London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Korean Englishman team wins cultural ambassador award

Congratulations to the Korean Englishman team Josh Carrott and Ollie Kendal for their “Korea Image Stepping Stone Bridge Award” from the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI). The award ceremony was held two days ago. Josh and Ollie run the 영국남자 Korean Englishman and JOLLY YouTube channels, which between them have over 4 million subscribers. Links: Corea Image … [Read More]

UK/Korea Creative Futures is launched

Here is the official announcement from the British Council of the collaboration with Korea over the next two years: British Council announces UK/KOREA Creative Futures 2017 London, 20 February 2017. The British Council today officially launched UK/KOREA Creative Futures 2017, a year-long celebration of the long-standing relationship between the UK and Korea which will see … [Read More]

Choigate, censorship and the arts

At any other time the presence of a demonstrator outside the KCC – and outside the opening screening of the London Korean Film Festival – protesting about artistic censorship that is said to have taken place during the current KCC director’s stint at the National Gugak Centre would have been prominent news. But choreographer Jung … [Read More]

The boom in literature museums

Those of you who saw Eungyo at the London Korean Film Festival 2012 may remember that the older author was talking with city officials about building a literature museum in his honour (and trying to avoid the honour). According to an article in today’s Joongang Ilbo, the building of literature museums has become rather a … [Read More]

French cultural adviser to Korean presidents slams Paris KCC

Guy Sorman, French economist and philosopher, has advised President Lee Myung-bak on cultural promotion, and has met with two previous Korean presidents. In a recent press conference reported by the Korea Times he expresses some interesting thoughts on the success of K-pop abroad: “It’s thanks to the work of artists, not the government”. And he … [Read More]

Hallyu Museum to open near Incheon Airpot

According to bridge bloggers AllKpop, who have translated a Korean article on Nate, a Hallyu Museum will be opening in the second half of 2012 near Incheon Airport to enable travellers to get a quick fix of their current bias or favourite TV actor. An interesting way of catering to the hallyu tourists. [Read More]

Presenting intangible cultural heritage in Bucheon

Monday 3 May 2010. Bucheon, a city of around 850,000 people in Gyeonggi-do just 40 minutes’ drive West from Seoul, is home of the Bucheon World Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo (BICHE), an annual event which showcases some of Korea’s finest performance arts and crafts alongside those of a dozen or so invited countries. The first … [Read More]

Presenting Korean Culture 2: Why bother with the artist VIPs?

Having being forced to think about issues concerning the presentation of Korean culture in London for the recent seminar at I-MYU, here are some additional thoughts, with maybe some more to come. The current exhibition at the Cultural Centre provides a stimulating and thought-provoking panorama of environmental issues. Present at the opening reception were two … [Read More]

The KCC DVD library

I popped round to the Korean Cultural Centre a couple of weeks ago to check on how things were going. I went downstairs to register for the library, and was greeted by this encouraging sight: It’s some of the DVDs that are being catalogued and which will be available for viewing. That big box at … [Read More]