Over at the Sun Herald (March 6, 2012) is the video of the helicopter crash that recently occurred while filming Top Gear Korea. I would embed the video here but I don’t know how so you are going to have to go to the link and watch this helicopter – up close and personal – hit the ground nose first.
And, speaking of fast wheels, the Donga Ilbo (March 5, 2012) has this piece on motorcycle gangs and their own protest movement of March First.
Outlaw motorcycle gangs ride on the March 1 Independence Movement Day and Liberation Day. They take Japanese culture, from where motorcycles originated from, with the concept of resistance and liberation. Japanese biker gangs protested police crackdown and held demonstrations surrounding police headquarters, eventually getting a permit for motorcycles over certain highway stretches. They were youths who stood up against the unique Japanese psyche that hates to interrupt or inconvenience others. Emulating them, Korean biker gangs used the two national holidays to demonstrate their resistance and liberation. It is nonsense, however, that they took the resistance of Japanese gangs on the day when Korea gained independence from Japanese colonial rule.
The article notes that:
today’s biker gangs in Korean, 80 percent of whose members are teenagers, seem to ride just for the sake of riding. A middle school dropout who was arrested Thursday said, “When car drivers who feel threatened by my riding swear, I feel so superior and they seem to pay attention to me.” What the bikers want from people by driving against the flow of traffic or over the median is a sense of superiority and people’s attention. A policeman in charge of biker gangs said, “Most of them are unfortunate youths without a parent or parents. Even if they have parents, they don`t come to the police station to take their children home.”
The police say that it is risky to chase the young bikers so, amongst other methods:
Officers are going to where the gangs often gather and give them snacks to encourage them to follow the law.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
This is the licensed Korean version of the BBC’s Top Gear show, minus Jeremy Clarkson. The format is the same though, and the show hosts are Korean actors, Kim Jin-Pyo, Yun Jung-Hoon, and Kim Kap-Su.
First shown on June 2011, this is the first episode.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewo7JOUwIz8
Anything minus Jeremy Clarkson is a good thing.
I think he means the licensed version of Top Gear without the Top Gear.
hoju_saram:
Check Stewart Lee’s splendid rant on Top Gear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0i0RXMvzMs
By ‘biker gangs’ I believe they’re talking about something more along the lines of scooter gangs. Real motorbike clubs in Korea tend to be much more white collar. My friend’s a member of one and there are no criminal elements at all. He did mention a few years ago about kids on scooters in Seoul going around on 3-1 Day and ripping down Korean flags and showing other signs of hatred towards society in general. Some motorbike clubs in Seoul were apparently talking about going around trying to stop them. At least these ‘gangs’ are relatively short-lived and not into anything particularly well organised.
@5
That was just tasteless and mean-spirited
#7
Coming from you, that is interesting. Please explain?
To borrow and paraphrase from former SC Justice Wizzer White: “I know it when I see/hear it.”
It is what it is.
But, hey, he can say what he likes; that doesn’t mean I have to like or approve it.
No it doesn’t mean that you have to like or approve it, but it is not usual for you to be sensitive or thin-skinned about what constitutes “tasteless and mean-spirited” as opposed to “robust mockery.”
I wonder how much of the clip you watched. Because Stewart Lee’s point (made several times in the bit) was that the Top Gear team (and Clarkson in particular) make their name by being tasteless and mean-spirited. And then laughing it off and saying “only joking~!”
#5: Watched about two minutes of that and found the humour to be a bit too subtle for me.
I’ve watched Top Gear a couple of times. It’s entertaining, but not enlightening in the least. One bit I remember is Clarkson saying how the stupid Yanks used a smoothbore cannon on the M1 tank, which therefore was less accurate than the rifled cannon on the superior British Challenger tank. Uh, nice try, Chief, but smoothbores fire a better round. Anyway, entertainment, not enlightenment.
@10
I watched the whole thing, wincing for about the last 60% – not just because it was tasteless, but because it wasn’t very funny and got increasingly less so. Compared to Clarkson, the Hamster and May, it also seemed very resentment-driven, heavy-handed and unlike the trio, who have also struck me as genuinely “just joking” (even at their most outrageous (which is not to say that they haven’t on a few occasions said regrettable things [among which I DON'T include the reference to British hyundai assembly workers as dog eaters
]), not offered in jest – the disingenuous protestations to the contrary just proving the point. But I suppose we should be grateful that Lee hasn’t actually joined the various self-righteous prigs who have tried to get Clarkson and company dinged from the BBC.
I like Jeremy Clarkson.
There, I’ve said it.
Robert, you realize that he probably only holds those opinions that are in line with yours for the money that he gets for writing them in weekly newspaper columns?
