Tragic Ferry Disaster

No one who pays attention to the news, or is interested in Korea, can be unaware of the tragic disaster recently of the ferry sinking. The fact that so many of those who lost their lives were children makes it much worse. It is appalling that the captain and crew of a ship wouldn't be trained in safety procedures and what to do in an emergency. They should know how hard it is to evacuate a sinking ship, and get people out as fast as possible. Now we hear that there were a lot of irregularities and illegalities that contributed to the accident. It's disheartening to hear of such rampant graft, but I guess it is in every country.

Our hearts go out to those who were on the ferry and their families. People are the most important thing there is, as is brought home to us in every disaster. The hope is that this shock will cause everyone to cooperate with reform, and that nothing like it will ever happen again. Rules are there for a reason. When they are not followed, accidents can happen.

Korean TV

Nampyeon (husband) and I don't watch regular television much anymore. It is too full of violence, crude language, and immorality. I don't like that sort of thing going on in real life, and I don't want to watch it on my television. We got tired of turning shows off halfway through. I had high hopes a few years ago for a spin-off show of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. We loved the movie, but someone got a hold of it between the movie theater and the tv station, and the tv show was crude. Bleh.

We have been watching carefully selected movies, and reruns of Star Trek; but now we have something new to watch. Korean drama.

My daughter-in-law watches them and has favorites. The selling points were that they were interesting and clean. The drawback is that you have to read subtitles, but you get used to that.

We started with her favorite: Secret Garden. It is a fantasy about a rich man falling in love with a poor woman who does stunts for movies. He tries to get her to go out with him, she tells him to get lost, magic happens, and their spirits switch bodies. It has really funny parts, sad parts, and interesting secondary characters (an important feature in a show). We enjoyed it a lot and I recommend it to anyone who can read fast.

When we finished Secret Garden we looked at some other Korean shows that are on Netflix. They are not all created the same. One was about some very vicious rich high school students who are extremely rude and bully anyone they don't like. There didn't seem to be any teachers or adults around to make them behave. Double Bleh.

Now we have started watching Heartstrings, also suggested by the daughter-in-law. It is about two college students, one studying traditional Korean music, the other studying western music (specializing in rock). This one also looks fun. I will let you know.