This retrospective of Bong Joon Ho, spanning an award-winning early short through to a series of internationally acclaimed features, charts the ascendancy of Korea’s most successful filmmaker, writes programmer Eunji Lee Korean cinema can be divided into two eras: before and after the emergence of director Bong Joon Ho. The advent of the 21st century … [Read More]
Year: 2025 (page 20)
Park Jiha – spring tour in London, Bristol and Leeds
The music of composer / performer Park Jiha blends classical minimalism and improvised music using traditional Korean instruments like the Piri (double-reed bamboo flute), Saenghwang (bamboo mouth organ), and Yanggeum (hammered dulcimer). Deftly combining the instrumentation and complex expression of traditional textures with an array of contemporary forms and sounds, around which she has developed … [Read More]
Blackpink 2025 World Tour at Wembley Stadium
K-Pop superstars BLACKPINK will take the stage for two nights at Wembley Stadium in August 2025 for their World Tour. This marks BLACKPINK’s first headline tour since their record-breaking Born Pink World Tour (2022–2023), which became the highest-grossing tour by a girl group. Is it also the first time that a group consisting of honorary … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Bestselling and beloved – Korean Literary Treasures
While primarily envisaged as a home for temporary displays of visuals arts, the KCC exhibition space over the years has hosted a number of exhibitions featuring historical or literary themes. 2024 started, for example, with an exhibition looking at the early relations between the UK and Korea, celebrating 140 years of diplomatic relations, and later … [Read More]
Hyangmok Baik: Home, at Beers London
Because I attach to things both passionately and irrationally, I politely requested (read: asserted my intention) to write the text for Hyangmok Baik’s sophomore exhibition at the gallery, Home. After all, in 2023, I wrote the text for his debut exhibition at the gallery. At that time the work drew allusions to childhood, dreams, and … [Read More]
Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 – Theatrical release
From the Academy Award-winning writer and director of Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, Mickey 17. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living. So Mickey, known … [Read More]
ARTMS: Lunar Theory tour, at the Troxy
We rise together, back to the moon and beyond. ARTMS is composed of LOONA members HeeJin, HaSeul, Kim Lip, JinSoul, and Choerry, who built one of the most creative lores in K-POP. In July 2023, ODD EYE CIRCLE, a unit of LOONA, released the album VERSION UP, marking the beginning of ARTMS. In October 2023, … [Read More]
Sun-mi Hong new album: UK tour
Sun-Mi Hong, the South-Korean-born and Amsterdam-based musician, stands as one of the most inventive drummers and composers of her generation, continuously pushing the boundaries of jazz and its intersections with diverse musical traditions. Her new album, entitled Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest, is the second release on Edition Records following Third Page: Resonance with … [Read More]
March events 2025
Today is LKL’s 19th birthday – we launched on 1 March 2006. I’m hoping to celebrate by getting myself a ticket for one or two of the Korean movies at BFI Flare. Somehow. But there’s plenty else to keep me occupied if I’m not successful – like Sun-Mi Hong at the Vortex. Screenings BFI Flare … [Read More]
Korean Folk Tales: A Blend of Korean and Western Music
Come and experience the magical world of Korean traditional music intertwined with captivating folk tales at St Giles Cripplegate. Immerse yourself in the rich cultural heritage of Korea through mesmerising performances that bring beloved folk tales featuring animal stories to life. This special programme features original compositions by the talented EPM (Electronic & Produced Music Department) composers, … [Read More]
Book talk: Charlotte Horlyck on The Emergence of the Korean Art Collector and the Korean Art Market
Articulating the shifting interests in Korean art and offering new ways of conceiving the biases that initiated and impacted its collecting, this book traces the rise of the modern Korean art market from its formative period in the 1870s through to its peak and subsequent decline in the 1930s. The discussion centres on the collecting … [Read More]
Hong Sooyeon: In the Flow, at Gallery KIWA
Gallery KIWA is pleased to present ‘In the Flow’, Hong Sooyeon’s first exhibition in London, on view from February 20 to April 19, 2025. The Korean artist studied Painting in Seoul and New York, and now lives near Seoul. Over a period of thirty years, Hong Sooyeon has developed a distinctive art practice in which … [Read More]
Yunchan Lim plays Chopin at the Albert Hall
Frederic Chopin took the piano and transformed it into the ultimate vehicle for the Romantic imagination. There’s a burning fire beneath the poetry of his music, or as one contemporary put it ‘cannons hidden in flowers’. In the hands of Yunchan Lim – who in 2022 became the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition … [Read More]
Seong-Jin Cho: A Ravel-athon, at the Barbican
A sold-out hall greeted Seong-Jin Cho’s Barbican debut in 2023. His much-anticipated return navigates a scintillating all-Ravel programme, saluting the composer in his 150th anniversary year. Bookended by the early serenade and the last piano suite, which honours his inheritance, Ravel’s piano music is laid before us, from the wistful Pavane that made his name, … [Read More]
Remembering ‘Comfort Women’: Politics of memory and international perspectives
Co-hosted by SOAS and the Northeast Asian History Foundation, this conference brings together prominent scholars on the “comfort women” issue and broader topics of wartime sexual violence, along with expert discussants from a variety of relevant fields. In an era where historical revisionism and political tensions increasingly shape narratives of the past, this event provides … [Read More]
Festival of Korean Dance 2025 – programme details announced
Here’s the official press release for the 2025 Festival of Korean dance. This year, in addition to performances at The Place in London, the festival tours to Bournemouth, Salford and Newcastle. A Festival of Korean Dance returns for its eighth year with 17-strong ensemble headliner and a live rock band Presented by the Korean Cultural … [Read More]