Guest Blogger - Michael re: Theaters & Television

A few days ago, I welcomed Michael, a guest blogger from Canada, writing about Jeonju City from 1994 to 1995. Here are more of Michael's comments. This time he's talking about the theaters and television.

Theaters

Popcorn was rare in our time. In fact, all you could get was a type of cheese corn that was popped earlier, sprinkled with a fine cheese powder, and bagged for later sale. It was only available at two of the four theaters and was always cold. The main food was dried cuttlefish and a cup of "rancid" mayo as a dip. I am certain they must still sell this via vendors on the street as on the express buses and the trains it was a very common munchie. The theaters themselves were another experience. In the summer the a/c unit was turned off as soon as the movie started and by the end you were sweating up a storm; likewise, in the winter the heat was turned off after the film began. Both actions were at every theater and were based on the economics of running the machinery to a public who had already purchased their tickets. I saw Forest Gump on the big screen for eight weekends in a row in the fall of 1994 (with our students). I also remember seeing Naked Gun 33 1/3, Legends of the Fall, and Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp several times. Do they still hand paint the huge murals in front of the theaters? When we were there they didn't have the huge billboard size decals we use here. Each new movie was announced by a hand painted mural that took about two days in good weather to produce. The artistic ability of these men was tested every week.



Television

Do they still have video-bongs? As you mentioned, the cost of consumer electronics is very high and there were few theaters, so you and a friend would go rent a video and sit in a small Dilbert type cubicle in a large room to watch it. You wore headphones and sat in recliner type chairs. There might be 100 people in your video-bong , but you couldn't see them without standing up. The problem for us was the smoke as it was not allowed, but the policy was not enforced. My school eventually paid for half a TV and VCR and we rented videos from the video / hair dressing shop down the street. As for TV, we had three channels and there wasn't an English show on a single one - ever! The only English TV was the Armed Forced Network in Seoul, Kunson, and Pusan and it only extended a short distance off the bases. Without TV, poor and unreliable delivery of the Korean Times and Korean Herald, and the internet not in common usage we were adrift in a lifeboat without communication. We eventually came to a solution of sorts. At 10:00 PM every evening I went to the our school and tuned their satellite to an English station in Hong Kong, set a 6 hour VCR tape to record, and left it running all night. In the morning we had 6 hours of late night TV / news / cooking shows / and anything else that was on. Without a program guide we never knew what was recorded; however, our afternoons and weekends were spend watching whatever was interesting. This was how we learned of the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma.