. McQuade told me that his grandparents met during World War II. 'Literally, like, in the middle of the biggest war between America and Japan, my grandparents found each other, and they fell in love, and they ... created a life for us from literally nothing,' he said. That is downtown Los Angeles, where immigrants come to build a life. If that looks like the third world nightmare to some, it's because they are blind to what they are seeing.
