The award-winning play which inspired the Netflix Comedy is back by popular demand. Following a sell-out season at Park Theatre earlier this year, KIM’S CONVENIENCE will transfer to Riverside Studios for a strictly limited season from 5 SEPTEMBER – 26 OCTOBER 2024. There’s humour and heart in every aisle… Now a global smash hit, this … [Read More]
Tag: Diaspora
Selected publications
- Joseph Han: Nuclear Family, Counter-Point 2022
Kim’s Convenience: a great family night out
On a cold January night, if you’re looking for some warm and cozy entertainment, Kim’s Convenience fits the bill admirably. The Park Theatre’s intimate stage has a homely feel. The scene, needless to say, is a convenience store, provisioned, as it happens, courtesy of New Malden’s Korea Foods. Audience members in the front row of … [Read More]
Kim’s Convenience comes to London stage in January 2024
The hilarious and heartwarming award-winning comedy-drama about a family-run Korean store that inspired the Netflix hit, is a feel-good ode to generatiowns of immigrants who have made Canada the country that it is today. Mr. Kim works hard to support his wife and children with his Toronto convenience store. As he evaluates his future, he … [Read More]
Free Chol Soo Lee: theatrical release
In 1970s San Francisco, 20-year-old Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee is racially profiled and convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. After spending years fighting to survive, investigative journalist K.W. Lee takes a special interest in his case, igniting an unprecedented social justice movement. Nearly five decades later, Free Chol Soo Lee excavates this largely unknown yet essential … [Read More]
Homeland – A new play by HeeJin Kim
“I just want to start a new life in this country. I worked so hard you know, to f*cking survive.” Theatre Company Knee presents the world premiere of Homeland, a comedy-drama that explores the idea of home from the perspective of recent migrants to the UK. Written by award-winning Korean Playwright HeeJin Kim and featuring … [Read More]
Living Memories – the KCC’s summer season of documentaries
Continuing a summer tradition, the KCC’s film nights for late July and August focus on the documentay genre, in a season developed in collaboration with Birkbeck. Below is the official press release that tells you about the season. All of the films look well worth your time. We’ll be prioritising Im Heung-soon’s award-winning Factory Complex … [Read More]
Documentary screening: Soup and Ideology
After suffering an aneurysm, Yang Yonghi’s mother starts revealing tragic memories of her fleeing Korea during the Jeju incident in 1948. The Japanese-born filmmaker begins to piece together her present and her mother’s past, whom she visits in Osaka every month with her Japanese fiancé. They bond through cooking and tradition, despite their ideological differences … [Read More]
Documentary screening: Daniel Kim’s Halmoni
Jo Ok Sim, the Halmoni of the title, reflects on her life as she tends the flowers in her nursery farm at the southernmost tip of Argentina, Ushuaia. Arriving here in 1974 with her schoolteacher husband, he noticed that nobody grew lettuce, and persuaded the government to give him some land so he could try. … [Read More]
Free Chol Soo Lee screens at Sundance Film Fest
In 1970s San Francisco, 20-year-old Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee is racially profiled and convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. After spending years fighting to survive, investigative journalist K.W. Lee takes a special interest in his case, igniting an unprecedented social justice movement. Free Chol Soo Lee gives voice to a hidden history to ask … [Read More]
Minari: a movie re-viewed
After my first viewing, I was wondering whether to recommend Minari to my friends and family. If I’d bought an expensive cinema ticket to see it then I would have only seen it once. However, I bought a ticket that licensed me to view it as many times as I wanted within a 24 hour … [Read More]
Book review: Min Kym — Gone
Min Jin Kym: Gone — A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung Viking, 2017, 256pp When Min Jin Kym’s Gone came out, I mentally heaved a sigh of relief. Here’s one Korea-related book, I thought, among the dozens that will be published this year, that I don’t need to read. The story of how her … [Read More]
Japan Society talk: Escaping to North Korea – with Markus Bell
Apologies for the late notice of tomorrow’s talk organised by the Japan Society, which may by now be fully subscribed. The speaker gave a fascinating talk at SOAS on broadly the same subject a few months ago, so I’d have high hopes of this one too. Escaping to North Korea – with Markus Bell 19 … [Read More]
A Special Global Community
Bella Frey talks about life as a Korean adoptee in England. It was in the 1950’s when the first babies were adopted to the United States from a war torn Korea. Many of them had been left orphaned and others abandoned. Since then hundreds of thousands of Korean babies and children have been adopted overseas … [Read More]
The Gyopo PI
Leonard Chang: Fade to Clear Thomas Dunne Books, 2004 This is the third novel featuring the private investigator Allen Choice, a Korean American whose name indicates how far he has moved away from his Korean roots. He can’t speak the language, but he gets annoyed when people call him Chinese or Japanese. He dates a … [Read More]
Racial tensions in Queens
Leonard Chang: The Fruit ‘n Food Black Heron Press, 1996 Leonard Chang’s first novel is proof that giving away key elements of the plot in advance need not ruin the enjoyment of a work of fiction. The book starts at the end, with the hero in hospital, blinded and incapacitated. You are told how the … [Read More]