In the film, she is wicked, bitchy and abusive. In reality, Jun Ji-hyun, the leading actress of My Sassy Girl, said she's just a 21-year-old who is still taking acting classes in college.
Tall, thin, and with fair skin and a delicate face, Jun gained swift popularity in Korean TV dramas before going on to films two years later. The success of My Sassy Girl moved her forward in the list of top Korean actresses. She won the Best Actress and Most Popular Actress categories in the recent Korean Film Awards and was also selected as the Most Representative Korean Actress this year by Korean film magazine Screen. Recent media reports in her native country say that her take-home pay per film has risen to over 300 million won (US$244,000). For making a commercial, her salary has reached a similarly high 700,000 won.
Perhaps because of the bossy girl she plays in My Sassy Girl, which is distinct from the mostly submissive female roles in Korean films, Jun has been labeled as the new image for women in Korean film.
PHOTO: LI WEI-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
In one scene in My Sassy Girl, she plays a futuristic warrior, in another she's a martial artist, shooting, hacking and flipping over her enemies. Off screen she is similarly agile. She says she does all her stunts herself. "I'd love to try a role like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. I like Angelina Jolie a lot," she said.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
While Americans face the upcoming second Donald Trump presidency with bright optimism/existential dread in Taiwan there are also varying opinions on what the impact will be here. Regardless of what one thinks of Trump personally and his first administration, US-Taiwan relations blossomed. Relative to the previous Obama administration, arms sales rocketed from US$14 billion during Obama’s eight years to US$18 billion in four years under Trump. High-profile visits by administration officials, bipartisan Congressional delegations, more and higher-level government-to-government direct contacts were all increased under Trump, setting the stage and example for the Biden administration to follow. However, Trump administration secretary
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,
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