It’s not often that you find a K-pop story in the pink pages of the Financial Times. In fact, if you search their site for “BTS” you will simply get a list of articles about the company formerly known as British Telecom. So what brings them to report the ins and outs of Lee Seung-hyun’s, […]
Category: Society
2019 LSE SU EAST ASIA Forum: “New Chapter for Cooperation?”
This year the LSE’s North Korea conference, which for the past couple of years has followed closely on the heels of the Korea Future Forum, has expended its scope to cover the whole region: 2019 LSE SU EAST ASIA Forum: “New Chapter for Cooperation?” Saturday 23 March 2019, 9:30am – 6pm Old Theatre | LSE […]
Korea’s Metoo, Withyou: A Conversation with Pros. Seo Jihyun
Join the SOAS Korean Social & Environmental Justice Society for a conversation with Prosecutor Seo Jihyun, the initiator of the Metoo movement in Korea. Prosecutor Seo Jihyun shocked the Korean society in January 2018 by appearing on national television to reveal the sexual harassment she had experienced at work and the serious career setbacks she […]
2019 LSE SU Korea Future Forum: Progression or Regression?
This year’s Korea Future Forum looks particularly interesting for the two keynote addresses, especially prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun. Full speaker details and more on the conference’s website and Facebook page. 2019 LSE SU Korea Future Forum Old Theatre, Old Building, LSE Saturday 2 March 2019, 9:30 AM – 5:20 PM Tickets £40 (students £20) | Buy […]
Film review double bill: Bamseom Pirates and Criminal Conspiracy
This weekend gave us the opportunity to watch two very different documentaries which cast their critical eye over contemporary Korean society and recent political history. Part of the fascination of both of them for UK-based Korea-watchers is the way they resonate: they provide, in the one case, a laser-like dissection of an issue of which […]
Screening: Criminal Conspiracy
News of a free documentary screenings courtesy of the Birkbeck International Documentary Society: Criminal Conspiracy 공범자들 Dir: Choi Seung-ho (2017, 105 mins) Birkbeck Cinema | 43 Gordon Square | London WC1H 0PD 7 October 2pm | Event’s Facebook page During the Lee Myung-Bak presidency Public Broadcasting in South Korea came under heavy government control and […]
Korea – The Antifragile Kingdom
Editor’s note: every now and then Matthew Jackson submits a cracking article from out of nowhere. Here’s one such article which, if I may paraphrase, wonders whether maybe han is healthy. I hope it’s not too long before the next one! The author and philosopher Nicholas Nassim Taleb (of ‘Black Swan’ fame) developed a concept […]
2017 travel diary 9: Sewol victims remembered at the Ansan Street Arts Festival
Ansan, Gyeonggi-do, 5 May 2017, 6:30pm. It is said that at the height of his efforts to build the Republic of Korea into an economic powerhouse, Park Chung-hee happened to be flying in a helicopter over western Gyeonggi-do. He looked out and saw what he considered to be a lot of under-utilised real estate, and decided […]
Event news: King’s College London Contemporary Korea Speaker Series
The London Asia Pacific Centre will be hosting the Contemporary Korea Speaker Series in October-November 2016. Thanks to funding provided by The Academy of Korean Studies, the series will bring to London four top Korean professors to discuss contemporary Korean economics, politics and society. The talks are as follows: 13 October 2016 – Prof Kim […]
Looking back at 2015: Domestic news
Our final look back at 2015: mainly domestic news stories from South Korea. In the news After 62 years of adultery being a criminal offence in the ROK, the constitutional court decided to decriminalise it by a vote of 7 to 2. Four out of ten married Korean males heaved a sigh of relief and shares […]
Adultery law – why was it ever a criminal offence in the first place?
The recent news item that the adultery was to be decriminalised in South Korea, 62 years after it was written into the criminal code, got me wondering as to why, when a country is rebuilding itself after a devastating war, would it be considered a priority to add adultery to the list of criminal offences. […]
Looking back at 2014: Domestic news
Our final look back at 2014: mainly domestic news stories from South Korea: The Sewol and safety culture The MV Sewol capsized on 16 April, causing the death of 304 passengers. A number of factors contributed to the disaster, including lax safety inspections, unsafe modifications, unsecured cargo, overloading, and an inexperienced crew hired on temporary […]
Busan will be extinct before Seoul, apparently
The report doesn’t seem to have been translated into English yet, and I can’t find it in Korean on the website of the National Assembly Research Service, but it has certainly provided some eye-catching headlines, the general gist being that “South Koreans will be ‘extinct’ by 2750 if nothing is done to halt the nation’s […]
Looking back at 2013: Domestic news
Our final look back at 2013, including a random collection of news stories, mainly domestic, that caught our attention. In the news Asiana Airlines flight 214 from Incheon crashed on landing at San Francisco airport on 6 July. The Boeing 777 had approached the runway too low and too slow. An American local TV station […]
Looking back at 2012: Domestic news
In our final round-up of Korea-related stories which caught our eye in 2012, we look at domestic and business news. Modern Life and how to escape it. Korea came 24th out of 34 leading countries in an OECD quality of life index, coming bottom of the class in job security and gender income inequality and […]
Seven shots of soju is “excessive”? It’s hardly even a warm-up
“The World Health Organization defines excessive drinking as the equivalent of seven shot-sized cups (1 fluid ounce per cup) of soju for men and five for women” says the Joongang Ilbo. If you define it like that, it’s hardly suprising if 42.5% of Korean men find themselves drinking “excessively” at least once a week.
Gangnam is worth more than the whole of Busan
3 districts in southern Seoul account for just 0.1% of the total land area of Korea, but 10% of the total real estate value. Gangnam alone is worth more than the whole of Busan. I know which I prefer… http://t.co/X37tBkB2