Exciting "Story"

Attention readers of Fun Times in South East Korea. I will be starting a new series in which I can exercise my literary skills. Well I wouldn't say that I have literary skills so much as there will be a fiction section to FTISEK.

For people who have no experience with Korea I need to catch you up on a somewhat interesting facet of Korean marketing culture. Occasionally in Korea, Koreans give stores or businesses a name with the word "story," attached to it. If the store is a clothing store, it might be named jeans story. If it is a noodle shop it might be named 면 이야기, or noodle story. I'm not sure if anyone knows why this practice is popular or what the word "story," means in this context, but I intend to give meaning to it.

My plan is to find a place that is named "something something "story," I will take a picture of it, and then I will write a story about it. Suppose there is a place called coffee story, I'll write a story about coffee. I'll try to write these stories in the context of Korean culture, or like a bad Korean movie.

Some times Korean movies have out of context details that weaken the over all effect of the movie. A popular Korean comedy called "Sex is Zen," billed it's self as the Korean, "American Pie," and was both hilarious and disgusting until some guy tried to force a woman to have an abortion, and then the movie was like "Whoa you did not just go there." Some times Korean movies have ten minute long montages of gangsters beating up some woman. So if I make a story called "Rice Story," that is billed as a romantic comedy there might be: animal cruelty, bladder warts, spontaneous toddler, a bar ironically named "rice story," a talking mouse who accidentally kills a pregnant woman which is supposed to be a metaphor for something, or even paraplegic Steve Perry who endures as a rice farmer.

This project will take some time because I both have to see a place that is called "______ story," and have a camera in order to take a picture, and then I have to think up a short story to write it. So one might follow the other. I might write a "noodle story," and then find a place called noodle story and take a picture of it.

Best wishes
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