Day 1

After spending a night at Seoul upon our arrival from Hong Kong, my friend and I took the earliest bus to Daejeon. We arrived at Deajeon in the early morning. As soon as we had checked in, we asked the front desk for the instructions to go to Iksan. The staff at the front desk had a very difficult time in understanding my poor Korean as I did not pronounce the word “Iksan” properly. After spending half an hour using different kinds of language, the staff eventually managed to give us a bus timetable from Yu Shing to Iksan. We were very lucky to find out that the Yu Shing bus terminal was just a 10- minute walk from the hotel and there were direct buses running from Yu Shing to Iksan 7 times a day. While we were talking to the staff at the front desk, one taxi driver sitting at the lobby overheard us. He offered to take us to Iksan and bring us back for KW100,000. My friend and I thought it was a bit too expensive and declined his offer, a decision that we regretted afterwards.

As soon as we arrived at the Iksan bus terminal, we found that we were standing in front of a BIG tourist guide board. That board displayed a map showing all the places of interests in Iksan with the approximate distance from downtown. My friend and I were so excited because we could see the word “Seo Dong” all over the map: there were “Seo Dong birth place”, “Seo Dong Park”, the Royal Tombs and Mireuksa Temple. Undoubtedly, Seo Dong is a celebrity here.

My friend and I decided to go to Mireuska Temple first because it was the farthest. According to “Seo Dong Yo”, Mireuska Temple was built by King Mu at the request of the Queen; actually it was her last wish before she died in the arms of the King. While the Queen was sitting in front of a lake, she told King Mu that she liked the lake very much and she had a dream earlier which said that if a Mireuska Temple was built in that site, King Mu and all the people of Baekje would be at peace. The reality is Mireuska Temple was built on a reclaimed lake by King Mu back in AD600. After 1600 years, most of Mireuska Temple was unavoidably destroyed. The only piece left now was a stone pagoda at the East Temple. Even the stone pagoda is on the verge of collapse and the government of South Korea has undertaken a 10-year project to restore the pagoda. The project is expected to be completed by 2008. Hence, while we were at the Temple site, the pagoda was still covered by a big building and inside the building, we found some huge pieces of stones.

Next to the Mireuska Temple site was a museum. Unfortunately, the museum was closed during our visit (it closes every Monday). Afterwards, my friend and I decided to visit the Royal Tombs, the graves of King Mu and his Queen. It was very easy for us to take a taxi from the city to the Mireuska Temple. But when we wanted to get back to town, we could not find any taxi at all. We stood under the sun for more than 30 minutes and still there was no sign of a taxi. There were many buses coming in and going out but we were not sure which one was the right one. We were so afraid that we might take a wrong bus going in the wrong direction. So we kept waiting and waiting and finally, we found a taxi! Hurrah!

The taxi driver took us to the Royal Tombs which were near to the city. At first, we saw a bigger tomb which was believed to be the grave of King Mu. It was rumoured that King Mu moved the capital of Baekje from Buyeo to Iksan during his reign. This is evidenced by the fact that he was buried here, in Iksan. The Queen’s grave was about 200 yards away from the King’s. We had to take a narrow path and there was no clear sign indicating the way to get there. Fortunately, the taxi driver was kind enough to walk  with us. He parked the taxi and led us to the tomb of the Queen. The size of the Queen’s tomb was slightly smaller than the King’s. While I was standing in front of the Queen’s grave, I sincerely hoped that she did live a bit longer in real life than in the drama. The idea that King Mu lost the Queen after 13 years of marriage really saddens me.

After the Royal Tombs, we asked the taxi driver to take us to other Seo Dong Yo film sets but he kept shaking his head. We really did not understand why he was so reluctant to bring us there, might be it was just too far way. At the end, he agreed to bring us to the ‘Seo Dong’ birth place. When I first saw the name of this place at the map, I was very naïve and thought that it was the real birth place of the real King Mu. Well, it turned out to be one of the “Seo Dong Yo” film sets. It was here that they shot the early life of Seo Dong while he was living with his mother. The film set was not very big but my friend and I were still thrilled about it. We took a lot of photos until the taxi driver reminded us to go back. At the entrance of this film set, we noticed that there were actually two other “Seo Dong Yo” film sets at Iksan. We would very much like to visit those two film sets. However, fearing that we might not be able to find a taxi afterwards and given that it was late afternoon already, my friend and I decided to call it a day and take the bus back to Yu Shing.

