Miss Granny (수상한 그녀), The Attorney (변호인) at Pitt in March for 12th annual Korean Film Festival.

Today the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh announced the lineup for the 12th annual Korean Film Festival. The 2014 film Miss Granny (수상한 그녀) will play on March 18, and the 2013 movie The Attorney (변호인) will plan on March 25.

Han Cinema summarizes the former:

Oh Mal-Soon (Nah Moon-hee) is a 74-year-old widow that realizes she is becoming a burden on her family. As she is roaming the streets, she comes across a photo studio and decides to dress up for a self- portrait. When she walks out of the photo studio, she mysteriously turns back into her twenty year old self. Making the most out of this one in a lifetime opportunity, she changes her name to Oh Doo-Ri (Sim Eun-kyeong) and decides to make the most out of her youth.

And the Washington Post summarizes the latter:

The recent South Korean box-office hit observes the progress, beginning in 1978, of a lawyer with few credentials but much ambition. Song Woo-seok (Song Kang-ho) is snubbed by other lawyers because he passed the bar exam without attending law school, or even college. These cohorts are further scandalized when Song begins registering real-estate transactions, a task previously restricted to notaries.

His most inexcusable offense? Song makes a lot of money while doing work other attorneys thought was beneath them.

. . .

Fictionalized from actual events, “The Attorney” shows the transformation of a character based on the late Roh Moo-hyun, who became a human-rights advocate and later South Korea’s president.

Miss Granny will play from 6:00 to 8:00 pm on the 18th, and The Attorney from 4:00 to 7:00 pm on the 25th. Both will play in 4130 Posvar Hall (campus map), and both are free and open to the public.

Pittsburgh City-Paper: "[T]he opening of Nak Won Garden marks the full-fledged arrival of Korean cuisine in Pittsburgh."

The March 11 issue of the Pittsburgh City-Paper contains a review of Nak Won Garden, which opened in Shadyside in November. Food critics Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth write of it:

But there is a difference, we think, in the way that smaller, tighter communities like ours adopt foreign cuisines. Instead of becoming fluent in them through full immersion, we tend to hold dear one or two iconic, gateway dishes, like Mexican tacos, Japanese sushi and Vietnamese pho. Once these have become established, often after several years, we are primed to explore and embrace a broader, more authentic menu.

If this theory holds, then the opening of Nak Won Garden marks the full-fledged arrival of Korean cuisine in Pittsburgh after a decade or more of enthusiasm for Korean barbecue. Open since November on busy Centre Avenue, at the seam of Shadyside and Bloomfield, Nak Won Garden is Pittsburgh's most ambitious Korean restaurant to date.

5th annual Matsuri at CMU, March 27.

The Japanese Student Association at Carnegie Mellon University will present its 5th annual Matsuri on Friday, March 27. The spring matsuri (meaning festival in Japanese) benefits Minato Middle School in Ishinomaki city, which was destroyed by the March 11, 2011 tsunami. More information, from the CMU JSA:

Join us in celebrating aspects of Japanese food, culture and society. We will be hosting the event at Merson Courtyard outside of the Cohon University Center on Friday March 27th, from 3:30 to 8:30 PM. While you enjoy these acts, traditional Japanese decorations and festival games, feel free to eat a variety of foods from our Food Booths such as Takoyaki, Yakisoba, Okonomiyaki, Onigiri and a variety of other Japanese foods! Small carnival games will be available, and J@CMU's origami and cooking groups will also be in attendance to further promote Japanese culture at CMU.

All profits go to recovery efforts for the Minato Middle School in Japan which is still suffering from the earthquake and tsunami three years ago. Your contribution is valuable and we hope to send a sizable amount of supplies this year, as we did last year. For more information regarding donations please go to this site: http://matsuri.cmu-jsa.com/cause.html.

Admission is free and the event is open to the public.

Peking Acrobats at Byham Theater, April 2.

Tickets went on sale in November for the Peking Acrobats at the Byham Theater on April 2, 2015. Prices run from $15 to $35.

이재은 scores Jung-ho Kang autograph, Clint Hurdle scores Jung-ho Kang shirt.

MBC TV personality Jae-eun Lee (이재은) scores a Jung-ho Kang autograph at Pirates Spring Training. For the first time, Korean media are covering the Pirates and Kang remains one of the top sports stories in South Korea this winter.



