It all started with a Samsung. As these things so often do (?) At some point I decided that I didn’t need an iPhone and acquired (cos you don’t really ‘buy’ them, in any meaningful sense) my first Samsung. I liked it. More importantly, Mel could use it. Like, most of it, without too much help. Which was an amazing testament to the facility of the Android system. Even a self-confessed technophobe can handle a Samsung phone. So we went Korean. And haven’t looked back. We’re now on 3rd or 4th upgrades over, maybe 10 years, and they do everything we need them too. Which may be way less than many people ‘need’ to do on their phones but we’re happy!

Then, in 2015, Spurs bought a player from Bayer Leverkusen. Son Heung Min. And after about 3 years of him being ‘that Chinky geezer’, or ‘a noriental bloke’, even the most die hard Spurs fan accepted that this fabulous and fabulously happy player who we all by then loved dearly, was in fact Korean. South Korean (the good bit) and in fact the captain of their national football team. Nothing at all to do with North Korea, with Kim Jong Un, with nuclear threats, nothing. Just a nice, smiley, goal-scoring SOUTH Korean. As a consequence of which, Spurs on match days is now a version of ‘Little Seoul’. Of Korea-town. They flock to White Hart Lane from as far away as Loughborough, Kettering and Milton Keynes to see and adore their national hero.

In 2016 a Korean movie re-made ‘the handmaid’s tale’, called The Handmaiden. It was a truly brilliant and beautiful film, remarkably so. And in fact started the international obsession with the book which followed. With a tv series (never seen it, no idea how they drag a wonderful story out to cover 19 seasons of 10 episodes each, but that’s tv), the re-launch of the book, the sequel, the prequel, with Handmaid’s tale-mania.

And then last night. The coup de gras. The night when South Korea finally found its place on the map. When the movie Parasite won the Oscars for best movie and best director. Both of which are Korean. It’s a forrin film. And never before has such a thing won anything at the Oscars other than ‘best forrin film’. To win ‘best film’ when it is sub-titled, non-American, non-English-speaking and downright slanty-eyed is positively humongous. YOU WANT DIVERSITY????? The Academy ‘shouted’, TAKE THIS MUTHA THEN!!!! I didn’t know that many Academy members could actually read that a sub-titled movie could win, but there ya go. I’ve underestimated that fine nation yet again. Not Korea, you don’t underestimate them, but America. Always truly worthy of underestimation.

I’m going to see Parasite tonight. In my defence I booked it yesterday BEFORE it won the Oscar.

Happy Monday

A xxxx