Highlights this month are a Korean strand in the Queer East film festival, the start of the 2023 Festival of Korean Dance and a bumper crop of translated literature.
Exhibitions
- Zadie Xa’s solo show continues at Whitechapel Gallery until the end of the month, and the Hallyu exhibition continues at the V+A for another few months. Both highly recommended
- Jae Ko’s solo show, Gi (氣 Vital Force), is at Opera Gallery, also all month
- The KCC’s current exhibition, Transfer, continues until 15 April. LKL review here.
- Jukhee Kwon’s solo show, Liberated, continues at October Gallery until 22 April
Performance
- pH-1’s “About Damn Time” tour comes to the Troxy on 2 April
- The Festival of Korean Dance commences on 24 April in Salford. The first London performances are 28 and 29 April
- Luminous perform at the Islington Academy on 30 April
Screenings
- The KCC’s season of in-house screenings entitled Seoul on Screen continues on 6 April with The Day He Arrives. Subsequent screenings in the season have yet to be announced.
- Queer East festival, 18-30 April, has a focus in Korea, with 8 feature length films, 6 shorts and a VR experience
Talks and seminars
- Barbara Zitwer launches her Korean Book of Happiness at the KCC on 19 April
- Han Kang launches her Greek Lessons at the Purcell Room on 23 April
- BKS members have a guided tour round the V&A’s Hallyu exhibition on 28 April
- The IKSU Annual International Conference is in Preston 3-4 April
- Online, David Mason talks about New Manifestations of Legalized Shamanic Shrines for the RASKB on 11 April, Harvard hosts a seminar on Kpop and the Diaspora on 6 April, and Kyung-sook Shin talks about I Went to See My Father for the Korea Society on 13 April.
Everything else
- The fashion label MINJUKIM is featured in free catwalk shows at the V&A on 21 April
- There’s a Kpop / hiphop night at Fire Vauxhall on 7 April
Upcoming publications
- It’s expected to be a really big month for literature in translation: JM Lee’s Painter of the Wind, Kyung-sook Shin’s I Went to See my Father, Gong Ji-young’s Togani, Han Kang’s Greek Lessons, Yun Ko-eun’s Table for One, Hwang Yeo-jung’s The Specters of Algeria, and finally The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories should all be out this month thanks to Anton Hur, Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton (x 2), Jung Yewon, Hannah Pang, Stella Kim, Lizzie Buehler, Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won
- Non-fiction titles include ReFocus: The Films of Kim Ki-young ed Chung-kang Kim and City of Sediments: A History of Seoul in the Age of Colonialism by Se-Mi Oh