She caught up with manager Clint Hurdle in his new Kang t-shirt:



Meanwhile, a local writer objects to the attention Kang is getting.

Seoul's PPG Place: Immanuel Methodist Church (임마누엘교회)

Across from Olympic Park in Seoul's Bangi-dong is Immanuel Methodist Church (임마누엘교회), shaped like a large glass castle.




Churches in Korea tend to be large and ostentatious---more often than not they're capped by neon crosses---but this one first caught my eye back in 2006 because it looks almost exactly like PPG Place, perhaps the most distinctive building in Pittsburgh.




PPG Place opened in 1983 and 1984, Wikipedia says, and the new church building ten years later. The church's website doesn't acknowledge the resemblence or the inspiration. Here are a few pictures from my visit in 2010.





PPG Place consists of six builidngs, the largest being 40 stories. The church has two buildings, a 16-story education center and a four-story church, and doesn't enclose a courtyard like its Pittsburgh counterpart. Behind the church is an alley full of motels and singing rooms, and across the street is the park that held the 1988 Summer Olympic Games.

Originally published elsewhere in 2010.

Jung-ho Kang making friends.

Alen Hanson and Jung-ho Kang. "Hanson, my friend."

New Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Jung-ho Kang is one of the biggest stories in Korean sports so far this spring. Daum, the second-largest internet portal in South Korea, has a short video on Kang, cobbled together from various Korean-language interviews. He also introduces viewers to teammates Andrew Lambo, Alen Hanson, and Jose Tabata; he introduces Tabata as the teammate who wants to visit Korea.

TOP Shabu Shabu to open week of March 8.

According to a new sign on the door, TOP Shabu Shabu will open the week of March 8. It's located at 114 Atwood St. (map) in Oakland, the former location of Pizza Sola.

The Pitt News, the student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh, ran a profile on the restaurant in January:

Andrew Khoo, the restaurant’s manager, said although they named the new restaurant after Shabu-shabu, a Japanese style of dining, yet Top Shabu’s hot pot style is traditionally more Chinese.

Customers will order a “hot pot” and whatever meats and vegetables they would like to eat, which servers will bring to the table. Customers will then cook the food using the hot pot, a metal container filled with broth and heated by an electric coil, and eat their food at their table. In hot pots, the food is cooked while the pot simmers. Thinly sliced beef is the traditional choice, Khoo said, but Top Shabu will offer a variety of meat and vegetable options.

“All food is cooked at the table,” Khoo said.

According to Khoo, Top Shabu’s bar will offer Asian-inspired drinks.

“We have a 10 tap system from the previous owner,” Khoo said. “We’ll also have a variety of wine and a large variety of liquor for unique mixed drinks. The mixed drinks will have an Asian influence. For example, melon liqueur is used a lot in China.”

The Drop Box at Cinemark North Hills, March 3 - 5.

The Cinemark North Hills theater will show The Drop Box, a 2015 documentary on Korean pastor Lee Jong-rak and his work with Korean orphans. The title refers to the controversial "baby box" (베이비박스) at Lee's church in Seoul where unwanted newborns may be left anonymously. A synopsis of the documentary produced in part by Focus on the Family:

The Drop Box tells the story of South Korean pastor Lee Jong-rak and his heroic efforts to embrace and protect the most vulnerable members of society. It is a heart-wrenching exploration of the physical, emotional and financial toll associated with providing refuge to orphans that would otherwise be abandoned on the streets. But The Drop Box movie is also a story of hope—a reminder that every human life is sacred and worthy of love.

The Drop Box will run at 7:00 pm on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Tickets are available at the Cinemark website. The theater is located at the McCandless Crossing shopping center on McKnight Road (map), roughly 10 miles north of the city.

Look for Pink Box in Oakland later this year.

Last year, word on the street was Squirrel Hill's Pink Box---a Taiwanese "Asian-European fusion bakery"---would open a location in Oakland in late-2014 or early-2015. Ownership now says to look for it much later in the year, as the bakery will not be moving into the converted house behind K-Box but will instead be knocking it down and constructing a new, modern building incorporating shipping containers at 4527 Winthrop St. (map). An October Post-Gazette article says the Oakland spot will be four times the size of the Squirrel Hill location.