Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

Aug. 9-14 in beautiful downtown Jaecheon

A couple of weeks ago my friend YK the film buff called and said he�d found out about this thing and asked me to go. My first question was �What is a MUSIC and FILM festival�? It turns out it is a film festival that focuses on the role of music in films, films about people famous because they make music, films where music is a main theme and also a live concert at the lake. OK. Sounded interesting enough for a day, especially since I deserved a vacation.

Second question: Where the heck is Jaecheon? As it turned out, it is near Danyang. I�d never heard of either one. It is in Chungchangbukdo, about three hours east of Seoul or 2 hours north of Daegu by express bus.

Friday morning
I check my e-mail and find a job interview is scheduled for 1pm, right after summer camp classes end for the week. Panic. What if they want me to come up Saturday for an interview? It will screw up my weekend plans. Contact YK and finally he understands what is going on. (His telephone English isn�t the best.) He goes on standby.

I rush home after class. Grab a salad and sit down by the phone. The guy calls on-time. (Good start.) The interview goes well except the part about the apartment. He doesn�t quite believe that I already own all my own furniture and appliances. Then he seems to get in a rush. He says I have the job and don�t need to come up for an interview. Well, OK. He asks when I can come up. I say the 21st, the first weekday that I�m free of this stinking job. He says, No, come Wednesday the 23rd so I can meet all the teachers. I�m like um�I don�t really care when I meet all the teachers, my lease here finishes the 28th and I doubt I�ll be living in the school apartment and really want to get started looking for a new home, but OK.

I finish that conversation and call YK and tell him that our original plan is back in play. He says OK, meet you at 6:30 in Jaecheon. And off I go to the bus.

I arrive at Seobu Station in Daegu and ask for the Jaecheon bus. It leaves from Bukbu Station. I get there and find out I have an hour and a half wait�I�ll be leaving Daegu at 6:10 and arriving in Jaecheon at 10:40�not the expected 6:30. Uh oh. I call YK and try to explain. He is mystified. Why aren�t you at DongDaegu Station? My bus doesn�t go to DongDaegu, it goes to SeoDaegu. But the bus from Changnyoung goes to DongDaegu. What bus from Changnyoung? I left from Youngsan. It goes to SeoDaegu. And it isn�t a 2 hour trip, it�s 4 and a half.

It turns out there is an express bus from DongDaegu, but I had the more local kind of bus that leaves from Bukbu Station. Went through some pretty countryside before it got dark and Danyang seems to be kind of a pretty riverside town in a resort area. Worth a second look in the daytime. Also, the ticket lady at Bukbu can�t tell time. I arrived in Jaecheon after only 3 � hours�and the heat wave has broken. It�s actually pleasant to be outside on a summer Friday night.

Jaecheon itself is OK. The two bus terminals are within 30 meters of each other�what a concept. They are in an older part of town, so most of the buildings aren�t particularly nice, but the motel district starts a block or so straight down the street from the bus station and there are a bunch of them, all looking nice enough. We found a room for W30,000 with no trouble. Saturday we found a nice two-block long area where the street has been covered over for people to walk and shop. Only a couple of restaurants along that street, but the Red Pepper is an upstairs place that serves acceptable spaghetti for W3,500.

The festival itself takes place in the one multiplex in town, the TTCinema ( a giant bright yellow building) a ten-minute walk from our motel, 5 minutes or so from the walk and shop street. There were two lines to get tickets. The left line had a sign that said ID. We didn�t know what that meant and neither did the guy ahead of us in line. We were in the right-hand line and paid W5,000 for each ticket.

The films on view on Saturday:
Theater 1:
11am: Vitus (a Swiss film about a little boy who is a musical prodigy)
2pm: Always Sunset on Third Street (a Japanese family film set in the 50�s)
5pm: This is Bossa Nova (Brazilian documentary)
8pm: Two Sons of Francisco (Brazilian film about a father who tries to make his two sons country music stars)
Midnight: GORA (a Turkish comedy about a guy who gets kidnapped by aliens)

Theater 2:
11:30am: The Keys to the House (an Italian family film about a guy who meets his 16 year old retarded son for the first time)
2:30pm: Sergeant Keroro (Japanese animation about space aliens who come to conquer Earth but fall in love with its charm)
5:30pm: For Horowitz (Korean movie about a woman who gave up her professional dream and teaches music, only to discover a genius. The kid has some kind of secret that will change her life. This one has a Q & A session with it.
8:30pm: MAIDS (a Thai comedy about 4 maids who save the country from corruption

