“Find Kany” (gwang series, YouTube)
Kim Rieun: She dances to her heart’s content as her mother-in-law busily cooks away. She jokingly grabs her husband’s hair while they watch a soap opera together to vent her frustration over the show. Scenes like these are normally hard to imagine taking place in Korea, but it’s different on “Find Kany.” Kany, a renowned dancer and performance director who’s worked with big names like Michael Jackson and Beyoncé, made waves on air when viewers met her as SHINee member KEY’s friend on MBC’s “I Live Alone.” Her uninhibited dancing and nonstop banter, even in front of people she doesn’t know, helps her effortlessly cross Korean cultural boundaries. When her mother-in-law gets on her about wearing rubber gloves, Kany lightens the mood with a dance, and when a shaman says her husband’s reading destines him to be her supporter, she reciprocates with wishes for success in his own career. As someone who throws the “think before you act” mantra on its head, Kany’s consistently honest, outgoing, unapologetic attitude cheerfully disrupts sensitive cultural hierarchies such as gender roles within families, in-law dynamics, and relationships between Koreans and foreigners. It’s also what fuels moments like the housewarming dinner, where her husband, mother-in-law, and French friends sit around and laugh together, proving that people with different backstories can come together and enjoy each other’s company.

Even the outgoing Kangnam, a proud self-professed chatterbox, has to throw in the towel after eight meals in one day. “It’s been 15 years in this industry,” he says, defeated, “and I’ve never met someone with so much energy.”  But Kany also breaks into tears when a fortune teller describes her as someone who sacrifices herself for others, confessing that she finds happiness in making those around her happy. For as much as she loves over-the-top Korean TV dramas and K-pop, no doubt she’s been through her share of tough times, like when the language barrier causes her to misinterpret her mother-in-law’s words. Kany similarly tears up when the fortune teller talks of her late grandmother, but, conscious of the cameras, just as quickly raises her voice and lightens the mood, showing that she may have been born a well of energy, but she also makes a conscious effort to be sincere. Perhaps that’s the secret to how she gained 150,000 subscribers in just two weeks—or as one comment puts it, “You better watch this lying down because it’ll sap your energy.” Boisterous but innocuous, and somehow impossible to stop watching—a series more addictive than everything K-dopamine has to offer.

Link Up (Apple Music Playlist)
Seo Seongdeok (Music Critic): Whether it’s a duet, a feature, or a collaboration, joint projects between artists have become a modern staple of pop music. It’s become especially common for artists to show up on remixes. One obvious reason for the trend is for the boost to popularity and longevity in an oversaturated music market, but giving songs a new frame like this also gives them new meaning, and that’s why Apple Music’s Link Up playlist is able to spotlight all kinds of diverse collaborations rather than just focus on hit songs from well-known pairs. Take a look at the song that’s currently first on the playlist, for instance: “Yellow Hearts” by Ant Saunders. Saunders wrote the song just before graduating high school about a real experience he had with an ambiguous romantic relationship symbolized by yellow hearts. The song went viral on TikTok, sparking a challenge where people responded as the girl in the song. Audrey Mika’s version was particularly popular and ultimately led to her featuring on an official remix in which the single confused perspective of the original evolves into a dialog reflecting two distinct emotional perspectives. And that’s just one song. The playlist is an opportunity to explore how new connections between artists can expand the boundaries of music.

“Your Utopia” (Bora Chung)
Kim Boksung (Writer): Author Bora Chung made her literary debut long ago but came to international prominence when her short story collection “Cursed Bunny” was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. After “Cursed Bunny,” she also published another collection, “Your Utopia,” titled after the included short story “To Meet Her” in the original Korean run. After this book too made waves internationally following the release of Anton Hur’s English translation—who also translated “Cursed Bunny”—Chung revised her collection and rereleased it at home under the title of the same included story the translated edition uses, “Your Utopia.”

The titular “Your Utopia” is a postapocalyptic story told from the perspective of an artificially intelligent car. There’s another story in the collection narrated by a sympathetic AI elevator. Every story in the book is arguably speculative fiction and each puts a unique twist on a sci-fi premise—space (but zombies), inception (but basically dead), and plenty of other goodies.

But the highlights literally bookend this collection. The very first story, “The Center for Immortality Research,” differs drastically from the others for its comedic tone. We learn in the author’s original afterword that the publisher wanted another story from Chung in the same vein, but instead she gave them “To Meet Her,” which now appears toward the end of the book. Together, the afterword and this late-book story emphasize the emotional, socially conscious thread that runs throughout the book and ties the whole thing together.