While we were in the bus returning to Yu Shing, we figured out that the total transportation costs that we had incurred actually exceeded KW100,000. “We should have accepted that taxi driver’s offer,” my friend whispered. I totally agreed.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

**Please credit http://jo-hyun-jae.com if wish to transfer.**

There is a brief release in the Official JHJ Fan Club website (jo-hyunjae.com) at 11:42 p.m. last night (July 23) about Jo Hyun-Jae being interviewed and photographed by “Defense Daily.”

“Defense Daily” is a daily newspaper issued by the Board of Public Defense.

Guess we’ll finally get some news and pictures of JHJ.  We have to wait patiently for the official release.

An easy one

Here’s a hard one

How to play the on-line jigsaw game:

1.Move the mouse over where it shows “Loading the puzzle” to finish loading.

2.Move the pieces to the one that you think matches by dragging them with your mouse.

3.When  two pieces match, they will become one bigger piece.

4.If you find some pieces are missing, they may be covered by others.

Have fun!

Now the complete pictures:

On Wednesday, July 22, 2009 a total eclipse of the Sun was visible from within a narrow corridor that traversed half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow began in India and crossed through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crossed Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and curved southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reached 6 minutes 39 seconds and covered a distance of 9,500 miles (15,200 km.)  A partial eclipse was seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, which included most of eastern Asia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Ocean.

(Information from NASA website)

I received a SMS message on my cell phone the evening before about this total solar eclipse, informing me our city would witness this spectacular event at around 8 a.m. on July 22.  Before I got all worked up, I did a little research on the internet and discovered that my city was not even in the path of the Moon’s umbral shadow.

I still got up early in the morning and waited with anticipation, even though the sky was not clear.  All morning the sky remained an ash white/grey, like a dead fish’s eyes.  I ended up watching live coverage on TV for four hours.  This total solar eclipse, visible only in Asia, is caused when the moon covers the sun completely and casts a shadow on earth.  This is the longest total solar eclipse in the 21st century and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132.

In other words, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a lot of people.  You have to be at the right time at the right place, unless you are a professional eclipse chaser like that American teacher from New York that I saw on TV who goes around the world following eclipses (this time he is in Shanghai, one of the cities in the path of totality.)  A Chinese man says he has waited 40 years for this.

It was really fascinating to see the skies darken and then the whole city plunging into total darkness in these cities in China — Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Shanghai.  Even though my skies remained cloudy or foggy or smoggy (not sure which), I shared in the exhilaration of those who were fortunate enough to witness this fantastic astrological phenomenon.

Laura, who has just joined our editorial team (we’re going from strength to strength!), lives in Chengdu.  What follows is her eyewitness account of this total solar eclipse:

While I was waiting in vain for my skies to darken, Stevie Wonder’s song came into my head:

This MV is full of Jo Hyun-Jae’s fans’ love for him — warms one’s heart.  Clips are from his visit to Thailand in July 2008.

Source:http://johyunjaefans.net/

(Credit: http://www.johyunjae.cn)

This is our resident “Seo Dong Yo” expert M’s epic adventure in 2007.

Someone once said that if you were poisoned by the “Seo Dong Yo” virus, you will develop the following symptoms progressively (grade no. 1 to 3 depending on how serious it is) :

• • Grade no. 1 – You will watch the drama countless times and still never get tired of it.
  • Grade no. 2 – You will go to the Internet and search for the history of Korea, inter alia, the Three Kingdoms, Baekje and Shilla.
  • Grade no. 3 – You will go to Korea and visit all the historical places mentioned in the drama, such as the Mireuksa Temple, the gilt-bronze Burner of Baekje and, of course, the Seo Dong Yo film set.

As a deeply poisoned fan of SDY, I can verify that the above theory is quite true as I possess all the symptoms. “Seo Dong Yo” is the first JHJ’s drama that I watched (the first and the best so far). I started watching it in January 2007 on a Mandarin channel and soon fell under its spell. I was so obsessed with it that I decided to visit Korea and follow the footsteps of Seo Dong. I successfully persuaded one of my best friends to come with me. She became a fan of SDY under my influence because I kept talking to her about this drama for months and at the end she succumbed and watched the DVD that I lent to her. My friend, a long time Korean drama lover, likes SDY as well but obviously is not as crazy as I am. Both of us are very busy at work and we decided to go to Korea in October which meant that I had more than half a year to plan the trip. For the following six months, I spent most of my lunch time on the internet searching for all kinds of travelling information such as accommodation and transportation, even including the bus and train timetables. At first, I was very pleased with myself, thinking that I had done a great job in addressing all the details and potential problems of our trip.  But later, to my dismay, I found out that no matter how well I had planned in advance, there were bound to be some unexpected events that were out of my expectation and control. Well, as one says, life is always full of surprises!

