JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

1. Han-Kyo Kim, "Politics in South Korea Since 1993," in John H. Koo and Andrew C. Nahm, eds., An Introduction to Korean Culture (Hollym, 1997), 248-253. [return to page 1 of essay]

2. Michael Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History (University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 179-80.

3. The Hollywood studio, 20th Century Fox, released a remake of this film under the same title, My Sassy Girl, in 2008 with Elisha Cuthbert in the starring role. A Japanese television series, Ryoki Teki Na Kanojo (2008), is also based on this popular Korean film.

4. Often labeled as the next Zhang ZiYi by the South Korean Media, Jun Ji-Hyun recently accepted the opportunity to star in the Hong Kong film, Blood: The Last Vampire. This film is based on a Japanese anime and scheduled to be released in American theaters in 2009.

5. The use of a word, “sassy,” is to describe an opinionated, authoritative, and domineering quality of Jun’s on-screen persona in My Sassy Girl and Windstruck. Likewise, “quirky” will be used to describe the eccentric, wacky, and unconventional nature of her persona in these films.

6. Sung Baek-Yup, "A Study of the Strong Woman Images in Korean Cinema," Unpublished Thesis (Seokang University, 2002), 29.

7. After the commercial success of My Sassy Girl the word “sassy” entered the cultural lexicon in Korea as a popular modifier in everyday life to describe things of any unconventional nature.

8. Park Eun-Young, “A Review of Windstruck,” Cine 21, June 2004.

9. Kim Hyun-Mi, Kullobol Sidaeui Munhwabonyok [Cultural Translation in a Global Age] (Ttohanaui Munhwa, 2006), 242-244.

10. Ko Jong-Suk, “A Review of My Sassy Girl,” Cine 21, August 2001.

11. Sung Baek-Yup, 30-32.

12. Kim Min-Young, “Crying over Men, A Review of Windstruck,” Cine21, July 2004.

13. Soyoung Kim, “A Critique of Windstruck,” Cine 21, June 2004.

14. The Lake House (dir. Alejandro Agresti, 2006), in which Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves starred, is a Hollywood remake of this Korean film, Il Mare (2000).

15. The use of italics here indicates some form of special emphasis (e.g., tonal inflections) utilized by the respondent. The usage of italics in the transcripts hereafter, with the exception of film titles, represents emphasis by the respondent.

16. The issue of translation needs to be addressed in any study that involves data collection in multiple languages. The focus group interview with the Korean-American women (group 1) was conducted in English while the Korean women (group 2) spoke Korean in the focus group interview session. While I tried to translate as directly as possible it would be remiss to not acknowledge that certain specificities may have been lost in translation. As a translator and a researcher I strive to focus on meaning in both the star image of Jun Ji-Hyun and the larger themes that emerge from the focus group interview data.

17. Neo-Confucianism (developed by Zhu Xi during the Song dynasty in China) is the term used to distinguish this belief system from the earlier form of Confucianism by Confucius and Mencius.

18. W. Theodore DeBary et al., Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol 1. (Columbia University Press, 1960), 457.

19. Taeyon Kim provides the social and historical processes through which the notions of female body have been constructed in Korea in “Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society,” Body and Society, Vol. 9(2), 2003.

20. Ibid.

21. Sung Baek-Yup, 18.[return to page 2]

22. Linda Williams, “When the Woman Looks,” in Mary Ann Doane, et al. eds., Revision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (American Film Institute, 1984), 83.

23. Ibid., 83.

24. Kim Hyun-Mi, 260-261.

25. Moon Suk, “Three Reports on Jun Ji-Hyun [3],” Cine21, June 2003.

26. Taeyon Kim, 103.

27. Iwabuchi Koichi, “From Western Gaze to Global Gaze: Japanese Cultural Presence in Asia,” in Diane Crane et.al. eds., Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization, (Routledge, 2002), 270.

28. Park Mun-Ki, Starwa CF [Star Marketing] (Doonam, 2006), 100.

29. The products Jun endorses include Coca Cola, Pantene hair products, Ponds skin care products, Olympus cameras, Samsung cell phones, and LG Telecom.

30. Moon Suk, Cine 21.

31. This is a Korean phrase which means “advertisement represents the essence of capitalism.”

32. Bryan Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (Sage Publications, 1996), 3-5.

33. I draw on the notion of sign-value in postmodern consumption practices from Arthur W. Frank, For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytical Review, in Mike Featherstone and Bryan Turner, eds., The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory (Sage Publications, 1991), 36-102.