The Korazy Collector Behind This Whole Korazy Thing

Back in 1999 Alex J. Powell, a humble tax collector working for the Australian Taxation Office decided to escape from his mundane life. He'd just turned 31 and didn't want to be an economic bum-wiper taking abuse from whining Australians anymore.

Seeing as how he had no real ties to keep him in Australia, Alex set off for what he thought would be a one year teaching stint in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Well, that might have been the initial plan but Alex soon began working as a voice actor, content creator and an extra in b-grade Korean TV dramas

and adverts.

Alex had been bitten by the creativity bug and he gradually picked up roles in slightly more respectable historical soaps playing regular characters as well as taking speaking roles in cheap Korean films. 

Along the way Alex met a couple of Korean toy collectors that wrote books on old Korean toys while hiring out their toys to film makers who would use them as props.

Alex was instantly drawn to the ugly world of old Korean bootleg toys and he soon began selling them to collectors overseas and amassing a personal robot army. 

As Alex developed contacts for procuring old knockoff toys he stumbled upon his first antique Korean animated movie poster. That was a moment of personal enlightenment for him; as if a lid had partially been lifted from a coffin to reveal the stinking, rotten and forgotten corpse that was retro Koreanimation art.  

Here was art that was/is blindingly bright and often so bad that it can be considered hardcore kitsch. Amazingly, nobody really knew anything about the genre in the West. The path ahead was clearly defined: Alex would build a collection that would eventually become a gallery exhibition.

Convinced this art had merit, Alex committed himself to procuring at least one of every poster ever made for a South Korean produced animated film or series. This would require swapping his gargantuan army of knockoff robots and spaceships for posters- it was tough work but it had to be done.

The Korazy collection numbers over a hundred posters now though there are around a dozen elusive and possibly non-existent originals like this 'Holy Grail' knockoff Atom poster that are still to be located.

But Alex persists. And even though he has misadaventures, like the time he unsettled a rat's nest in an old dust filled shop in a remote part of Korea before running out of the store screaming like a little girl in terror with his arms waving in the air, or the ongoing struggle to procure original posters from knockoff films-- as opposed to knockoff posters from original knockoff films or even knockoffs of knockoffs or even knockoffs of knockoffs of... -- he will continue to search, no matter what. For this is the way of Indiana Jones, Columbus, Mad Max, Odysseus and Captain Picard: There must be more out there, yet to be discovered.