As you may know, “Seo Dong Yo” was mainly filmed in Buyeo and Iksan, the previous capitals of Baekje. Since these two cities are quite far away from Seoul (around 3 hours by bus), I decided to use Daejeon (city nearest to Buyeo and Iksan) as a base. You may not have heard of Daejeon, but if you have watched KAIST, the first drama that JHJ starred in, you will know that KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is actually located in Daejeon. Daejeon is the 5^th largest city of South Korea and is mainly a manufacturing and commercial city. Since Daejeon is not a popular tourist spot, there are not many hotels in the city. Eventually, I managed to book a hotel at Yu Shing which is at the outskirts of Daejeon. Later I find out that Yu Shing is very famous for its “hot springs”.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

** Please credit http://jo-hyun-jae.com if wish to transfer.**

You all know the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”   And all Jo Hyun-Jae fans know he loves baseball caps.  When asked how many baseball caps he has in a Q & A two years ago, he says: “30 – 40.”  By now he must have many more.

He is also fond of wearing ski caps, and I daresay no one wears these as stylishly as our JHJ (in whatever colours — white, black, or red.)

In his historical dramas and modelling assignments JHJ wears all kinds of hats and assorted head gear, and he looks equally fantastic in these.

Do you have a favourite photo of JHJ in a cap/hat?  Send it to us at jhjfans@gmail.com and we may have a second “hat post”.

(Credit for photos: names on photos.  Thanks!)

This is Eliza’s response to our 5/14/09 post  “JHJ for ‘A Frozen Flower’”? (original in Chinese)

I finally watched “A Frozen Flower”.  From start to finish, I remained utterly calm.  In other words, my heart did not flutter once.  I was not touched by any scene or character.  So it takes a stretch of the imagination to discuss my feelings.  A story that fails to move me, characters that do not attract me — only give me thoughts, not emotions.

This movie’s theme is an exploration of “love” — homosexual love, heterosexual love, conflict of love, struggle of love, cruelty of love.  The King’s love for Hong Lim seems very deep.  Extreme love leads to eventual extreme hate and extreme pain.  Does Hong Lim love the King?  He must have, perhaps not pure love, mixed with loyalty and awe.  But how could feelings nursed since childhood be anything but love?  So at the beginning their love for each other is mutual.

The Queen’s appearance upsets the balance.  The Queen’s change of heart is understandable.  The King’s neglect makes her feel very lonely and isolated.  As Queen, she is confined to her chambers, physically and spiritually hollow.  So she accepts Hong Lim with only the slightest struggle and falls in love with him.

Does Hong Lim love the Queen?  Even though he professes to the King his love for the Queen, all I can see is his sexual trysts with the Queen.  I do not feel the union of heart and mind.  This is the greatest flaw in the movie.  Instead of devoting so many scenes to depicting sex, more effort should be made to portraying love.  Perhaps sex is inevitable, but at least the audience should be able to feel the love in the sex.  So Hong Lim’s love for the Queen is unconvincing and weakens the theme of so-called true love.

As for the King, the movie’s portrayal of this role is much more solid than Hong Lim’s.  His emotional turmoil is clear, so his later actions are not surprising.  I can understand his feelings but I do not condone his actions.  At the end of the movie, neither of the two men can die a peaceful death; both have tears in their dying eyes, creating a tragic atmosphere.  Maybe some members of the audience will be moved by this, but regretfully, not me.

The main reason I do not like this movie is because the theme is too restricted.  It is nothing more than a movie about the love and hate between man and man, and between man and woman.  I do not like such a simple theme — it does not deepen my understanding or inspire any epiphany.

Apart from this, the movie’s portrayal of one of the chief characters, Hong Lim, is not deep enough, especially his emotional and psychological make-up.  This makes the character superficial and his actions unconvincing.  Perhaps the scriptwriter’s original intention is to portray him as someone single-minded in the pursuit of love, but all I can see is someone who does not cherish the King’s love and cannot control his lust for the Queen, who mistakes sex for love.

As for the actors, Jo In-Sung [as Hong Lim] can be described in one word: “pathetic” (in the best sense of the word, meaning arousing pity.)  He gives me the impression of being the King’s “concubine” rather than his “warrior”.  Though his eyes are not very big, they are often “watery”, projecting a look of innocence and passion.  Even then, because of the limitations of the role, he fails to touch my heart.  His acting skills cannot be completely displayed, so he gives the impression of simplicity.  Compared to him, Ju Jin-Mo, who plays the King, gives a much more subtle and rounded performance.

