Here’s the list for April. Plenty on offer for music fans; for others the main interest is outside of London, and in the new books coming out this month.
Exhibitions
- In Manchester, Jane Jin Kaisen’s Halmang is at esea contemporary until 21 April.
- In Bristol, Young In Hong’s Five Acts is at Spike Island all month
- In London, Choi Jeong Hwa participates in the Hayward Gallery’s group show, When Forms Come Alive
- Ordinary World, the KCC’s 2024 Open Call exhibition, lasts until 13 April
- Oh Myung-hee participates in the group show The Future is Female at the Garrison Chapel, until 6 April (LKL review here)
- The Delight media art experience finishes its run in Borough Market on 14 April
Live performance
- The LSO performs Unsuk Chin’s SPIRA and Donghoon Shin’s Cello Concerto on 7 April
- Seongjin Cho plays Beethoven’s fourth at the Festival Hall on 10 April
- Haon plays the Garage on 5 April
- Wave to Earth’s UK tour is in Glasgow, Manchester and London, 7 – 10 April
- from20 and Hello Gloom#s appearance at the Islington Academy on 17 April has been cancelled
- ITZY’s “Born to Be” tour comes to Wembley Arena on 24 April
Screenings
- Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema has a season of Korean documentaries, jointly presented by the Centre for Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield, 16 – 21 April
- The KCC has a fully subscribed screening (My Mother the Mermaid) on 4 April.
- Queer East festival will be screening Choi Eun-hee’s A Princess’s One-Sided Love on 19 April and Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night on 22 April. There are also some Korean shorts showing in various programmes
- You should be able to find Concrete Utopia on some digital platforms from 1 April (I just spotted it on Amazon Prime and it’s probably elsewhere as well)
Talks and social
- UCLan’s annual Korean Studies conference, Exploring Dynamics: Korean Anthropology and Sociology in a Global Context, is on 19 – 20 April
- In Brighton, Monica Macias talks about her memoir Black Girl From Pyongyang on 13 April
- The second Read Korea Book Party is on 13 April in New Malden’s Cafe 63 High Street
- There’s a New Malden Kpop Festival, 5 – 6 April, in the Methodist church.
Books
- Recently published (and not previously highlighted here):
- Jang: The Soul of Korean Cooking, by Mingles chef patron Mingoo Kang, published by Artisan a couple of days ago.
- The Dawn of War in South Korea (1947-1950): The South Korean Workers’ Party and the April Third Massacre, by Kyu-hyun Jo, pub Springer
- Non-fiction expected this month:
- The memoir of Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy head of mission in the DPRK embassy in London, Passcode to the Third Floor: An Insider’s Account of Life Among North Korea’s Political Elite, tr Robert Lauler pub Columbia University Press
- How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life: Powerful Lessons on Belongingness, Healing, and Mental Health by Jeanie Y Chang aka Noona’s Nunchi, pub Wiley
- Modern Korean Digraphia: Metanarration and National Identity, 1894–1972 by William Strnad pub ibidem
- The Korean Welfare State: Social Investment in an Aging Society, ed Kyungbae Chung and Neil Gilbert pub OUP
- Classical texts expected this month:
- Poems and Stories for Overcoming Idleness: P’ahan chip by Yi Illo, Dennis Wuerthner pub University of Hawai’i Press.
- Fiction expected this month:
- Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories by Ch’oe Myong-ik (a lifelong resident of Pyongyang) tr Janet Poole pub Columbia University Press
- Table for One: Stories, by Yun Ko-eun tr Lizzie Buehler pub Columbia University Press
- The Stone Home, by Crystal Hana Kim pub William Morrow
Let me know what books or events I’ve missed.
During March the LKL Korea Book Database reached a milestone, logging its 2,000th book (Shanna Tan’s translation of Kim Jiyun’s novel Yeonnam-Dong’s Smiley Laundromat, due to be published later this year). As of today, there are 2,006 titles in the database, of which around 57% are academic / non-fiction titles and 43% fiction (mainly Korean literature and poetry in translation). Have a browse.