Theater 3:
11:00 Bob Dylan�s Legends: Hurricane Carter and Bob Dylan: In the Madhouse (a documentary about trying to find a recording of Dylan�s appearance on BBC in Jan. �63)
2:00 The Mozart Minute (Austrian collection of 20 one-minute films dealing with Mozart
5:00 The Refugee All-Stars (US documentary about a group of refugees from Sierra Leone who form a band)
8:00pm Holiday Makers (Czech comedy about a tour group on vacation)

There is a 4th theater, but I�m tired. From the three schedules, I think you can see the variety of offerings. There are also some showings of films that Nino Rota did the score for: 8 �; the Leopard; Plein Soleil; La Strada.

YK and I went to the Dylan things. I wasn�t very interested in the Hurricane Carter flick because I never liked the song, but the second one was OK. It had very little music by Dylan and a lot of talking about him. YK wanted to see the Mozart stuff, but those tickets were sold out. There wasn�t anything else showing at that time that we wanted to see, so we ate lunch and went out to the lake.

About 40 minutes (by bus) outside town is a big lake: Chung Poong Lake. There was a film and live concert scheduled for 8pm. YK had looked on the internet and found a huge hotel ad and decided to splurge at W100,000 a night�I have a new job. What do I care?

We were disappointed. We got to the hotel only to find that we were booked into the hotel�s branch, up the mountain side. We had to call them to come get us. Got to the hotel and found out our room was not ready. There was no coffee shop where we could wait. There was no beer garden open for another 6 hours. There were no cold drinks at all in the �mart�. An hour killed in the lobby napping on a couch rather than our W100,000 per night beds. And our plan to take a boat ride shot to heck. Finally we get in our room. No view of the lake. Short nap in a very narrow twin beds and it�s time to eat before the movie/concert. Get downstairs and find out we have to wait almost an hour for a shuttle bus to take us to the other hotel where all the restaurants are. We get pissed and ask for our money back. Get 50% and then end up walking to the other hotel. Grab a take-out pizza and carry it to the shuttle down to the lake for the concert.

The film: �Music is Perfume�, a Brazilian documentary about Maria Bethania that needed some serious editing. The first 30-45 minutes, very interesting. The last hour, just a lot of repetition.

After a 10-15 minute break the concert begins. The band is the Yoon Do-Hyun Band (of Pilsung Korea! fame). They were more than decent. The lead singer can sing, in spite of his bad Mohawk. I�m fairly certain he spent a number of years living overseas. He was able to say �We f****n� love rock and roll!� and a few other things without a detectable accent. With the encore, they performed about an hour and fifteen minutes. It was all pretty basic rock and roll. I enjoyed it in a toe-tapping kind of way. With some chemical stimulation and somewhat less heat and humidity I probably would have enjoyed it even more. (Yes, the break in the heat was over.)

Catching a bus back to town was kind of chaotic. This part of the festival needs some serious organizational work. Hoards of people rushing from one bus to another trying to squeeze on as buses came from all parts of the parking lot, then honking horns trying to clear a path through the crowds to get out of the parking lot. The organizers blowing whistles but not actually doing anything to line the buses up and form lines of people. Nothing that thought out.

Summary:
1. Accommodations: Decent and not inflated if you stay in town. Avoid the Lake Hotel/Hill Hotel out on the lake. (I would say: Avoid the damn place at any time.)
2. Food: The one restaurant we ate in was pretty good. The take-out pizza was average (at the hotel).
3. Films: Good selection, interesting theme.
4. The booklet is bilingual and has been proofread by a native speaker. Not more than one or two sentences in Konglish.
5. All movies but two had English subtitles.
6. Concert: Could have chosen a better film, but hey. The live performance was good and in a nice scenic spot.
7. Bus transportation to the lake needs work.

I would consider going back next year

[indytrucks]

Good comprehensive review. I had no idea such a thing existed. Thanks for that.

BTW, Danyang is worth another look when you've got some time. I suggest the autumn.

[Ya-ta Boy]

And thank you for THAT tip, Mr. Indy. I will check it out since I'm moving to the area in a week or so.


This was my first-ever film festival. There are a crap-load of them in Korea. If the others are as good as this one, I think I may have found another way to spend the random weekend.

Experiences at other film festivals are welcome. Please include approximate times of the year.