If you ask me which role I would like Jo Hyun-Jae to play, I would choose the King’s.  Even though this role is not entirely positive, it is rich and allows scope for expression.  I believe JHJ is capable of playing either role of Hong Lim or the King.  But as a matter of fact, I do not want JHJ to be in this movie — because it is not worthy of him either artistically or intellectually, nor is it challenging enough.

There is an ancient Chinese saying that goes something like this (I’m paraphrasing): “From time immemorial, heroes and beautiful women must not be allowed to see white hair.”  (meaning: the strong and the beautiful die young: it would be heartbreaking to see them frail and ugly in old age.)

On the flight from Hong Kong to my base, I saw a living example of the above.  I was sitting across the aisle from an actor who was the reigning heartthrob on the Hong Kong silver screen when I was a child.  (He is still active in the entertainment world.)  He must be in his early 70s now, still looking very trim and fit from the neck downwards.  He was dressed entirely in white* — from his white denim jacket (with a short-sleeved white shirt underneath) and jeans to his white tennis shoes.  This contrasted very sharply with his extremely pronounced tan, especially his face which was half covered under a giant pair of sunglasses (which he had on throughout the flight.)

But what was exposed sent shock waves down my spine the first time I looked him in the face.  The dark skin, very taut but dry, made him look like a mummy!  Too many face lifts?  Cosmetic surgery is supposed to make you look better, isn’t that so?

(*That white outfit made me immediately recall the first time I saw JHJ at Osaka’s Kansai Airport in June 2008.  JHJ was also in a short-sleeved white shirt, but he was wearing a white ski cap and sunglasses and this man was sporting a ponytail!  I remember being blinded by a flash of light then.  Now I also winced and averted my eyes, but it’s because I was saddened by the sight before my eyes — of a once handsome man refusing to grow old gracefully.)

In case you are wondering by now: What has this got to do with Jo Hyun-Jae?  Maybe nothing.  But one of the reasons I like JHJ is he is genuine — whether in looks or in character.  Everyone who has seen his kindergarten photo (see above) knows our JHJ’s exquisite features are already fully formed at age 3.  He is 100% natural — one of the few Korean actors who have not gone under the knife.  I hasten to state I have no objection to or prejudice against anyone who resorts to cosmetic surgery.  If it opens doors for you in life or boosts your self-confidence, good for you!  Only tenet is — make sure it’s an improvement (and don’t overdo it.)

I have often wondered what JHJ’s parents or his sisters look like.  When asked whether he resembles his father or his mother, he has said half/half.  Great genes!  If I were a geneticist, I’d like to study JHJ’s DNA.  What combination can produce a perfect specimen like this?  We all have two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth.  But JHJ’s facial features are a work of art, or rather, a work of God.  And not just these, also his high intelligent forehead, his long and slender fingers (like a pianist’s), his model figure (like a model’s), the shape of his head (which looks good with or without hair), his very fine skin (even when he was smoking)………….Did I miss anything?

But the best thing is — JHJ is totally oblivious to these; he is utterly unselfconscious, even modest, about his looks.  He was once asked on stage which part of his body he was most pleased with.  He demurred and stammered, and when pressed, finally muttered: “My shoulders.”  Shoulders?  How many of you have seen his shoulders?  Unlike some Korean actors who lose no opportunity to display their perfectly sculpted torsos, JHJ rarely shows any flesh.  I can only think of him in his swimming trunks (when he still hasn’t lost his baby fat!) in “That’s good”, topless the morning after that one night stand with Eun Jae in “Only You”, in bed with Lee So Yun in “Joy of Love”, sleeveless and in vests in “Forbidden Love” ………..Anything else?

JHJ is both hero and beauty to me, but I’m perfectly confident he will live to see white hair.  I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to see that he has the looks of one “blessed”.  The Chinese believe such a person will live a long life of fortune, prosperity, peace and serenity.  He may not be the biggest superstar on the Korean stage, but he is the best and the brightest.

EVER has sent Jo Hyun-Jae the above presents to congratulate him on his impending promotion to corporal and to celebrate his leave.

These include a bottle of San Pedro 1865 Limited Edition (1000) red wine, fruit basket, sweets and snacks, jelly, and T-shirts (Kenzo) from Japan.

They know JHJ likes red wine, so this is a most fitting gift for a very special occasion.

There is even a bag of snacks for JHJ’s pet dog Shin.  Guess which one?

(Source: EVERjohyunjae.  Thanks!)