London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

October events 2024

Collage of images illustrating events in October 2024
Clockwise from top left: Seayool playing the piri (Suite for Jeju Island at the Bloomsbury Festival) | Bongsu Park (Mirror, at Gallery Rosenfeld) | National Changgeuk Company in Lear (K-music @Barbican) | Ahn Sung-ki and Park Joong-hoon in Nowhere to Hide (BFI Echoes in Time season)

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

Exhibitions

Discussion

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

Publications expected (and two missed from last month)

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.