PIBOT wasn’t designed with ships in mind. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST, built it as a life-sized humanoid pilot, roughly 5 feet 3 inches tall and 143 pounds, able to climb into an ordinary aircraft cockpit and fly it using the exact same switches, yokes and throttles a human pilot would use, with zero modification to the plane itself. That’s the entire point of the design, according to the KAIST team led by professor David Shim: rather than building a new autopilot system for every aircraft type, you build a robot that can operate whatever cockpit is already sitting in front of it.
Handsome young policeman, son of police big shot, moves to small town where he teams up with a 20 year veteran. Shortly thereafter there is a murder, a murder in a small town where there hasn't been a murder in 20 years. The story centers on the staff of the local Manyang police substation. Note: Manyang is not the same as Munju.
Characters. All men unless otherwise noted.
Lee Dong-sik - A local detective whose life was turned upside down when his sister disappeared 20 years ago,
Han Joo-won - A young, handsome detective, son of the Assistant Director of the National Police Force.
Park Jeong-je - A captain at the Manyang substation and Dong-sik's childhood friend.
Yoo Jae-yi (woman) - The hardworking operator and manager of the Manyang butcher shop and restaurant.
Nam Sang-bae - The chief of the Manyang police substation, nearing the end of his career.
Oh Ji-hwa (woman) - Head of the violent crimes team at the Munju Police Station. Previously married to:
Lee Chang-jin - The CEO of the JL Construction company, heavily involved in local development projects. Previously married to Oh Ji-hwa. Slimy thug. You despise him as soon as he opens his mouth.
The grocer, apparently not too smart, and he has a stutter.
Han Joo-won's father, big shot in the national police force.
Park Jeong-je's mother, local politician.
Several women victims.
Very slow paced story of horrific serial killer in a small town in Korea. It starts with the discovery of a body. The investigation goes very slowly for the first 7 or 8 episodes, mostly we have everyone suspecting everyone else. They the investigation starts getting results. Eventually the whole story is revealed.
The story starts 20 years ago when the sister of a local policeman, Lee Dong-sik, discovers their neighbor, the grocer attempting to dispose of the body of a woman he has killed. He, being the demented son-of-a-bitch that he is, cuts off the tips of her fingers. She manages to escape from his clutches and runs down the road looking for help. The chief of police (who will be Han's father), driving home drunk after a late night party with his two partners, hits her and kills her. He calls his partner, Lee Chang-jin, to come help him clean up the mess. The Chang-jin shows up, takes charge, and the chief leaves. Chang-jin doesn't do anything, he leaves the body in the middle of the road. Not too much later, a teenage boy, Park Jeong-je, also drunk, comes down the same road and runs over the body. He calls his mom, who is the chief's other partner. She calls Chang-jin and he comes out to this same scene, again. He loads the body in his car, but then . . . something happens, I don't recall exactly what . . . and when he gets back the body is gone. The grocer has finally caught up with his victim. He carts her off, takes her back to her house (not his house) and walls her up in a concrete block wall next to the boiler, which he repaired. This repair must have been going on at the same time in order for his working in the basement to go unremarked.
Now everyone clams up and the murder goes unsolved for 20 years. The dead girl's brother, Lee Dong-sik, is now an inspector with the local police department. Chang-jin has become a developer and Park Jeong-je's mother is running for mayor. The chief of police (Han's father) is now the deputy director of the national police force. His son, Han, has joined the police. As part of all cops early service, they need to spend some time in a rural district, so he gets transferred to this same small town.
He's a good looking guy, but he's got some minor psychological problems. He's hyper-sensitive about cleanliness, his personal space and the letter of the law. He seems to be a good cop, but it takes him forever to respond to anyone talking to him. Or maybe that's just the director wanting to keep his pretty face on the screen for a while. He seems to be pretty smart, but these long delays make him look kind of stupid, so what's the deal?
Now another body shows up. Actually, it's the first one the grocer killed. It was buried in the swamp 20 years ago but has worked its way to the surface. Her fingertips have also been cut off, which leads to suspicion that it might be the cop's missing sister, but DNA evidence shows that it is not her.
