What a year it’s been. Even without any event organised by the KCC, there’s been more than enough to keep us all entertained and enriched. And when you add into the mix All Eyes on Korea, The Year of the 12 Directors and the London Korean Film Festival we’ve almost had a surfeit of K-Culture. … [Read More]
LKL articles by Philip Gowman (page 99)
A Christmas message to the nation from Park Jae-sang
From the BBC website, a seasonal greeting from Psy, in which he promises to give us a full-length concert next year. “Crazy crazy crazy. Sweat, sweat, sweat.” [Read More]
Seasons Greetings, and enjoy our favourite seasonal tune: “Christmas Snowing” from Yell Owe Jam
Best wishes to all LKL’s readers, contributors and supporters, and thanks for staying with us over the past twelve months. We’ll be taking a break for a couple of days. Until we return, please enjoy this lovely Chritmas song from Yell Owe Jam, with vocalist Yedda (aobve left) and saxophonist Kim Heecheol. Thanks to our … [Read More]
LKL Quiz of the Year 2012
We gave it a rest last year, but we’ve brought it back for 2012: the LKL Quiz of the Year, featuring some of the top celebrity stories of the year, as well as one or two from the business and cultural pages. Some, but not all, of these stories might have been featured on LKL … [Read More]
Book Review: John Everard – Only Beautiful Please
Only Beautiful Please – a British Diplomat in North Korea John Everard Asia/Pacific Research Center, Div of The Institute for International Studies, 2012, 250pp It is always with a sense of duty rather than eager anticipation that I pick up a book on the DPRK, regardless of who the author is. To the extent that … [Read More]
High-rise Korean art at NEO Bankside from Choi and Lager
2012 has been a year when Korean art has emerged from the sterile white cube of the gallery to be displayed in real-life spaces. From working offices to inhabited domestic settings, it has been a good year for seeing art in places where you can live with and enjoy it on a daily basis rather … [Read More]
Tim Garland’s Korean collaboration: Sinawi and the Blues
The combination of Korean traditional instruments with modern western ones gives rise to complex performance issues. Incompatibilities of style, volume, timbre and tuning are challenges to be overcome, not always with success. With the improvisatory nature of jazz, where instruments get their chance for solos and where amplification is a customary feature of the mix, … [Read More]
BIGBANG at Wembley Arena: Fantastic, Baby
The thudding of the bass speakers was turning my inside to soup as the shrieks of the fangirls were searing laser-like into my brain. And the concert hadn’t even started yet. I had brought a stiffening drink into the arena with me, but there was no chance to down it. As soon as the band … [Read More]
Kyung Hyun Kim’s Virtual Hallyu: more approachable than Remasculinization, but still tough going
Kyung Hyun Kim: Virtual Hallyu — Korean Cinema of the Global Era Duke University Press Books, 2011. 280pp On Planet Deleuze, a world in a parallel universe inhabited by hyper-intelligent philosophers, psychoanalysts and cultural studies scholars, Kyung Hyun Kim’s second book on Korean film will be voraciously devoured, as no doubt his previous book was. … [Read More]
The London Book Fair Announces Market Focus 2014: Korea
LONDON/SEOUL, UK, 11 December, 2012 — The London Book Fair and The Korean Publishers Association have announced Korea as the Market Focus of The London Book Fair 2014. The launch event at Asia House today was attended by The London Book Fair, The Korean Publishers Association and LBF Market Focus strategic partners, the British Council … [Read More]
A thesis on DPRK Environmental Management – in six tweets
Tomorrow (11 December) between 9am and 5pm (GMT), Robert Winstanley-Chesters will be participating in the Leeds University “Tweet your Thesis” Competition. During these hours he will be attempting to present his pending PhD dissertation entitled “Landscape as Political Project?” Environmental Management in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as six tweets. He says he’s never … [Read More]
Girl band is one of the DPRK’s Great Innovations of 2012
The KCNA has a press release which celebrates the many innovations in the year in which the DPRK became a great and prosperous nation. Immediately after an introductory passage praising the “ideologocial might” of the military, and before a listing of the many new factories and other technological achievements comes a brief paragraph on soft … [Read More]
BA resumes flights to Seoul – but I’ll still fly Asiana
British Airways resumed direct flights to Seoul on 2 December 2012 – a service they stopped back in 1998, in the aftermath of the so-called IMF Crisis. That was then. This is now: “We have seen significant growth in customers wanting to travel to Seoul for both business and pleasure,” said BA’s commercial director in … [Read More]
Kim Young-ha longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize
It’s nice to see that the book I’m currently reading, Kim Young-ha’s Black Flower (검은 꽃), has been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Last year, Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mother won it. Can Korea make it two years running? At LKL, we loved Kim Young-ha’s Your Republic Is Calling You, and found … [Read More]
2012 Travel Diary #22: The Burial Grounds of the Royal Joseon Placentas, and why underfloor heating is not always good for you
Sancheong Town, Gyeongsangnam-do, Sunday 1 April 2012. Yes, it’s 1 April, and no, this article is not an April Fool’s joke. Sunday in Sancheong town, and the National Assembly election campaign is in full swing. All along the main street, the ppongtchak trucks are parked nose to tail, probably about eight of them. All of … [Read More]
December events 2012
There’s no let-up in the season of Advent. Exhibitions O Bang Saek is the must-see exhibition at the KCC, but it ends on Tuesday 4 December. Hurry. Also essential for this month are some short films by London Korean artists. See under Film below. Phobia finishes at Hanmi Gallery on 5 December. They have another … [Read More]