Welcome to LKL 4.2. Regular readers will have noticed the design change I made over the weekend, which I’ve been playing with on my test site for a while. In the past I’ve consciously kept the LKL front page as boring-looking as possible: when I launch the front page at work I don’t want to … [Read More]
LKL articles by Philip Gowman (page 185)
The end of the line — a review of Y Euny Hong: Kept
Y Euny Hong: Kept – a comedy of sex and manners Simon & Schuster, 2006 The author of this entertaining comedy, Y Euny Hong, claims to speak from experience as a surviving descendent of a declining Korean aristocratic family. Making a living now as a journalist, she was given the generous opportunity of 3 pages … [Read More]
The big, the small, and the predictable: K-film at the 52nd BFI London Film Festival
Is it a reflection on the current state of the Korean film industry that the films to be shown at the 52nd BFI London Film Festival don’t really surprise me? In previous years the organisers have managed to select films which are out of the ordinary, maybe one or two that I hadn’t heard of. … [Read More]
BAKS conference report: looking forward / looking back
The 2008 BAKS conference at Clare College Cambridge started and finished with talks with a distinctly global flavour. People came from the four corners of the globe, with presenters from New Zealand, Singapore, Hawaii, Germany and the US. And we were also fortunate to have the support of the ROK ambassador, Chun Young-woo, plus the … [Read More]
So Hot?
The official provider of broadband services to the LKL household has been looking East. As part of their Hot Girl Group series Virgin Media has noticed JYP’s teenage girl band Wonder Girls. Number 8 in a list containing 7 other girl groups whose average age is at least 5 years older than them, the performers … [Read More]
September events 2008
Here are the events for September. Festivals We are at the start of the eighth lunar month, which means that Chuseok is approaching. Chuseok this year falls on 14 September. If you’re in Korea, enjoy your time sitting in a traffic jam on your way back to your home town. In London and nearby there … [Read More]
DPRK’s Decision to Suspend Activities to Disable Nuclear Facilities
It has been a while since one of these press releases was circulated from the DPRK embassy in London. This was distributed today. A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday in connection with the stumbling block laid by the United States in the way of settling the nuclear issue on … [Read More]
English church, Korean choir, great concert
What is aural image is conjured up when you hear of a Civic Chorale? Perhaps a worthy amateur choral society, used to performing madrigals with rather too many singers and too much vibrato, plodding through an annual Messiah at Easter time? Think again when it comes to the Suwon Civic Chorale. This forty-strong choir from … [Read More]
B-boys promote Korean tourism at KCC
It’s now more than a year since the somewhat controversial launch of the Korea, Sparkling tourism brand. As I suspected at the time, people would get used to it in due course, and now the logo has become a familiar feature on the various tourist literature available. The branding, together with the Han Style campaign … [Read More]
Make this Saturday a Korean day
I’ve already told you about the films this Saturday. Take your pick between The Chaser at 4:40 in Leicester Square and Seven Days in Brunswick Square at 6:30. How about making a whole day of it? Turn up at the Korean Cultural Centre earlier in the day and browse the DVD / CD library and … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Free Words at Mayfair Public Library
When I went to the Free Words exhibition at Mayfair Public Library it was a grey Friday evening, and consequently did not see the works at their best. It was the last day of the main show, and the artwork seemed to have been forgotten in a rather drab-feeling, unloved public-sector space on the top … [Read More]
Another tweak
So soon after the release of v4, here’s 4.1. My brain has been unable to stop fretting over getting better navigability on this site, including encouraging people to read more than the one article they land on when they google-search for a pic of Super Junior. First came the related post list a few days … [Read More]
Welcome to LKL v4
It may not look like a big change, but it’s been exercising my mind for a few weeks. The underlying change is an upgrade of my blog templates to take advantage of all the latest functionality of WP2.6. LKL’s look and feel is based on Scott Wallick’s plaintxt templates. Scott faithfully upgrades his templates to … [Read More]
Korean bookshop in New Malden
Thanks to David Gomez for writing in with an answer to a question which lots of people have asked: where to buy Korean books in London. Not books about Korea, not books about how to learn Korean, but books written in Korean. My standard answer is that I haven’t the foggiest idea, but that if … [Read More]
The Asia House festival of Asian Film
Asia House’s first film festival contains one of the big Korean hits from last year, but also has enough to tempt you to try out films from other countries. 5 films, 5 UK premieres. Everyone’s favourite castaway Kim Yun-jin (above) stars in Seven Days directed by Won Shin-yeon: Jiyeon (Kim Yun-jin) is a hard working, … [Read More]
Farewell, Anna Fifield
As the world’s attention was focused on Beijing yesterday evening for the opening ceremony of the Olympics, in a small hanok in Bukcheon another celebration was taking place. Anna Fifield, the FT’s Seoul bureau chief, was having a farewell party to mark the end of her four years in the Land of Morning Calm. I’m … [Read More]