Actress Kim Tae-hee (pic) is chosen as Korea’s most beautiful female celebrity in a recent KBS survey with 15,222 respondents.
The top 10 in sequence are… Kim Tae-hee, Lee Young-ae, Han Ga-in, Song Hye-kyo, Kim Hee-sun, Son Ye-jin, Han Ye-seul, Jun Ji-hyun, Kim Hye-soo and Shim Eun-ha.
Update – Found out from K-popped that there’s a poll for actors too, and the top 10 in sequence are Jang Dong-gun, Jo In-sung, Rain, Bae Yong-joon, Song Seung-hun, Won Bin, Jung Woo-sung, Hyun Bin, So Ji-sub and Lee Byung-hun.
Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” is Japan’s highest grossing domestic movie in 2008, while “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” tops the international list.
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (Image from
Gibli Studio (Jp))
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English subbed Japanese music video of “Endless Story” by American-Japanese artist Yuna Ito; the song is an insert for movie “Nana” in which Ito starred as a pop star…
The song is a cover of “If I’m Not in Love”, written by Dawn Thomas and first sang by Kathy Troccoli in 1994. There are a few other covered versions of the song… American country singer Faith Hill did it in 1999, Taiwanese singer Saya in Mandarin shortly after Endless Story (2005), and Hong Kong singer Janice’s Cantonese version in 2008.
Folks at Koreasparkle is running a Korean blog awards in which our pop channel is nominated as Best Blog about Korean Pop Culture.
To be frank, I’m not keen in websites’ awards… so I’m not going to bore you with the poll, especially if you are not familiar with the nominees.
The nominee list provides some good links though, with bunches of Korean related blogs in various topics… might find a few interesting ones if you are keen in Korean stuff.
Thanks for the nomination, although I still find it a bit odd considering the fact that this blog is not dedicated entirely to Korean matters.
A pair of pandas donated by China to Taiwan made their debut at Taipei City Zoo following an opening event by Taiwanese President Ma Ying Jiu on January 24th.
Taiwanese President with the first group of panda’s visitors (Image from
Xinhuanet)
The pandas, named Tuan-Tuan and Yuan-Yuan (Tuan-Yuan means Reunion in Chinese), arrived in Taiwan in late December 2008 and underwent a month long quarantine before being officially introduced to the public. A group of 500 orphans and underprivileged kids were the first group of visitors.
The panda diplomacy is seen as a huge leap of relationship between the two political entities. China first suggested the donation in 2005 but was rejected by Taiwan’s leadership back then, but the idea was embraced in 2008 with the change of Taiwanese presidency.
Seollal (설날), or Korean New Year, is the first day of the Lunar Calendar and one of the two most important traditional Korean holidays (the other is Chuseok).
Koreans in traditional Hanbok to celebrate Seollal (Image via
Korea.net)
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Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Seollal (Korean) and Happy New Year to everyone who celebrates the Lunar New Year. For others, well… best wishes to you too :)
Sharing an old CNY song by Sam Hui, “God of Wealth has Arrived” (財神到)…
The nominees for the 45th Baeksang Arts Awards (Korea) has been announced; you can refer to Hanfever for the list. I am sharing some pics instead, which looks kinda cool with all the nominee’s faces grouped together…
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