Jennifer Paun, who organised and hosted KCCUK Director Seunghye Sun’s valedictory talk at the University Women’s Club, gives her impressions of the evening. On the evening of Tuesday 24 March 2026, it was a great pleasure for me to welcome Dr Seunghye Sun to the University Women’s Club for her lecture, K-Everything with AI: Rethinking … [Read More]
Tag: Cultural diplomacy
K-Everything with AI: Rethinking Cultural Diplomacy
This talk explores the global phenomenon of Korean culture through the concept of K-Everything, moving beyond individual genres to consider Korean culture as an expansive emotional, aesthetic, and relational ecosystem. It asks how rapidly advancing artificial intelligence is reshaping the nature and practice of cultural diplomacy. Korea currently stands at the forefront of digital soft … [Read More]
“Unfolding the heart”: LKL meets KCCUK Director Seunghye Sun
Reflecting on her KCCUK tenure, Dr Seunghye Sun outlines a strategy of partnership, emotional diplomacy and ‘digital humanism’, positioning Hallyu as an introduction to a deepening understanding of Korean culture. She discusses extending UK–Korea exchange beyond pop culture into literature, heritage, visual arts and technology, and argues that Korean soft power is widening, not peaking. [Read More]
Liberation Day gets international premiere at IDFA
Morten Traavik, the man who brought us a North Korean accordion quintet covering a Norwegian synthpop track, now gives us a documentary about a Slovenian art-rock band performing versions of songs from The Sound of Music in North Korea. Read a review of the “documentary musical” Liberation Day in the Guardian. More info on Morten … [Read More]
Understatement of the year: Joint concert “not quite a success”
There’s a delightful and very detailed account of the grand Independence Day North-South musical collaboration in the Korea Joongang Daily. The headline reads “DMZ concert not quite a success, but not a failure”. Less politely put, the affair sounds like it was a bit of a fiasco: Only “13 musicians … turned up: one violin, … [Read More]
British Council signs MOU with DPRK Cultural Committee
As trailed at the launch of the current photographic exhibition at the British Council, a memorandum of understanding has now been signed between the Council and the DPRK’s Cultural Committee. Not quite the ministerial level MOU that is in place between the UK and the ROK, but still a significant step. British Council forges new … [Read More]
LKL 2012 Quiz of the Year — the answers
The answers to LKL’s 2012 Quiz of the Year. How many did you get? 1 The Watermelon Economy It was Lee Seung-han, the boss of Tesco in Korea, who accused Lee Myung-bak of running a watermelon economy: on the outside, lots of rhetoric about “green” growth, but actually red on the inside. “Not even communist … [Read More]
Alexander Liebreich’s musical diplomacy in Pyongyang
Great BBC feature on Alexander Liebreich and his musical diplomacy with the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Pyongyang. http://bbc.in/100eliE. A briefer feature can be found on iPlayer here. LKL interviewed him in Tongyeong in 2012 when we visited the Tongyeong International Music Festival, of which he is artistic director. And a one-hour long documentary about his … [Read More]
DPRK unveils new fusion technology on Paris concert platform
At least three things are of interest in relation to the 14 March Paris performance of the Unhasu (은하수) Orchestra from North Korea. First: that it happened at all; second: how it was reported back home; and third, what it was that the orchestra was playing. The funding First, then. How did it get to … [Read More]
The Philharmonia Orchestra in Sorok-do
Video of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra in tour to Korea in May 2010, including concert in Sorok-do. Ashkenazy with Cho Yong-pil, sponsored by Lady Rothermere. http://bit.ly/d8LyYB. Also reported in the Korea Times. # [Read More]
Americans in Pyongyang
With typically bad timing my travel arrangements didn’t work out. I caught the Star-Spangled Banner and the first movement of the New World Symphony in the car on the way to the airport, but missed the North Korean anthem which opened the broadcast, and of course all the encores — including the tearful Arirang (by … [Read More]
Suzannah Clarke’s musical diplomacy
A while ago I posted about Jason Carter’s trip to Pyongyang to participate in the annual Friendship Festival. While in Pyongyang, Carter met up with Middlesborough opera diva Suzannah Clarke, who has been performing at the Friendship Festival every year since 2003. Clarke’s North Korean connection is through football. She’s had a long association with … [Read More]
Alternative takes on Independence Day
The Chosun Ilbo provides some interesting alternative takes on Independence Day. It’s not just the day that Koizumi visited the Yasukuni shrine again, or when Koreans held anti-American demonstrations. First, the event was marked in Japan, as it has for the past 16 years, by a “Concert for Peace” given by the Tokyo Phil, this … [Read More]
North-themed update
The Xinhua newsagency reports the cordial meeting between Kim Jong-Il’s brother-in-law Jang Song Taek and a member of the Chinese politbureau, as the DPRK’s tour of Chinese economic zones draws to a close. Meanwhile, Yoduk story, the musical based in a North Korean concentration camp, is a sell-out success. The BBC is now featuring the … [Read More]