Dong-sik and Han have both been collecting missing persons reports and they have about a dozen reports of women about 30 years old who have gone missing. This new dead body spurs them to do some more digging. They spend a good deal of time suspecting each other over the flimsiest of circumstances. Can't say as I blame them since they don't have any other evidence.
Now the grocer kills his 20 year old daughter. Evidently, 20 years ago, a hooker got pregnant and then latched onto the grocer who marries her. The hooker gives birth, leaves the baby with the grocer and runs off. Now the grocer embarks on a 20 year campaign of revenge, killing hookers and burying them in a field. The baby grows up to be an irresponsible brat. Both the grocer and the kid suspect he is not her father. Eventually her behavior sends him over the edge and he kills her. Now his whole sordid tale unravels.
The Price of Confession | Official Trailer | Netflix [ENG SUB]
Netflix K-Content
Korean murder mystery. We have two near simultaneous murder cases. The two prime suspects, both women, soon arrive in solitary confinement where they hatch a nefarious scheme to get our girl released. Our girl doesn't like it but she goes along with it because the alternative appears to be a life sentence in prison.
The prosecutor is convinced our girl murdered her husband, and given the evidence on hand, she does look pretty guilty. The show gives us two fairly balanced re-enactments of her husband's murder, one in which she is guilty as sin, another where she is completely innocent. The only way we know she is innocent is because nobody that sweet and loyal could be a murderer.
As the show goes on, strange messages and photos show up, and also we get glimpses of someone sneaking around in the shadows. It is not till near the end that the real culprit is revealed. It's kind of odd because there has been no indication that they were involved and the reasons for the murder are paper thin, unless you are a crazy person, and eventually that crazy is revealed.
Mercy For None | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Korean John Wick wades through an army of thugs using his fists, knives, broken glass, actually anything that comes to hand. You know the shits about to go down when he puts on his gloves. Sometimes he'll pick up a knife in the middle of one of his killing sprees and we get even more blood splashed on the screen. For the main event, he has a special bat made. It's a metal bat and looks like there is a five pound weight wrapped around the big end. It makes a great sound when he drags it across the concrete floor.
Unlike John Wick, it's not about his dog, it's about his brother. The useless son of an allied chief gangster ordered the hit. Half way through the show, our guy gets his revenge. Think this might trigger an even bigger bloodbath? Well, we've still got three episodes to go. Somehow I don't think they're going to sitting around drinking tea and crumpets and discussing their philosophy of revenge.
The Watching the Detectives label is there to let you know this show is about criminals. However, we've only seen one cop so far, and he wasn't doing much detecting. He was being interrogated by a mob boss.
This show is just nuts. We've got a whole bunch of very rotten characters who are willing to do all kinds of evil in order to get there grubby little paws on heaps of money.
The show starts off with a degenerate loser who is in debt to a loan shark. The loan shark is a serious dude, he has threatened to cut up the loser and sell his organs, so loser is highly motivated to pay back the loan. Meanwhile, his father gets knocked down by a car. Other than some scraps are bruises, he is uninjured, but he spends the night in the hospital. He sends his loser son to his house to pick some clothes and his son uses this opportunity to rifle through his dad's stuff and finds a 500 million yen accidental death life insurance policy (figure a thousand yen to the dollar and you won't be far off). All this gives dummkoff the idea to hire a hitman to knock off his father.
After this the show kind of explodes into multiple intersecting stories of murder, confidence games, extortion, blackmail and double dealing. It's pretty incredible. We've watched three of the six episodes and we've got like six story lines that, I expect, will collide in a spectacular finale.
The Recruit: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
This is an action thriller. Our boy is a lawyer working for the CIA and he's gets dispatched to deal with a legal problem in far away places, but when he pulls on the legal problem, reality intrudes.
