London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Central St Martins graduate featured in Joongang Ilbo

There’s a nice feature in today’s Joongang Ilbo on the London-based Korean fashion designer Lee Jung-sun of J. JS Lee, who has an MA from Central St Martins. Her collections are known for their clean and androgynous lines. Links: www.jsleelondon.com | @Jackiejslee Fashion’s rising star focuses designs on ‘cleanism’, Lee Do-eun, Joongang Ilbo, 6 August … [Read More]

Min-jin Kym gets her Strad back

Nearly three years after it was stolen, and a few months after a false alarm in which people thought it had turned up in the possession of a Bulgarian gypsy, Korean violinist Min-jin Kym is reunited with her Stradivarius. Great news. Links: Missing Stradivarius found, BBC, 30 July 2013 Famed Stradivarius violin owned by Min-Jin … [Read More]

The Good Friday transatlantic K-blog meetup

9 o’clock in the morning on the Good Friday bank holiday at a Hammersmith coffee shop might not seem the likeliest place for a K-blog meetup. But Roy Ghim, from the Tavern of the Taekguk Warriors, a US-based Korean football site, had just arrived at Heathrow and was on his way into town. And as … [Read More]

Nah Youn Sun on reducing an audience to tears

LKL’s favourite jazz singer, Nah Youn Sun, fresh from singing at Park Geun-hye’s inauguration talks to the JoongAng Daily about her career, about her new album, Lento, which will be released in the UK in April, and about singing Arirang to foreign audiences: To my surprise, audiences, regardless of their nationality, shed tears while listening … [Read More]

Im Kwon-taek visits London for the Olympics

As part of the VIP delegation visiting from Seoul to launch Korea’s bid for Olympic glory in London 2012, a surprise dignitary was legendary film director Im Kwon-taek. I first caught sight of him at the Korea Shining Bright event at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Monday night, 30 July. I wondered if I … [Read More]

2012 Travel Diary 3: Bugaksan to Daehakro

Seoul, Saturday 24 March 2012. There’s time to kill before our evening appointment in Daehakro, so we go for a stroll in Samcheong-dong, along with most of the rest of Seoul. It’s 5pm on a pleasant Saturday afternoon, and young couples amble with an charming lack of purpose, getting in your way if you want to … [Read More]

A look back at 2011 – part 3

In the final part of our look back at 2011, we summarise some of the news stories which caught our eye. China This year the region’s biggest economy continued flexing its muscles: it conducted the first test flight of its new stealth fighter, announced that it had deployed stealth missile speedboats in the East China … [Read More]