Exam
Hi everyone. Here’s a copy of the exam you wrote. Feel free to use it while studying. But I repeat, do NOT pre-write your answers and memorize them. It will only make answering the questions harder.
Please note that Part 3 is a surprise.
Sorry! (Powerpoint Coming)
Sorry everyone! I’ve tried a couple of times to upload my powerpoint file, and it failed. I think it’s too big for my disk space on this site. I’ll see if I can find a file host for it soon and upload it then!
Thanks for your patience!
Update — the Show! (Club 빵!)
Update: the show we’ll be seeing on Saturday night (7:30pm) is one at Club 빵, in Hongdae. Yeah, as in “bread.” Yes, that will cost you 12,000 won. The bands playing are listed here. But if you’re too lazy to click, they are Lee Young Hun, Oyster Boys, Banana Bow, and Juck Juck Haeseo Grunge. Worth it, and you never bought a text for our class, so don’t complain! 
Here’s a map! (Click to see bigger.)
Check the earlier message for a link (at the Korea Gig Guide) to the time and band list. I expect you will be there unless you’ve talked to me with a good reason.
Feel free to bring your friends, of course. Or your enemies. I will possibly have a few friends there.
Next class is a panel discussion about “Are You A Copyright Criminal” and there’s an article in the earlier post for you to read. Also, next week, well finish our discussion (my lecture) on subversive messages in The Host and in V for Vendetta, and discuss the show we saw, and the real name system and related online free speech issues.
Hope you all have a great week! See you Thursday!
Update!
Hey everyone,
I’ve been slow to update, but here it goes:
READINGS:
I’ve decided to assign an essay by Cory Doctorow for discussion in our class next week (ie. as background to the discussion on May 28th). The essay is titled “How Hollywood, Congress, And DRM Are Beating Up The American Economy.” You may wish to read the Wikipedia page on DRM to understand what he is talking about. If you find this essay interesting, you can download a whole book of essays by Doctorow free. Legally, that is!
PRESENTATIONS:
We have the following presentations in the next few weeks:
May 26th: The Korean Blogosphere and Real Name System
- Myung-Ah Noh, Sook Ja Koo, Bo-ryung Yang
May 28th: Are You a Copyright Criminal?
- Areum Jo, Ji-eun Hwan, Do Jae-Won, Sang-Yoon Lee
June 4th: UCC: Fad or Foundation?
- Kyung-Hee Park, Sunhwa Park, Chahwan Ryu, Youngni Choi
Homework:
The following homework has been assigned in the last few weeks:
- Your dream media project, and how you would carry out the planning, creation, and other steps necessary to make it happen. (Was due today.)
- A group project describing a new technology or medium that would “kill” an older medium.
- A radio play adaptation of an existing story or narrative. Your adaptation should be made after consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of radio as a medium.
- Watch the Hollywood film V for Vendetta and the Korean film 괴물 (The Host) for next class, if you haven’t seen these movies before.
I also said that we would attend a live indie music concert as part of the homework for this course. The show will be on Saturday, May 30th, in the evening, but I’m not sure which show we should see. Please feel free to email me your recommendations if you know any of the bands listed as playing a concert on that night!
OTHER STUFF:
I mentioned the following things in lectures and discussions recently:
- The Dead Media Project
- The Onion (a major internet comedy site that is also a local newspaper in some parts of the USA)
- Indymedia.org (a major independent newsmedia site in the English-speaking world)
- a couple of sites devoted to Korean Indie music and culture:
The War of the Worlds, Radio Version
If you visit the Wikipedia page on the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, you can find links at the bottom of the page to several versions of the broadcast, as well as lots of information about it. Go ahead and have a look. I posted links to Korean and English language versions of the story as well, earlier.
The Exam, and The War of the Worlds
Everyone!
Our panel discussion tomorrow (April 16th) will be about censorship, ratings, and control in Korean media. I expect that your preparation/reaction paper package will be submitted to me when you come to school for your midterm exam on April 21st.
As for the exam, I’ll repeat what I said in class: you will be given a choice of which questions you want to answer, probably by choosing one question from Group A, one question from Group B, and possibly a third in similar fashion. It’s important to express your own ideas and opinion about the question, not just to repeat what was said in class, so I recommend you spend your study time thinking about some of the issues we’ve dealt with and discussed in class. I will select questions from student submissions (on the reaction papers) to make up the test, and will try to select them so they represent a range of different issues for each topic.
Remember that I have instructed you to use a black pen when writing the essay questions for the exam. If you use pencil, it will be discarded. Please also remember to double space, to make reading your answers easier. If I cannot read your writing, I cannot grade it.
I mentioned that we will be looking at the radio play of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds after exams, and suggested that you could read the Korean translation of the novel, or the English version.
You can find one Korean translation here (it’s #22 on the page) but please bear in mind that this is a translation for children. I don’t know what the quality is. I recommend, therefore, looking at the English original, which you can download for free from Manybooks.net. It’s about 175 pages long.
Whatever you do, don’t watch the Tom Cruise movie and then think you know the story — it’s extremely different and one thing we will be discussing (and which will come up on the exam) is the question of how the novel and the radio play are different, and why.
For the Panel Discussion
Here are some links to videos that will be discussed in the Panel Discussion on April 2nd:
Things to Read Up About
Today’s panel discussion was interesting, so we’ll follow up next time with a discussion of advertising. I asked you to read up on the following things before next class (on March 31st):
In Preparation for the Lecture:
- Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”
- Pavlov’s famous experiment with the dog and the bell
In Preparation for the Small Group Discussion:
- What is “sexual discrimination”?
- Have a look at some Korean soju advertisements, especially the recent ones featuring Hyori.
Also, PLEASE remember that your current big homework assignment (making an advertisement for any product, real or imagined) is due on March 31st (correction: April 14th). You may make either a video (ie. TV ad) or magazine advertisement. (If you make a print ad, you might want to submit a series — two or three — in order to make sure your best work is included.) You must NOT use anyone else’s content in your advertisement: no downloading pictures, no downloading music that isn’t legally, freely available.
If you would like some legally usable music, I recommend looking at the website Jamendo. There is a lot there, and if you credit the artist (with a link) it will be enough.
I will want these assignments in electronic form so I can post them to our class website for other students to see.
Panel Discussion #2: Gender and Sexuality in Advertising
Here are some ads for today’s discussion (and more will be added afterwards, I hope):
Student Info Sheet (Old)
I couldn’t find the original file for the Student Info Sheet, so I’m going to upload the old one for those who need to download it. It says Fall 2008 at the top, so please cross that out when you print it and write Spring 2009 instead. Please also (a) make sure you glue your photo onto the page, and (b) make sure you write the name of the class at the top so that I know which class it belongs to.