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 the front of the photo is the digital remaster of Robot Taekwon V, just released on disk, complete with toy robot. I’m not sure what they’re going to do with the latter.
That’s a serious array of disks, and includes lots of those dramas which are too expensive to buy.
For the moment though, you won’t be able to take the DVDs (or the books, for that matter) home with you: you have to watch them on the DVD machines made available for the purpose on the premises. And, as you may recall, the KCC is open 9:30-5:30, weekdays only. I wonder if mysterious diseases are suddenly going to afflict Jumong fans in full-time employment?
For K-pop fans, there will be about 100 CDs. I didn’t get a chance to peruse the collection, though I poked my nose into a packing crate and saw SG Wannabe’s 3rd album at the top. It would be nice if there’s lots of back-catalogue: representative K-pop works from the 1960s onwards, such as you can’t get in the shops any more. I’ll report back once I’ve done some more snooping.
Links:
- Korean Cultural Centre website
Theres kpop albums? 😮 does that mean you can buy it?
Hi there Kim
Unfortunately the CDs are only for listening to on the premises, like the DVDs. I went to the KCC this lunchtime to take another look. The K-pop collection is fairly up-to-date stuff – from the last 3 or 4 years. I only took a very quick look, and a random sample of CDs which stuck in my mind were:
– 2 Hyolee albums, of which one was Stylish E…
– Rain: Bad Guy / Rain’s World
– Sung Si-kyung the Ballads.
– Vibe # 3 Re-feel
– BoA
– Big Bang
– Shinwha My Choice
– Wax
I don’t remember any other ones. Go ahead and pay them a visit yourself. You can also maybe search their online catalogue – though unfortunately it’s not very user-friendly.
As I said in the main post above, there’s around 100 CDs, but not all of them are K-pop. At a rough guess I’d say 80% – 90% of them are, though. The rest are traditional Korean music, one or two Western classical (with Korean musicians) and at least one jazz CD.
I was hoping there would be older K-pop / K-rock stuff like Seo Tai-ji, Sanullim and anything pre-1995, but I think they just got sent a job lot of recent CDs.
But go along and have a listen, then you can buy from the usual online sources.
Philip