학원 in Pittsburgh? Murrysville man starts SAT academy based on South Korean models.

Yesterday's Tribune-Review profiled Jesse Lee, who started mySchooler Academy and Education Consulting after being dissatisfied with options for preparing his own son for the SATs:

Lee moved to the United States from South Korea in 2000, earning a master's degree in information science from Carnegie Mellon University.

“A couple years ago I thought about it, that I just needed (to provide) that for college preparation,” said Lee, 46, who lives in Murrysville with his wife, Kyung, and son Jay, a junior at Penn-Trafford High School. “Originally we started this year in January: Saturday classes started at that point and then we just expanded them. Our students just needed more, so we set up doing a summer schedule for them.”

Talk with author of Love Beyond Measure: Memoir of a Korean War Bride, July 29.

On July 29, the South Butler Community Library will host author Katie Schell to discuss her 2013 book Love Beyond Measure: Memoir of a Korean War Bride:

Encounter a breathtaking story about one of the first Korean women to ever live in Moon Township, PA. This memoir details the amazing life of her mother Ock Soon Lee’s journey as a young Korean peasant who survived unspeakable suffering. Orphaned at age seven and farmed out to households as a slave, Lee experienced near-starvation and capture by the North Korean Army. Yet, incredibly she survived and fell in love with an American G.I. from McKees Rocks. After immigration laws changed in the late 1950’s she became one of a small handful of Korean War brides to make it to the United States. This is a true story of incredible courage that carried Ock Soon Lee from life as a peasant in Korea to that of a proud American. It is a story of strength and love during the Korean War. It is a story you will never forget.

Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania's Picnic with Iwate Prefecture Teenagers, August 7.

The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania (based in Pittsburgh) has announced an August 7 picnic with a group of six teenagers from Iwate Prefecture. From the JASP event listing:

Come and join us Thursday, August 7th, 2014 at 6 p.m. for a picnic in Schenley Park. We will be picnicking with six teenagers from Iwate Prefecture who were affected by the tsunami earthquake in 2011. These children are visiting Pittsburgh courtesy of UK-based The PINE Foundation, and were selected on the basis of their stellar participation in extracurricular English-learning activities by the Children’s Empowerment Iwate Charity (http://www.epatch.jp/). This picnic is a great opportunity to help them gain more knowledge of U.S. culture and give them positive thoughts of the world after they suffered from huge trauma in the tsunami earthquake.

Meats and beverages will be provided by The PINE Foundation. Please bring a side dish to share, as well as any picnic chairs you may have.

Registration is required by July 31, and can be done so online or by calling a number provided at the link. The picnic will be held at Westinghouse Shelter (map).

Korean-style fried chicken place Chick'n Bubbly to soft-open in Oakland Monday, July 28.

Chick'n Bubbly announced today, during its free sample giveaway, that it will have a soft opening on Monday, July 28. Chick'n Bubbly is a Korean-style fried-chicken place at 117 Oakland Ave. (map), next to Oishii Bento---routinely voted the best local Korean and Japanese restaurants by Pitt News readers---with whom it shares owners. We scanned a menu below:

Free samples of Chick'n Bubbly on July 25.

Chick'n Bubbly announced on Facebook a little before noon that it would offer free samples of its Korean-style fried chicken from 12:30.



Chick'n Bubbly is under construction at 117 Oakland Ave. (map), and will be Pittsburgh's first Korean fried chicken place.

Pittsburgh-based papercutting artist Bovey Lee in the news this week.

Vase I (detail 2), via her website.

This week a couple of blogs (1, 2) have profiled Hong Kong native and Pittsburgh-based papercutting artist Bovey Lee. An excerpt from her artistic statement:

My narrative-based cut paper explores the tension between man and the environment in the context of power, sacrifice, and survival. These three “motivators,” as I call them, drive all our desires and behaviors toward one another and the environment. We live in a time when we overdo everything from technology to urbanization to consumption. My recent work is informed by our precarious relationship with nature in the twenty-first century, i.e., what we do to the environment with our super machines and technologies and what nature does back to us in reaction.

I hand cut each work on a single sheet of Chinese xuan (rice) paper backed with silk and both are renewable and eco-friendly materials.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville, from July 25.

The newly-opened Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville will show Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) from July 25 through July 31. A contemporary Chicago Tribune review of the 2000 martial arts film:

This is a film that really soars. One of the best adventure movies of the last decade, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is also gravely, eerily beautiful: poetic and moving in ways that we usually don't associate with violent genre films. The movie draws on three Chinese language cultures -- the subject is Chinese, the director (Lee) is Taiwanese-American, but the style is Hong Kong to the core. Yet where the classic Hong Kong actioners -- films such as "A Chinese Ghost Story" and "Wu-Warriors of the Magic Mountain" -- are often rambunctiously kitschy and over-the-top, this movie has richer veins of psychology and character, even though Lee, a devotee of such films since boyhood, plays with most of their conventions (one-against-a-bunch fights, treetop battles, wizards and sorcerers).

The movie stars Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, and Chow Yun-Fat. Showtimes vary at the single-screen theater, and are listed on the website. The theater is located at 4115 Butler St. (map).

Golden Pig to reopen July 31.

Golden Pig, the best Korean restaurant in the area, will reopen July 31.



It had been closed since May 28 while the owner was in Korea. Golden Pig is located in Cecil Township (map), about 20 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

Former Penguin Jim Paek named coach of South Korea's men's national hockey team.

Via Yonhap:

South Korea has turned to a former National Hockey League (NHL) defenseman to lead its men's national hockey team, hoping his playing experience and coaching acumen could help the country qualify for the next Winter Olympics on home ice.

The Korea Ice Hockey Association (KIHA) announced Wednesday it has signed Jim Paek, the first player of Korean descent to play in the NHL, as the new head coach and executive director of the men's national team. He agreed to a four-year deal but financial terms weren't disclosed.

Korean-Canadian Paek (백지선) was the first Korean player in the NHL and played parts of four seasons with the Penguins. The second Korean player, Richard Park, also debuted with Pittsburgh. Baek has been an assistant in the American Hockey League since 2005.

Yojimbo (用心棒) at Oakland's Melwood Screening Room, July 30.

Oakland's Melwood Screening Room will present the 1961 Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo (用心棒) on July 30. An excerpt of a 2005 Roger Ebert review:

[Kurosawa] was deliberately combining the samurai story with the Western, so that the wind-swept main street could be in any frontier town, the samurai (Toshiro Mifune) could be a gunslinger, and the local characters could have been lifted from John Ford's gallery of supporting actors.

Ironic, that having borrowed from the Western, Kurosawa inspired one: Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), with Clint Eastwood, is so similar to "Yojimbo" that homage shades into plagiarism. Even Eastwood's Man With No Name is inspired, perhaps, by the samurai in "Yojimbo." Asked his name, the samurai looks out the window, sees a mulberry field, and replies, "Kuwabatake Sanjuro," which means "30-year-old mulberry field." He is 30, and that is a way of saying he has no name.

He also has no job. The opening titles inform us that in 1860, after the collapse of the Tokugawa Dynasty, samurai were left unemployed and wandered the countryside in search of work. We see Sanjuro at a crossroads, throwing a stick into the air and walking in the direction it points. That brings him to the town, to possible employment, and to a situation that differs from Hollywood convention in that the bad guys are not attacking the good guys because there are no good guys[.]

The show starts at 8:00, and the theater is located at 477 Melwood Ave. in Oakland (map). Part of the Essential Cinema series, tickets are $2.