Ha-Joon Chang: 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism Penguin, 2011, 304pp As a Cambridge University professor, Ha Joon Chang is of course highly specialized in his field of economics. However, this book is written for the lay reader. The book is written in a very interesting format. It comes as a series of … [Read More]
LKL articles by Shouvik Datta
Report from the KCC Artist Talk: Shakespeare interpretations in East Asia
I hadn’t been to any of the events for Seoul in the City, part of this year’s City of London festival. The symposium at London’s Korean Cultural Centre for Shakespeare’s plays in contemporary East Asian languages seemed particularly interesting to me. My previous experience of Shakespeare in East Asia was confined to Ran, Akira Kurosawa’s … [Read More]
A visit to the British Museum’s Samsung Digital Discovery Centre
“There are few museums in the world who are doing work with young people on the scale we are doing:” Shouvik Datta discovers how Samsung is helping the British Museum to engage with a younger audience. I was recently checking the website of the British Museum, when I came across with interest and surprise the … [Read More]
The challenges of marketing and translating Korean literature explored at the KCC
Shouvik Datta reports from the Korean Literature Forum at the KCCUK on 15 October. It was an interesting and well-attended discussion at the London Korean Cultural Centre on October 15, well chaired by the BBC journalist Samira Ahmed. My own knowledge of Korean literature is confined to the modern classic “Three Generations”, by Yom Sang-seop, … [Read More]
Ancient and modern ceramics at the KCC
Shouvik Datta reports from the talk on Korean ceramics at the KCC on 15 July, which was part of a series of events accompanying the current Moon Vase exhibition. It was a warm July day, and Ms Heena Youn, who is currently completing her PhD at SOAS (on a specialist area of ancient Chinese ceramics), … [Read More]
O Bang Saek – Shouvik Datta visits the opening event of the KAA exhibition
The exhibition and performance by the Korean Artists Association at the Korean Cultural Centre (Strand, London) on November 28, featured painting and displays of visual art, traditional Korean instruments and a performance of highly modern dance. The association was originally founded in 1997 by a group of Korean artists and poets to promote Korean culture … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Spring Snow — on the value of the priceless
Spring Snow, the final film of this year’s London Korean Film Festival, was shown at London’s ICA on November 11. The film falls into a Korean tradition of documentary drama films such as Lee Man-hee’s A Day Off. Kim Soon-ok, played very well by Yoon Suk Hwa (윤석화), is an aging mother and wife. She … [Read More]
Aidan Foster-Carter on North Korea: Shouvik Datta reports from the recent LSE talk
Aidan Foster-Carter is an Honorary Research Fellow at Leeds University in Sociology and Social Policy, writes about Korea for the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxford Analytica and contributed to ‘Exploring North Korean Arts’ (published 2011). I was therefore very interested when he came down from the major university in the North of England, to talk … [Read More]
Translation and cultural uniqueness – another take on the KCC Literature workshop
I’ve long been interested in knowing more about modern Korean literature. So I learnt with interest about the Korean literature workshop (Tuesday, June 26, 5-7pm) and looked forward to it as I arrived for the event at the Korean Cultural Centre on London’s Strand. The evening began with a talk by Dr Grace Koh of … [Read More]
On Pyongyang University of Science and Technology
My time in Korea as a British English teacher was all spent in South Korea (or Republic of Korea). In the South, North Korea is a land no one talks about (although many still have family in) which became divided from the South as a result of the 1950-3 war. I decided to attend the … [Read More]
Mark Morris on Lee Man-hee and the flowering of Korean film in the 1960s
Everybody in Britain has heard of Samsung computers or Hyundai cars. However, another aspect of South Korea today is its successful export of films, music and TV dramas to neighbouring countries, known as ‘Korean Wave’ or ‘Hallyu’. In order to get a Western perspective on Korean cinema, I visited the Korean Cultural Centre in London … [Read More]
Festival visit: Korea Calling at the Thames Festival 2011
Korea Calling this year was very well attended. The two-day event near the South Bank’s OXO Tower (Saturday September 10/Sunday September 11) formed part of the Thames Festival. This was the event’s fifth year, and there were plenty of features on when I visited on the Sunday. At the centre of Korea Calling was a … [Read More]