Bella Frey, who recently reviewed The Return – the closing film of LKFF 2018 – tells us about her own personal return earlier this year. A tale of the unexpected… My head is still swimming from my recent trip to Korea. It was in part planned to be a personal pilgrimage to re-visit places from […]
Category: Personal accounts
The BTS Love Yourself o2 concert – a fresh perspective
LKL’s young contributor Gargi Sengupta, who reported from the Sheffield Korea Day earlier this year, provides her second report – from the biggest KPOP event in London ever! On the 10th of October I went with my father to watch the BTS concert at the London o2. Since I have been a HUGE fan of […]
Affective becomings and musical transformations: BTS take London
Dr Colette Balmain, or maybe a ghost writer, reports from the biggest KPOP event in the UK this year: Taking the Plunge This is the first concert review that I have written although I have been to many concerts, some of which I have good memories of and others which I wish I could press […]
2017 travel diary – reminiscences
Index Sat 29 April: Busan – Min Young-ki’s solo show Sun 30 April: Haman-gun – Gaya kingdom royal tombs Mon 1 May: Sancheong-gun – Hwangmaesan Royal Azalea festival Tue 2 May: Mungyeong-si – Tea bowl festival Wed 3 May: Buddha’s Birthday in Bongamsa | The Gyeongbokgung at night Thu 4 May: Jeonju Fri 5 May: […]
Beth McKillop reports from the 2016 Culture Communication Forum in Seoul
Senior Research Fellow and former Deputy Director at the Victoria and Albert Museum Beth McKillop was the UK’s representative at Korea’s annual Culture Communication Forum hosted by the Corea Image Communication Institute. Since 1990 when I first visited Korea to collect ceramics, outfits and furniture for a planned Victoria and Albert Museum Korea gallery, I’ve […]
Kang Ik-joong’s Floating Dreams installed on the Thames
For one reason or another, today at the office I had my eyes glued to my PC screen most of the day. I didn’t have much time to enjoy the view from my window, from where I can see the Thames around the Greenwich peninsula. Which meant that I managed to miss one of the […]
Caught on the plane: Twenty and Memories of the Sword
I always look forward to long-haul flights as an opportunity to catch up on all the movies I should have been watching over the past year. And having just returned from an ultra-long-haul holiday, I can heartily recommend Singapore Airlines in-flight entertainment. My only complaint is that there was too much to watch: if the […]
A lunchtime of ceramics and an evening of awesomeness
I wish the lunch break had been longer at today’s Korean film conference at SOAS. I was planning on having a quick snack at Mr Mok’s Bibimbap Cafe in Museum Street, maybe say a brief hello to my friends at It’s All Greek a few doors away, and then look in at the British Museum’s […]
Please close your eyes and block your ears during the brief documentary on 2 Nov
For all the wrong reasons, I’m not looking forward to the opening gala of this year’s London Korean Film Festival as much as I ought to be. Of course, I’m really looking forward to the actual movie itself. Ode to My Father has been a much-talked-about film, with admissions of over 14.25 million at the […]
2014 Travel Diary day 11: The most expensive breakfast ever
The return home, with thanks to all who made the trip special. Eulji-ro, Seoul, Monday 16 June, 8am. My last morning in Seoul, and I was seriously hung over. I had arranged to meet the Seoul bureau chief of my favourite newspaper for breakfast: he had suggested that we meet at my hotel, not far from […]
2014 Travel Diary day 3: 사십구재
The 49th-day ceremony (사십구재) for Sena Lee, who died in Seoul on 22 April 2014, held at Anjeoksa, Sancheon-gun, at which family and friends said farewell to her. According to dharma master Tim Lerch, Traditionally, the period of 49 days after someone dies is seen as a time for that person to check their consciousness and digest their […]
No-one’s in the mood for celebrating
In a brief article two days ago, Variety noted the impact of the Sewol ferry disaster on the Korean box office, on TV schedules, and on pop concerts. No one is in the mood for enjoying themselves right now. Not that such an injunction is needed, but I hear that government officials and diplomatic staff […]
How to organise and accommodate an ever-growing library?
When I started this Korean lark over 10 years ago, obviously I didn’t have any books on the subject. Over the years, the collection has been piling up, literally. Translated literature; novels in English by Koreans and by foreigners about Korea; the regrettably necessary section on North Korea; books on Korean art, history, film, music, […]
2013 Travel Diary #30: New Connections
Museum of Modern Art, Gwacheon-si, Saturday 14 September, 1:30pm. I’m still wandering around some of the museum’s permanent collection when my phone rings and my 3pm appointment wonders if they can shift to 2:30pm. It’s 1:30pm by now, and City Hall is a one hour journey away, so the proposed new time is going to […]
Kiejo’s Cambridge feast
Kiejo Sarsfield tells how a housewife from Masan ended up supervising dinner for 60 in a Cambridge college. In March I had e-mail from Dr Michael Shin, Lecturer in Korea Studies and fellow at Robinson College Cambridge, about a Korean food event he was planning to organise in a couple of months. He was asking me whether I would be interested […]
An apology to LKL subscribers
If you are reading this, it is because you are one of my loyal subscribers who get new articles delivered into your email inbox as soon as a post is published. You’re probably waiting for news of a recently-organised event. Instead, you find a post with no useful information in it. As you may know, […]
Thank you
Tonight at the Korean Cultural Centre, I’m told that it was a record attendance for a Global Korea Lecture. So, thanks to the people who came along to my talk. I think I said most of the things I wanted to, but missed a couple of things. More importantly, thanks to the Ministry of Culture, […]