I recently joined the Korea Studies mailing list at koreaweb.ws. Amid the emails on upcoming academic conferences and professorial vacancies there’s frequently an interesting nugget or two for an amateur like me. Recently there have been some communications about classic out-of-copyright books being available for free over the internet. In fact one academic, Thomas Duvernay, … [Read More]
LKL articles by Philip Gowman (page 224)
Condoms as a lucky charm
The FT’s Seoul correspondent, Anna Fifield, had a busy week last week. Head office would have been wanting her to divine what is going on in the brains of the DPRK’s leadership – not an easy task, and everyone’s got something to say on the subject. Fifield’s piece in Saturday’s FT was one of the … [Read More]
Your feedback from the London Korean Film Festival 2006
Thanks to those of you who replied to LKL’s audience survey of those who attended the 2006 London Korean Film Festival. I’ve passed your detailed comments on to the organisers, Tae-min and Jase, and here is a summary of what you said. Your favourite film of the festival? Dan loved Love is a Crazy Thing, … [Read More]
DPRK e-bulletin: missile tests
Received 7 July 2006 from the Embassy of DPR of Korea in London: DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman on Its Missile Launches Pyongyang, July 6 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question raised by KCNA Thursday as regards the missile launches in the DPRK: In the wake … [Read More]
Crying Nut to tour the US
This story has to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt, because it comes from KBS. But now its members have returned from military service the band has reformed. They are about to release their fifth album, and will tour it to the States later this year. If anyone knows if they’ll be playing … [Read More]
Interactive Korean-American TV
I got an email yesterday from Dion Park at www.iKATV.com, asking for a plug. Happy to oblige. I visited the site and found it a bit baffling at first – all I could find was some brief and blurred YouTube videos. But Dion explained later that the website is still in prototype and is still … [Read More]
Mark Clifford: Troubled Tiger
(M.E. Sharpe / Routledge 1998) Chronicles the modern history of Korea from the 1960s to the mid-90s, focusing on the drive for economic growth and the control exerted by the Blue House over the direction of the economy. Clifford gives us a politically balanced view, emphasising the successes of Park Chung-hee, but not shrinking from … [Read More]
Is Samphire available in Korea?
Samphire is this decade’s rocket. Ten or 15 years ago, no-one had heard of the peppery salad leaf. At one yuppy dinner party in the early 90s I recall having eaten it boiled like spinach (can’t remember what it tasted like), and you could only get hold of it by growing it yourself. Now it’s … [Read More]
July events 2006
July is the month for Korean drumming. There’s a concert at the Purcell Room on 17 July, and evening classes on Korean drumming at SOAS that week 17-21 July. As a culmination of that week, there’s a special drumming event in Russell Square on the Friday night, from 7pm. On Tuesday 25 July there’s a … [Read More]
DPRK e-bulletin: DPRK religious delegation to US
The second e-bulletin received today (issued 26 June from the embassy in London). The attempted visit by the DPRK delegation coincides with the global week of prayer for North Korea. U.S. Blasted for Having Blocked DPRK’s Religious Delegation’s Entry into U.S. Pyongyang, June 22 (KCNA) — The U.S. authorities barred a delegation of the Korean … [Read More]
DPRK e-bulletin: Joint military exercises
Two e-bulletins received today (issued 26 June 2006). The first one follows: DPRK’s Stand on Projected RIMPAC-2006 Clarified Pyongyang, June 23 (KCNA) -. A spokesman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland declared this in a statement issued on Friday in connection with the U.S.-led large joint military exercises RIMPAC -2006 to … [Read More]
Think Korea website now up & running
It’s taken a while, but here it is: www.thinkkorea.org.uk. It seems to be part of the Korean Embassy website. And it’s now coming up on google. It must be a recent creation, because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve googled in search of “Think Korea 2006” and only found my own site. … [Read More]
Yoko Ono at St Pauls
I was trying to find an excuse to plug an event put on by a charity I’m involved with. It’s an installation of two of Yoko Ono’s works, at St Paul’s Cathedral as part of the City of London Festival. The major piece is Morning Beams, installed in the north transept, modelled by the artist … [Read More]
The picture that says it all
A South Korean soccer fan protests against what he considers to be the referee’s unfair judgment after South Korea’s national soccer team lost to Switzerland in their World Cup Group G match as they watched the match on a screen in Seoul, Saturday, June 24, 2006. Switzerland defeated South Korea 2-0. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon). It’s … [Read More]
Kim Ki-duk: the Coast Guard
While browsing Play.com over the weekend I noted an upcoming Tartan release: Kim Ki-duk’s neglected The Coast Guard. The title of the film, to a westerner, is somewhat misleading. In the peaceful west, a coast guard is something to do with lifeboats, or air-sea rescue. He sits in a lookout post all day scanning the … [Read More]
Dear Leader’s Heir Apparent fills Independent News Void
The UK’s Independent is getting increasingly soft-focus. It’s more like a Sunday supplement than a newspaper. Yesterday’s page 1 and 2 (you don’t get much to a page in the new tabloid format, once you’ve sold all the advertising space) contained the shock horror news that 4x4s are bad and their drivers are stupid. On … [Read More]