Notebook on Cities and Culture

Korea Tour: ¿Por Qué Corea? with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega


Listen Later

At a coffee house somewhere in Busan, Colin talks with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega, film critic and enthusiast of Korean cinema. They discuss whether she'd recommend other movie-lovers move to Busan; how the Busan International Film Festival attracted her to the city (and the importance of its parties); why, in Busan, "everybody says yes"; the state of Korean film criticism in Spanish; how she first encountered Korean cinema, and how its auteurs got her to know Korea; the bad first impression Korean culture can sometimes give on film; what happens when you mention kimchi in Argentina; why her move to Korea became inevitable; her experience of understanding nothing in Korea even after having studied the language for years before arriving; what makes the dialogue in Hong Sangsoo movies easier to understand than the dialogue in other movies (and why Korea struck her as a real-life Hong Sangsoo movie when she arrived); whether she feels a kinship with Isabelle Huppert's character in In Another Country; the shock of finding out that, in Korea, she's white; the understanding she gets by standing outside society, and the "healthy jealousy" she feels for those inside; the difference between Korean conception of history and the Argentine conception of history; how Korea's heavily advertised matchmaking services speak to the cultural importance of marriage; why to learn about a culture from its independent films, not his mainstream one; how Korean social life "flows" from one place to the next; the role of the Seoul International Women's Film Festival; what happened in the world of Korean film festivals in the wake of the Sewol disaster, and how all the elements aligned to match the national mood; what it felt like to live in a silent Korea; the strong identification within Korean generations; her critical interest in connecting Korean film to the conditions in Korean society; why she waited on reading about Korea until she'd lived here a while, then picked up Michael Breen's The Koreans; the difficulty of explaining Korean food and drink to friends and family back in Argentina; the Korean penchant for "crowded" food and "crowded" web sites; how the culture has turned her "no"s into "ne"s; and what hour she (as well as the Argentine ambassador) woke up to watch the World Cup.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Notebook on Cities and CultureBy Colin Marshall

  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8

4.8

123 ratings


More shows like Notebook on Cities and Culture

View all
Bookworm by KCRW

Bookworm

573 Listeners

In Our Time by BBC Radio 4

In Our Time

5,389 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,189 Listeners

The Political Scene | The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

3,954 Listeners

The Tennis Podcast by David Law, Catherine Whitaker, Matt Roberts

The Tennis Podcast

1,385 Listeners

Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,469 Listeners

Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,483 Listeners

The Bill Simmons Podcast by The Ringer

The Bill Simmons Podcast

30,133 Listeners

The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker Radio Hour

6,670 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

111,917 Listeners

The Harper’s Podcast by Harper's Magazine

The Harper’s Podcast

136 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,321 Listeners