
We’re now getting in to peak event season – and in fact this is the longest monthly list I can remember. Frieze is at the beginning of the month, Asian Art in London at the end; and there’s plenty of exhibitions outside of those two art fairs in between to launch the autumn season. Meanwhile, the K-music Festival opens on 3 October with possibly its best programme ever, Foyles has its annual Korean Culture Month, Chuseok time and Kimjang time seem to bookend an ever more busy hallyu festival season, while the background hum of live K-pop concerts turns into a roar this month.
Our pick of the month’s events is undoubtedly the National Changgeuk Company’s King Lear at the Barbican, but for a completely different theatrical experience there’s another chance to experience Moon Kim’s monodrama The Waiting Room, plus multi-disciplinary artist Bongsu Park presents a new performance piece at Gallery Rosenfeld. For something unusual, why not support Jeju Island’s campaign to get their 4:3 archive listed at UNESCO by attending their exhibition and symposium on 16 October. Another Jeju-themed event this month is our other pick of the K-music festival: the first performance of Piri player Seayool’s Suite for Jeju.
Finally, make sure you keep your eyes peeled for the full programmes of the LKFF and LEAFF film festivals and get your tickets in good time. The details of the LKFF released so far, and indeed the BFI’s special season, are tantalising.
So, here’s the list:
Live music, theatre and performance
- K-Music Festival presents
- National Changgeuk Company’s take on King Lear, 3-6 October at the Barbican
- Youn Sun Nah with Bojan Z at the Union Chapel on 6 October
- Seayool’s Suite for Jeju Island at the Bloomsbury Festival on 23 October
- Hera Hyesang Park with David Junghoon Kim at St John’s Smith Square on 26 October
- Black String at King’s Place on 30 October (unfortunately clashing with a couple of good Korean movies screening at the BFI)
- Moon Kim performs her play The Waiting Room in Canary Wharf, 2-5 October
- Kim’s Convenience continues at the Riverside Studios until 26 October
- Bongsu Park presents her new work, Mirror, at Gallery Rosenfeld on 5 October.
- Bomsori Kim (violin) makes her Wigmore Hall debut on 21 October
- Hyelim Kim participates in an open contemporary music workshop at the Barbican, 24 October
- Live K-pop and hip-hop concerts include
- DKB’s Dark Strange tour (2 October)
- B.I’s Hype Up tour (4 October)
- Madmans Esprit European tour (8 October)
- Bang Yongguk’s III Europe tour (20 October)
- ARTMS Moonshot world tour (23 October)
- DPR’s The Dream Reborn World Tour (27 October)
- Woosung’s B4 WE DIE tour (30 October)
Exhibitions
- Pulse – the Seoul-themed digital art experience under the railway arches in Borough Market finally ends its year-long residency on 8 October.
- Minsuk Cho’s Serpentine pavilion is uninstalled on 27 October or shortly thereafter
- FOCUS art fair, which includes a number of Korean artists, is at the Saatchi Gallery 10-13 October.
- The Saatchi also hosts the foward-looking Oulim exhibition, featuring all sorts of high-tech arts and entertainments, 18 – 27 October
- The KCC’s exhibition Digital Heritage, Now! AI With You continues all month
- Haegue Yang’s big retrospective entitled Leap Year opens at the Hayward on 9 October
- Mire Lee’s Hyundai Commission is unveiled in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall on 9 October
- Hanmi Gallery hosts Korean Iconic; Echoes Now, 4 – 12 October, part of the London Hallyu Festival
- Flow Gallery hosts an exhibition of teaware from Boseong County
- Han Collection hosts ceramics from a Korean and a Belgian artist, 5 – 26 October: Infinite Blue: A dialogue between East and West
- Lloyd Choi Gallery presents Guided by Nature, a curated selection of Korean crafts at Cox London, 7 – 17 October
- The Brunswick Art Gallery hosts an exhibition on the Jeju 4:3 Archives on Truth & Reconciliation in support of a campaign for a UNESCO listing
- Mikey Espinosa presents With Love, Korea at No Format Gallery, 25-31 October,
- At the University of Sheffield, the K-pop Worlds exhibition ends on 17 October
- In Preston, UCLan hosts an exhibition to celebrate 10 years of Korean Studies, 8 – 11 October
- In Durham, the Oriental Museum explores the Korean lives and legacies of Richard and Joan Rutt
Discussion
- Anders Karlsson gives two talks on 18th century culture, society, history and politics, inspired by Lee Joon-ik’s movie The Throne (Sado, 2015), 5 and 19 October
- UCL hosts a seminar entitled Unlocking the Power of Hallyu: Culture, Creativity, and Collaboration, along with some interactive experiences, on 6 October. Part of the London Hallyu Festival.
