London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Taekwondo, Technology, Kimchi & more

In the second Global Korea lecture of 2009, Ramy Salameh from the Korea Tourism Organisation examines what Korea has to offer as a holiday destination: Taekwondo, Technology, Kimchi & more: A touristic overview of South Korea Tuesday 25 August 2009 at 6:30pm Venue: Korean Cultural Centre Culture shock, modern, unique, dynamic, sparkling, friendly, technological, ancient! … [Read More]

Blog Korea! Visit Korea!

LKL’s new content may become a bit sporadic over the next 10 days. I’m taking a quick break in Korea in between jobs. And, seeing that I’m likely to write a blog article or two about my trip, I thought I’d register LKL with the KTO’s Blog Korea competition. You too can join the fun. … [Read More]

Cambridge-based Man U fan wins trip to Seoul

Celebrating the big supporter base in Korea for England’s most successful football team, the Seoul Metropolitan Government last weekend gave away a trip for two to Seoul in a lottery drawn at half time during the Manchester United game against Blackburn Rovers on 21 February. The legendary Bobby Charlton was there to witness the draw, … [Read More]

Excess Baggage goes north of the DMZ

After last week’s feature on South Korea with Jennifer Barclay, this week’s Excess Baggage looked at North Korea with Robert Willoughby, author of the Bradt Guide to North Korea (right), and Doris Richards, an avid traveler. Willoughby’s introduction to North Korea was as an English language examiner working for the British Council, assessing the language … [Read More]

Boryeong Mud Festival 2008

The Festival is on around about now. The traffic on my two other posts about the festival is going through the roof. If any reader based in Korea is going along and feels so moved, feel free to send me in some photos and an article to tell everyone how great it is. I’m told … [Read More]

Jennifer Barclay featured on BBC Radio 4

LKL contributor Jennifer Barclay was on Sandi Toksvig’s Excess Baggage this morning, talking about kimchi, modern Korean history, and living and traveling in Korea. She was joined by Julian Appleby, who has recently returned from a stint of English language teaching there. As ever with these programmes, there was an ulterior motive involved: Jennifer’s book, … [Read More]

Koreans in New Zealand

I had known for a while that New Zealand is a place where Koreans have been travelling – and settling down – for a number of years. At the BFI London Film Festival in 2004 there was a short film entitled Eating Sausage (Zia Mandviwalla, 2004), about Korean immigrants in Auckland; while Bungee Jumping of … [Read More]

The Seoul Magazine photo challenge

One of my minor complaints with Seoul Magazine is their slapdash approach to visual material. Particularly in their events listings they splatter pictures around the page with no description of what the image depicts and what article or event it relates to. We bloggers have a partial excuse for not putting captions under pictures, because … [Read More]

Thank goodness for that

I’m not sure what audience BBC World TV is aimed at, and I’m not sure that the BBC know either, which is why it is so bland. And because the channel is done on a budget, the programmes are in part funded by advertisements, and the content is padded out by trailers and is endlessly … [Read More]

DPRK travellers’ tales

Two travel accounts have recently been highlighted in the BAKS list. First, a long account by guitarist Jason Carter of his 10-day trip to Pyongyang earlier this year to perform in a spring music festival. Like many DPRK travel accounts, we find the author having moments of frustration with the minders as well as appreciating … [Read More]

A hallyu tourism research project in Leeds

A reader at ukfan’s DJG Comic Relief forum is doing a research project on Dae Jang Geum. He’s a PhD researcher at Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change at Leeds Metropolitan University. As part of this he needs your help to perfect a cultural survey. The survey can be found here. Please email it to … [Read More]

Celebrity news round-up: January 07

Rain, LKL’s man of the year 2006 has started 2007 on a low-note with a speeding ticket in Hong Kong at the start of his gruelling tour. He also underwhelmed one reporter at a Singapore press conference who found him just a little dull. This wasn’t a reflection on his performance on-stage (and I’ve yet … [Read More]

In-flight entertainment

No marks to British Airways for assuming that all their customers, regardless of flight origin and destination, are British or American and have no interest in the culture of wherever they’re flying to or from. The in-flight entertainment provides mainly Hollywood stuff and a bit of British TV, while the audio channels are western classical … [Read More]

Farewell to Seoul

Some of the highlights and not-so-highlights of my visit to Seoul. First the good. Soundday in Hongdae Gwacheon’s National Museum of Contemporary Arts The Leeum Gallery (post to come soon once I’ve done a bit of research. Now done. Post is here) Insadong. Yes, there’s some touristy tat for sale, but there’s also some really … [Read More]