Happy New Year. Seollal is on 22 January, ushering in the year of the water rabbit.
Exhibitions
- The V&A’s Hallyu exhibition and the Whitechapel Gallery’s Zadie Xa solo show are still going strong
- The KCC’s winter Open Call exhibition runs until 4 February
- London Art Fair runs from 18 – 22 January. I don’t see any of the main Korea specialists among the galleries attending, though you’ll find the occasional Korean artist represented by a mainstream gallery (for example Joy Kim at Union and Myung Nam An at Cube)
Music
- Ensemble La Mer et L’Île play recent compositions for western strings and Korean traditional instruments at St John’s Smith Square on 20 January in a programme entitled Five Senses of Korea
- Sik-K plays the Kentish Town Forum on 22 January
Screenings
- We’ve yet to hear of any theatrical screenings this month, but you can still catch Decision to Leave (most critics’ film of the year) along with other Park Chan-wook films on MUBI
Talks and workshops
- The British Korean Society has a members-only viewing of the Korean collection at the British Museum on 13 January
- A talk on Korean arts conservation followed the next day by a visit to the Korean collection at the British Museum is available via the KCC on 19 and 20 January
- A conference on Art and Soft Power in the UK and South Korea will be held at SOAS on 28 January
Publications expected in January
- In fiction and literature, expect
- Brother Anthony’s translation of Sin Yong-mok’s poems entitled Concealed Words
- Kim Chi-young’s translation of Cheon Myeong-kwan’s novel Whale
- A translation of Choi Gyu-seok’s graphic novel 100°C: South Korea’s 1987 Democracy Movement (translators too numerous to credit here)
- In non-fiction there’s
- Lenika Cruz on BTS
- A collection of Comfort Women testimonies edited by Choi Chungmoo and Hyunah Yang
- The Oxford Handbook of South Korean Politics
- Han Gil-soo’s Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea: Movements for Political and Economic Democratization in the 21st Century