Koreans living in a dreamworld starting to wake up.

Paris Lovers...what a happy couple.

Looking at Korea one can see something of a Leave it to Beaver mindset when it comes to relationships--especially in the minds of 20-something girls here. One could compare it (as I will) to a monk living life in a temple and then having everything changed when he starts to see what happens over the hills where he makes his home.

Thankfully, some movies are starting to show that life may not be what we assume. Recently I watched Hi, Dharma! (a story about a gang of criminals that hides out in a monastery) and In-eo Gong-ju (literally means mermaid princess, but is translated to My Mother the Mermaid or Little Mermaid; a story about a daughter who somehow visits her parents when they first meet and fall in love).

Dharma is a comedy where the gangsters find out something about themselves within the (relative) purity of the monks and the monks gain a new perspective from their dichotic encounters. Both learned that their so-called 'pure' states (of peace or brutality) are not perfect and they can grow from knowing one another.

The daughter in Mermaid had a revelation as well. She hated her parents (her father seemed a dim-witted postal worker and her mother a cussing rubber/masseuse at a bathhouse). She wished she were an orphan like her boyfriend. An odd occurrence (I still don't know how this happened) put her back in time to when her parents met on Jeju-do where her mother was a diver (mermaid connection) and her father a postman. She comes to see them in their innocence and pure state--full of dreams and potential; not the broken and bitter people they became. A picture taken at that time shows the village in and around their first bus and her young father on his bicycle, smiling. The daughter asks her mother why he is smiling...and in the last scene her mother says, "Of course he is smiling, what else could he be doing?" (or words to that effect). Yes, the young have every reason to smile.


My Mother the Mermaid and Hi, Dharma!

Mermaid seems to show that the 'pure' state of youth and promise is a transient one and Dharma could be saying that moving from purity may actually be good (adding another dimension for growth). This is something that some young people here don't seem to grasp...they need to have perfect grades to get into the perfect university and get the perfect job and marry the perfect spouse and have the perfect family (which means grandsons for many parents and in-laws). Perhaps in the future less emphasis will be placed on keeping up with the Kims/Joneses but for now many still aspire to a pure and perfect dreamlife.

Of course, if they don't marry the perfect person Koreans can now get a divorce quite easily...which is another problem.