- Jieun Kiaer discusses the Future of Hangeul in a globalised world, 8 October in Kingston
- SOAS hosts Interrogating “K-Culture” – Religion, culture and philosophy through multicultural perspectives, 9 October
- Andrei Lankov talks at Kings College on 10 October: North Korea — Masters of Survival and Control
- The KCC hosts Korean Art Now! on 10 October
- The Warburg Institute hosts a panel discussion to mark the launch of Korean Feminist Artists: Confront and Deconstruct, 10 October
- There’s a discussion on the Jeju 4:3 Archives on Truth & Reconciliation at the Brunswick Art Gallery, 16 October
- Joo Dong-geun, the artist behind the manhwa All of us are dead talks at the KCC on Friday evening 11 October and Foyles on Saturday afternoon 12 October.
- Miye Lee, of Dallergut Dream Department Store fame, talks via zoom at Foyles on 26 October.
- Timothy Cho asks How Do You Solve Problems in Dictatorial Countries Like North Korea at City Law School on 23 October
Screenings
- The Regent Street Cinema hosts a screening of Park Chan-wook’s Handmaiden on 1 October
- A documentary on The Last of the Sea Women has a limited run at the Bertha Dochouse from 11 October
- The BBC’s Made in Korea series is finished, but you can still catch it on iPlayer. The final episode features a performance at the British Embassy during the King’s birthday celebrations.
- We’re entering film festival season. Here’s what we know so far:
- Fortunately for your diary there’s only one Korean film in the BFI London Film Festival. All screenings of it are fully booked already, but you’ve probably seen a film very much like it already (it’s Hong Sangsoo’s latest).
- The London East Asia Film Festival (23 October – 3 November) releases its programme on 1 October – it usually has a few Korean crowdpleasers in its lineup but we have no advance insight into the details.
- Frustratingly, so far the KCC have only done a partial reveal of the London Korean Film Festival‘s programme (1 – 13 November) – namely those titles that are screening at the BFI. This means that if you like to plan ahead, you have a choice between (a) buying a ticket for a screening that you know about, only to find out later that there’s a competing screening more to your taste somewhere else; or (b) waiting to find out the full programme before you make any reservations, only to find that the BFI screenings have already sold out. But what they’ve revealed so far is very enticing and we’re looking forward to the full list (we’ll update that post as more details are announced).
- Competing with both LEAFF and LKFF, the BFI launches Echoes in Time, a special season of Korean films which runs from 28 October until the end of the year: a great selection of Golden Age classics from the 60s and New Korean Cinema titles from the 90’s and early 00’s (pre-Oldboy). Won’t it be nice to be able to see things like Lee Myung-se’s Nowhere to Hide on the big screen again, in a 4K restoration?
Special events, festivals and socials
- The London Hallyu Festival has some open-air festivities in New Malden, 5 October. The festival presents some interactive experiences the next day at UCL (see under Discussion above)
- In Preston, UCLan has a Korean Culture Day on 9 October
- The 2024 Korea Kimchi Festival is at Samsung KX on 12 October
- The Kpop UK National Competition 2024 is at Kingston’s Rose Theatre on the afternoon of 20 October.
- There are K-pop parties at Fire Vauxhall on 4 October, the Electric Ballroom on 5 October, Heaven on 6 October, and Dingwalls on 18 October
Publications expected (and two missed from last month)
- In poetry and translated fiction:
- Marigold Mind Laundry, by Jungeun Yun tr Shanna Tan pub Penguin
- Blood of the Old Kings, by Kim Sung-il tr Anton Hur pub Tor
- The Trunk, by Kim Ryeo-ryeong pub Penguin
- Find Me as the Creature I Am, by Emily Jungmin Yoon pub Knopf
- In non-fiction:
- The Politics of South Korea: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Ji Young Choi pub Lynne Rienner
- Korean Feminist Artists: Confront and Deconstruct, by Kim Hong-hee pub Phaidon
- The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea, by Jamie Doucette pub University of Michigan Press
- And the two missed from last month:
- Southeast Asia-North Korea Relations: Drivers, Linkages, and Strategic Ambivalence, ed Chiew-Ping Hoo, Shine Choi and Brian Bridges pub Routledge
- The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea,
by Victor Cha pub Columbia University Press
Phew – what a marathon. I’m bound to have omitted something, so as usual let me know what books or events I’ve missed using the contact forms linked.