This time the Yakuza (Japanese gangsters) have kidnapped a woman working for some charity outfit delivering food somewhere on the east coast of Russia. Initially, it is not clear what has happened to her, she has just vanished. Eventually we hear that her deliveries were somehow interfering with their smuggling operation. Basically, the kidnapping was just an excuse for our boy to unleash mayhem on the Russkies, which he does in fine style.
Curiously, the CIA is portrayed as being full of evil and corrupt people who aren't above killing co-workers if it means they get a shot at a promotion or a better office. They are some real scum bags.
We were watching Stranger, a Korean crime drama, last week. Everything is centered on Seoul and then out of the blue Hwang's boss announces that he going to be sent to the USA to see how prosecutors operate over there. His first stop is going to be Austin, Texas, which was a bit of a shock because that's where we met. Makes me wonder how well Austin is known outside of the USA. Might be because it's a known hotspot for music.
We started watching the second season of Stranger, a Korean crime series on Netflix, and it's taken a left turn off into Constitutional law. Along with some petty crime (that might turn out to be murder), corruption, cover ups and a whole bunch of political infighting, we also have the police fighting the prosecutor's office over who has the authority to issue warrants. Seems if was changed in the 1980 constitution that was written after the military coup, or at least in this story it was.
This got me thinking about how our own constitution came to be. I know the 'founding fathers' got together and hashed it out, but where did they get the ideas? I'm thinking a 'classical' education may have something to do with that. I wonder what kind of constitution people would come up with today. Could we do any better? I kind of like the one we've got, it seems to have served us pretty well so far.
Which makes me wonder just what a 'classical education' is. I imagine it means reading some old books, but do you really get any more out of reading the originals in their archaic language than you would get out of reading a modern summary? Of course there is always the question of whether the summary is true to the original, but then how do you know the original is the one you should read? Someone else might suggest a different book by a different author, one that has a completely different view of people and the world. If you are diligent and a critical thinker, you will probably be able to sort it out. But what if you trust your instructors and they feed you a bunch of hogwash, will you be able to sort it out?
Korean crime drama with a convoluted plot. We have a murder, but most of the show is about the political infighting going on in the prosecutor's office. There is an investigation into the murder, which grows into an investigation into corruption, which means you never know who is really a good guy and who is corrupt, lying, dirty dog. Except we do because the actors are giving us subtle hints. Well, except for one guy who is obviously a psychopathic scumbag. All that is beside the point because the reason we are watching it is because of the bright spots provided by the lead characters. Those bright spots don't happen often, but they really shine when they do because of horrid background provided by the rest of the show.
Netflix, in Korean with English subtitles. Season 1 has 16 episodes, one hour each. Season 2 in progress.
The K2 is a pretty terrible political thriller / action / drama. In Korean with English subtitles, 16 episodes on Netflix. I mean, it's not bad as these sort of things go. We have a big fight scene in every episode, we have a large assortment of bad guys, a bit of comedy, a touch of romance and a selection of really nasty villains. There are a couple of instances of slick technology being employed, but mostly we have drama alternating with action. Occasionally we get an emotional scene with some syrupy singing. They don't translate the singing, but you don't really need it. It's probably the same emotional drivel as we get in our own syrupy songs, and the translation would probably come out sounding like nonsense.
Our hero, after having been on the lamb for a while, returns to the warm embracing fold of a security service where he is given the code name K2. There is a campaign for the presidency going on, and our hero has discovered that one of the candidates is a vile, murdering scumbag. Fortunately, his security service is employed by the opposing candidate, who is also a creep, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so he goes along with their campaign, until he finds out that 'madam', who is the power behind the throne is just as vile as the opposition. That puts him in kind of a bind.
Reminds me of our own presidential campaign here in the USA. I have no doubt that people operating at that level are perfectly capable of being vile, underhanded, backstabbing, scumbags.
"There’s a reason that the Costco in Seoul, South Korea sells more American beef every day than anywhere else on earth." - Kacy Atkinson
Okay, it's not a profound bit of wisdom or a clever insight into the human psych, but it is a bolt out of the blue. There are Costco stores in South Korea? They sell American beef? Who knew?
