LKL reports from last Saturday’s half-day conference at Cambridge: “60 years of overseas Korean adoption and the Korean adoption issue”. What is it like to be yellow on the outside but white on the inside? Adoptees freely joke about the banana analogy. But simply being a white person in a yellow skin is only part … [Read More]
Category: Event reports and reviews (page 40)
Yulgok Yi I – a learned slouch with a stomach problem
LKL reports from the most recent Friday evening seminar at SOAS, in which Isabelle Sancho examined the letters of Confucian Scholar Yulgok Yi I What should one expect from the letters of one of the best-known Confucian scholars? In some respects, the sort of thing you might expect from any correspondence: pleasantries about health, about … [Read More]
Nothing to Envy: it brought tears to the eyes of a jaded cynic
LKL reports from the book launch of Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy – Real Lives in North Korea It was a well-informed audience attending Barbara Demick’s book launch at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday, many of whom had been to North Korea. As the strains of a Mozart Symphony wafted upstairs from the concert … [Read More]
Free love, chastity and nationalism in Han Yongun’s novel “Death”
Brief notes from the recent talk at SOAS, which probably involve getting hold of the wrong end of several sticks… Han Yongun was the most renowned Buddhist nationalist poet of the colonial period. He was jailed for his involvement in the March 1st movement, and composed his famous poetry cycle “Silence of my love” while … [Read More]
Yi Chuljin at Roehampton
After seeing Yi Chuljin’s Seung Mu & Salpuri Dance. Michaelis Theatre, Roehampton University, 2nd Dec. 2009. By Paul O’Kane. To see Yi is to be freed, from the chair in which one is sitting, becoming somewhat elevated, and thereby rescued, both from this moment and from whatsoever culture we reluctantly and temporarily inhabit. In his … [Read More]
Photo Essay: Yin and Yang in Korean Dance
Jo Seong-hee captures Yi Chuljin and Nam Youngho in rehearsal with some stunning images. Text by the editor. In a carefully-planned and stimulating collaboration at Roehampton, Yi Chuljin and Nam Youngho presented an evening of balances and contrasts, explicitly referencing Yin and Yang on several layers. Most obviously, we had a male and a female … [Read More]
Transeurasian languages: are Japanese and Korean related?
Darren Southcott reports from the SOAS seminar given by Dr Martine Robbeets on 20 November: “Korean and the Transeurasian languages: similarities that make a difference”. With additional material from Peter Corbishley Korean and the Transeurasian languages was not the title of a talk designed to bring in the crowds. But slowly SOAS room G50 filled … [Read More]
Brief review: Transreal at Asia House
The recent exhibition at Asia House, Transreal, presented two very different Korean artists side by side. There was a convenient area of overlap – both artists have produced mountain landscapes in red and white. But while one artist well-represented on these pages – Sea-hyun Lee – pursues his red landscapes with an almost obsessive single-mindedness, … [Read More]
Mother reveals Bong’s perversity
This report captures director Bong Joon-ho’s insights on his subversive thriller, detailing his “perverse” casting of icons Kim Hye-ja and Won Bin against their established types. Bong discusses his meticulous control over “feminine” landscapes and storyboards, ultimately emphasizing how the primal maternal instinct can transform a mother into a monster in her desperate quest to protect. [Read More]
Are you being Serbed?
Aashish Gadhvi reviews Korea v Serbia at Craven Cottage on 18 November Two years ago Fulham’s Craven Cottage played host to a friendly match on a chilly winter evening between Korea and Greece, which went down a success. The stadium was full of crazy Korean fans singing and chanting throughout the match as Korea walked … [Read More]
Breathless: can there be any escape from the cycle of violence?
Breathless (똥파리) is Yang Ik-june’s debut feature, in which he is also lead actor, and the film has deservedly won numerous awards. As the film opens, a man is beating up his girlfriend in the street. To the rescue comes Sang-hoon, played by Yang, who subdues the offender only to turn to the woman and … [Read More]
“Asia! Asia!” – Stephen Epstein at SOAS
Stephen Epstein had a busy week last week giving lectures in Cambridge, Oxford and London. He is on a lecture tour of Europe, using the trip as an opportunity to test various chapters from his forthcoming book with a critical audience. Friday’s lecture at SOAS focused on the portrayal of some of Korea’s Asian neighbours … [Read More]
Remembering Murder: from “Memories of Murder” to “Mother”
Colette Balmain examines Bong Joon-ho’s Mother as a thematic evolution of Memories of Murder, shifting from a procedural to an intimate, arguably incestuous, study of devotion. By portraying the mother’s desperate quest for her son’s innocence against a corrupt, commodity-driven community, the film serves as a searing allegory for modern South Korea and its buried historical traumas. [Read More]
Atta Kim’s melting moments
The Dorsoduro, Venice’s south-western quarter, has a completely different atmosphere from the hustle and bustle of the tourist areas around St Mark’s across the Grand Canal. It’s busy around the Peggy Guggenheim museum, but further west, beyond the Campo Santa Margherita, the crowds thin out. Here, alongside a narrow waterway on the Fondamenta del Soccorso … [Read More]
The Axis of Vaudeville: Images of North Korea in South Korean Pop Culture
Elizabeth Grace reports on Dr Stephen Epstein’s talk at Cambridge earlier this week We are all too familiar with the Western media’s portrayal of North Korea as a rogue communist state, complete with an evil dictator whose regime is seen as an unrepentant member of the “axis of evil.” Although these one-sided portrayals are increasingly … [Read More]
From Gulag to Getaway: North Korean refugees tell their story in Parliament
“In South Korea, we are taught English, Maths, things like that. We are taught nothing about North Korea.” I was talking to a young South Korean after a meeting of the North Korean All-Party Parliamentary Group. She was visibly shocked at what she had just heard. Two North Korean refugees – Jung Guang-il and Lee … [Read More]