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Peter Corbishley

Korean pensioners buy in to London

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by Peter Corbishley on 4 February, 2010

in Business, In the news

At a total cost £1,040.5m, the National Pension Service of South Korea, the fifth biggest pension fund in the world, has bought three properties in London. These are half of a six storey commercial building in Grosvenor place, followed by a tower at 88 Wood Street in the heart of the City. But the [...]

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Petal essay contest Salon des Refusés 3

15 December 2009 Korean literature in translation
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Peter Corbishley offers his entry into the “There a Petal Silently Falls” essay competition.

A Korean novella – a human tragedy
It is unnerving to have images from a half-recollected film [1] play through a reading of There a Petal Silently Falls. [2] Yet that sense of disorientation evocatively models how the girl’s bewildered spirit-awareness [...]

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Uncertain States: a second look

22 November 2009 Exhibition reviews and comment
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Peter Corbishley also pays a visit to the photographic show in Commercial Road
Alerted by LKL, it was a pleasant surprise, on my way back from eating Korean food in New Malden, to pop into Photo Space at the bottom of the road where I live. Two Korean photographers, Jo Seong-hee and Park Ju-young, are [...]

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A view of Korea from Bangladesh

22 November 2009 Koreans elsewhere
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Peter Corbishley has just returned from a trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the Koreans are also active.

In 2009 South Korea is putting some $320m investment into the Bangladeshi economy and nearly 160 companies are working there, including a third of all companies operating in the export processing zones. In addition in 2006, for example, [...]

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Gateways to Korea

26 April 2009 Conference reports
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Peter Corbishley digests some recent Korean history lectures at SOAS and the KCC, and a recent book by Alexis Dudden

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A North Korean Feelgood Lecture

23 January 2009 Conference reports
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A report on the fascinating talk given by Nick Bonner about making documentaries in North Korea

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Watching Korea with the British Museum

18 December 2008 British Museum
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Peter Corbishley reviews the recent Korean Film double bill – Marathon and Wedding Day

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Inlaying techniques in Korean craft

7 December 2008 Ceramics
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Peter Corbishley digests the discussion on Korean crafts at the KCC on 2 Dec led by Professor Park Young-sook

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A week is a long time in … Korean economics

20 October 2008 Business
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By Peter Corbishley
Given the present economic world order, last week was an opportune time for an update on Korean peninsular economics. First Aidan Foster Carter tells BAKS that in August President Lee Myung-bak’s military banned “Bad Samaritans,” by Chang Ha-joon, an economics professor at the University of Cambridge, for being un-Korean. Then on the same [...]

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Pansori and bibimbap – fusion in Korea’s cultural content

3 October 2008 Conference reports
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By Peter Corbishley
Last Thursday and Friday 24-25th September an itinerant band of Pansori sellers displayed their wares at the Korean Cultural Centre (KCC) and the School of Advanced Study, University of London. The main event was Yonsei University’s (Institute of Media Art) Jeong Taeg Lim and Jung A Huh’s talk on ‘The Aesthetic modernity of [...]

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The new ambassador’s first outing

9 June 2008 Dano 2008
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Peter Corbishley adds to the appreciation of the day, and Noridan gets another vote
Congratulations to Justina Jang on this year’s Dano festival, especially, especially the Noridan performance. The festival dropped a generation or two from last year. Tomi Kita was somewhat as his name suggests when pronounced – viz Tommy Guitar. Somewhat less of an [...]

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Hanbok by Lee Rhee-Za

20 November 2007 Art & Style in November

Hanbok by Lee Rhee-Za: an exhibition in the seminar rooms of the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore SW7 2EU.
Review by Peter Corbishley
In fact this is 3, or perhaps, at least at the opening event, 3 and a half, exhibitions rolled into one. The first was a display of copies of garments typically worn in [...]

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Shades of Shamanism

14 October 2007 Chuseok 2007

Peter Corbishley’s sketch of the BM’s Chuseok festivities
Times change. The small but significant Korean Collection at the British Museum includes a Moon Jar which so inspired the English potter Bernard Leech.

But the drum beat of Shamanistic trance was not perhaps what Dr Sloane or the Smirke family had in mind for the front lawns [...]

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Korean traditional dance at Asia House

25 July 2007 Dance
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Peter Corbishley reports on last week’s dance event at Asia House
Thanks to some unusual traffic your reviewer arrived late enough to get a front row seat for this unique performance of seven of eleven traditional Korean dances. ‘Exciting’, ‘beautiful’, ‘unexplored but most interesting’ were some of the words and phrases used to introduce this [...]

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Korea Business Reception at London City Hall

24 January 2007 Business

By Peter Corbishley
On Monday 15th January the glitterati of the Anglo-Korean business worlds were invited to network by Ambassador Cho and Mike Backhouse of Standard Chartered under the auspices of Ken Livingstone and Think London. Over 250 companies accepted invitations to an event originally scheduled to be part of Think Korea 2006, as the Korean [...]

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