Yor-K 2022: Korea Day in York

Organised in collaboration with the York St John University

Yor-K 2022 is a sustainability themed day-festival that celebrates contemporary and traditional Korean culture.

The festival is packed with family friendly activities and opportunities to experience the food, music and art of Korea. All events take place on Saturday 28 May at York St John University’s Lord Mayor’s Walk campus. They are free and open to the public, but some booking is required. Please see the following information for event and booking details.

1. Cultural Fair

12:00pm – 2:30pm | No pre-booking required
Outside Holgate Dining Room Extension
Sample Korean food at our pop-up food stall, play traditional Korean street games and see a Korean calligrapher at work.

2. Art Exhibition

12.00pm – 5:00pm | No pre-booking required
Holgate Dining Room Extension
A vibrant display of traditional Korean clothes (hanbok) and Korean paintings and crafts.

3. Discussion: Gastro-diplomacy – the language of kimchi

3pm – 4pm | Register here
CC/011 – York St John Creative Centre

Join Dr Tim Wharton (University of Brighton) for a talk exploring food sustainability and the language of kimchi!

The food industry, like the fashion industry, is driven by the pursuit of impossible perfection: endless rows of blemish-free fruit and vegetables in supermarket aisles (tasting of not-very-much), pre-packaged trays of skinless, boneless meats with nary a head or foot or tail in sight and a steady stream of cookbooks and articles with photo-shopped, super-saturated photos of beautiful dishes bathed in summer sunlight. In their book Ugly Food, Tim Wharton and Richard Horsey argue for a more responsible approach to food and cookery. In so-called ‘Western’, Anglo-Saxon cuisines there are a range of ingredients that people refuse to eat simply because of the way they look: certain ugly fish, for example – gurnard, garfish, horse mackerel’ ugly vegetables too – celeriac, Hamburg parsley and Jerusalem artichoke.

In the current environmental climate, this is unacceptable.

In his Yor-K Festival talk, Dr Tim Wharton will present the Maxims of Gastronomy outlined in Ugly Food: The Maxim of Quality, The Maxim of Purity, The Maxim of Availability and The Maxim of Sustainability. He will show how one everyday ingredient rises to the challenges inherent all these maxims and ticks all the boxes when it comes to the more responsible approach proposed in Ugly Food. In one culture, the humble cabbage – derided by just about every school-age child in the UK (a derision that persists in many adult victims of childhood school-cabbage-trauma), has well and truly transcended its status as a mere vegetable. Salted and fermented with chilli and garlic – kimchi (and the process of making it – kimjang) has become a way of life in South Korea and, more than that, a means of promoting peace and well-being: a kind of gastro-diplomacy. This talk celebrates the language of kimchi. A recipe for kimchi is about more than just the preparation of cabbage; it is, in effect, a recipe for happiness!

4. Screening: An Omnivorous Family’s Dilemma

3pm – 5pm | Register here
CC/102 – Critical Listening/Screening Room, York St John Creative Centre
Documentary in Korean with English Subtitles
Director: Yun HWANG (2015, 105min)
Producer: Il-kwon KIM | Production: Studio DUMA, CinemaDAL | Cinematography: Jeong-hoon SHIN, Ku-yeong KIM | Editing: Yeon-jeong LEE, Yun HWANG

‘An Omnivorous Family’s Dilemma’ follows filmmaker Yun Hwang as she tries to find out what kind of life pigs lead before they are sold for meat.

Synopsis

This film takes place when there was a nationwide slaughter of livestock to put a stop to the foot-and-mouth disease. Filmmaker Yun realizes that she has never seen a pig before, and starts a journey searching for pigs. Yun goes deep into the mountains to meet a pig farmer who raises his pigs in a traditional manner. As Yun observes the daily routines of a mother pig Shipsoon and her piglet Donsoo, she discovers new facts she has never known before. As she develops a bond with the lovely pigs and acknowledges another side of the farm and meat industry, it becomes difficult for her to enjoy pork cutlets as she used to. And to make matters worse, her husband and young son Doyoung are not making her choice of daily menus easier. As she falls into a dilemma, her awareness about eating animals begins to penetrate everyday level.

Director’s Note

It was 2011 during the winter time, when the news was lightly speaking about burying 3.5 millions of livestock in the land. At that time, I realized that I had never even seen a real pig before in my life. I had enjoyed pork cutlets so much but I have never seen a living pig. What a strange situation it was. It was rather easy for me to see either tigers or gorillas in the danger of extinction. Ironically, I was well aware of tigers but not pigs. I met the pigs on my dinner table not on the farm. For this reason, I started my journey to meet pigs to get to know them. Also, I wanted to show my son the real pig. While I was spending time with my son at a pig farm, we learned about them. Although the pigs have their own language, we found out the way to communicate with them. The universal language, love has made it possible.

About the Director

Starting with her documentary Farewell (2001), Yun Hwang has continued to make documentaries venturing beyond a human centered perspective to explore the ironies of modern civilization from non-human animals’ standpoint. As a three-part series along with Farewell, she has directed Silent Forest (2004) and One Day on the Road (2006).

Farewell was screened in many film festivals including International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and received Excellence Award in YAMAGATA International Documentary Film Festival, Woonpa Award (award for the best Korean documentary) in BUSAN International Film Festival, and Audience award in Seoul Independent Film Festival.

Yor-K 2022 is a sustainability themed day-festival that celebrates contemporary and traditional Korean culture. Organised in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Centre, the festival is packed with family friendly activities and opportunities to experience the food, music and art of Korea.

5. Music Night

5:30pm – 7:30pm | Register here
York St John Creative Centre

Featuring dynamic performances from the Shilla Ensemble and York St John students, the York-K: Korean Music Night is an eclectic showcase of traditional and contemporary Korean music and dance.

‘Obang’ – Shilla Ensemble: Hyelim Kim, Seayool Kim, Seonju Kim, Yong Min Cho
The traditional Korean colour spectrum, also known as Obang-saek refers to the five Korean traditional symbolic colours of white, black, blue, yellow and red. These colours are feature prominently in ‘hanbok’ (traditional Korean dress), paintings, musical instruments at festivals, architecture, flags and traditional icons. For this year’s Korean Music Night, the Shilla Ensemble will present a programme of music and dance from its traditional and contemporary repertoire reflecting the concepts embedded in the significance of these colours. The program will include minyo (Korean folk songs), court music, dance and new compositions inspired by various aspects of Korean culture.