Gargi Sengupta, a new guest contributor, reports from the Sheffield Korea Day earlier this year.
On 11th March, my Dad and I went to Sheffield to go to the Korea day at Sheffield University. As I love Kpop and want to acquire knowledge and learn more about Korean culture, it was a great opportunity for me because I got to understand more about Korea. As well as learning a lot, I also had fun and enjoyed my time there.
At the Korea day there were many entertaining and interesting stalls such as crafts, dress up, Korean games and Korean calligraphy. At the crafts stall we could make traditional Korean mirrors out of a mirror making kit. Personally, that was my favourite stall as it was very creative and the mirrors were fun to make. At the dress up stall we could wear a traditional Korean costume called ‘Hanbok’ and take pictures on a Polaroid camera. Another stall to mention was a Korean calligraphy stall where either someone would write your name in Korean calligraphy or you could write it on your own with help from the people at the stall.
In addition to activity stalls, there were also a couple of stalls selling food. They were selling Glass noodles (see through noodles) with beef, Kimchi (spicy cabbage), Kimchi pancake and Bulgogi.
There were also many Kpop dance shows and traditional dance and music shows. Although the traditional dance was very good I was not particularly interested in it compared to the Kpop show as I was eagerly waiting for the Kpop to start. There was a Kpop singing competition and a dancing competition, where the judges were a traditional Korean dancer, the head music professor at Sheffield University, and a dance choreographer. My favourite dance group was called ‘AZIZA’ and they danced to ‘Mic Drop’ by BTS. I liked them the most because as well as dancing amazingly, they had communicated with the audience, and also danced to one of my favourite songs by my favourite band!
Downstairs, there was a workshop run by a Korean makeup artist talking about Kpop idol makeup and K-drama makeup. She was using a model to put the makeup on and talking about it. I do not use makeup a lot, so I wasn’t that interested, but I could tell that others were very intrigued!
Overall, I think that I would definitely give this event 5 stars as it was packed with fun and I learnt so much about Korean culture. It was very family friendly as there were kids’ activities, as well as activities for older people, like the makeup workshop. I would recommend this to anyone, like me, who loves Kpop or is interested to know about Korea.
LKL apologises to Gargi for the huge delay in posting her lively article – and if she writes up the BTS concert in October we promise to be a whole lot quicker in posting!