Sperwer: “various self-righteous prigs” eh? I ought to sign off my future emails to you with that monniker. I feel that, if Clarkson et al are selling Top Gear material but the BBC is not profiting it, they should probably be on a for-profit TV station.
It’s surprising a guy as politically incorrect as Clarkson could be on the BBC. Is he the go-to anti-Greenie poster child they trot out to show they’re balanced?
That “comedian” gives all comedians a bad name. If you can’t get a chuckle in two minutes then buh-bye.
Wedge: really? Perhaps you’ve never heard of Jerry Springer, the Opera, for which half of Britian’s Christians wanted to charge Lee with blasphemy.
@14
Who knows what Clarkson really thinks? He’s said himself that he doesn’t believe what he says, thereby acknowledging by implication that he’s in it for the dosh. So what if he is, if everyone knows/thinks that, and he admits it. I happen to think he does believe a lot of what he says or at least of what he says suggests that he believes, even if he has chosen to say it in ways that get up people’s noses. At least he isn’t sanctimonious about it like Lee, who comes across as really at bottom a nasty, humorlesss git, e.g., the extended rift on Hammond, for which compare the genuinely funny (and good-natured) way that Clarkson and May take the piss out of him for his size, dress, etc.etc.
Are Clarkson et al in fact illicitly profiting from Top Gear mdse? It’s a little difficult to believe that all Top Gear related activity, and how the income therefrom is split up, isn’t an agreed matter of contract, i.e., isn’t illicit. Or are you suggesting that BBC doesn’t profit from carrying the show? Again, hard to believe?
Hamel: I think I’m in over my head here. I don’t watch the Beeb, have never seen this comedian before today and have only watched Clarkson twice and read a column by him once, with which I vaguely recall agreeing. I also liked his comment on the Ssangyong Odious making children cry. I have no idea who Hammond or May are. Jerry Springer, however, I certainly know and am less than favorably disposed toward. Now if you want to talk about Dennis Miller…
I like Jeremy Clarkson too. Jaguar fitted with a toilet LOL.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080152/Jeremy-Clarkson-accused-racist-India-toilet-jibes-Top-Gear-Christmas-Special.html
To quote Stewart lee: “If that seems a bit much to Top gear viewers, it’s just a joke, like on Top Gear.”
Good stuff. I couldn’t care less about Clarkson’s opinions; he just comes across as a mean-spirited bully. I saw their Vietnam special, and watching him ride around with a pot for a helmet and then denigrate the local cops did it for me. Tremendous ass.
I didn’t see the Vietnam episode, but I have seen others in which Clarkson et all clown around in questionable and/or offensive ways. But scampering around with a pot on one’s head seems pretty tame in comparison to stating a wish for and then imagining and vividly describing someone’s gruesome wounding and death followed by a gleeful account of of his decapitation. And then repeating the same again, and again.
In his defence, I think he was being ironical. Can I dislike both of them?
Regarding the pot-on-head antics, it was the whole belittling of the stupid orientals attitude that clinched it for me.
Sure .
I also think most of Clarkson’s antics vis-a-vis other cultures is at least as much taking the piss out of white bwana-hood and in relation to the american cousins etc a very tongue-in-cheek send-up of national stereotypes.
I have been a devotee of Top Gear for years (Thank you , BBC America!), and think Jeremy Clarkson is a British “living national treasure,” or whatever they call it these days.
As for the American version of Top Gear, it sucks. ‘Nuff said.
I had not known that Korea now had its own version, and will likely spend a good couple of hours this weekend watching some of the links provided on YouTube. I am not hopeful, though. The magic of the original is not easily replicable, precisely because of the banter of its three British hosts is so unique.
And I can’t even begin to imagine who the producers got to be the Korean version of Stig. I wonder how long THAT will remain a secret?
DLB
P.S. BTW, if the promo is any indication, having screeching chicks riding shotgun as these cars are put through their paces is not a good sign.
OK, I just watched the first episode from season one, and I’m pretty sure I heard one of the hosts call his co-host a “michin-jashik.”
Sweeeeet! Maybe this show has real promise after all!
DLB
DLB,
I bet you would be awesome as one of the drivers in the upcoming BBC Korea 3-man shovel competition and palanquin races, but you’d really have to watch that rice wine intake if you’re going to overtake the local favourite from North Cholla.
Palaquin races? Now that I GOTTA see!
BTW, over lunch I just watched the rest of the first episode of season one, and am very happy to report that the host translated the name of the new MINI Countryman as “chon-nom.”
Fantastic! So far, this Korean version of Top Gear is exceeding ALL expectations!
DLB
Jeremy Clarkson is funnier than any of you lot can ever hope to be. Top gear without him would be drab.
Anyways, it’s sad about the helicopter crash. I look forward to reading the accident report when it’s released.
You must log in to post a comment.