All Eyes On Korea : Launch

In light of the upcoming Olympics, the Korean Cultural Centre (KCC) in London has put together a fantastic program to promote Korean culture over the summer. All Eyes On Korea is a '100 day summer festival' that will last from June through to September this year. 

As the 100-day countdown to the Olympics began, today I attended the official press launch at the KCC which featured an introduction to the festival and a taster of what is to come in June by Paul Wadey, PR Officer at the KCC.  We were told that the festival was inspired by the five colours of Korea, each representing North, East, South, West and Centre. It is hoped that the festival will provide the perfect opportunity to continue the spread of the Hallyu wave and showcase all things Korean - from K-pop to K-classic, Korean fashion to Korean food, Korean art to Korean literature and much, much more. 

In a previous blog post, I mentioned some of the risks faced by focusing Korean cultural promotion too much on K-pop and how this left Korea at risk of losing out on other groups of people who would potentially be interested in different aspects of Korean culture. Well, with a jam-packed program such as this - there is no risk of anyone being left out. 

In the presentation, we were given some rather interesting statistics. For example, non-Korean visitors make up 81.4% of the total and of all the visitors, 35% have visited more than 4 times. 70.5% of visitors were between 18-39 but in addition, around 10% were over 60 - demonstrating the centre's ability to appeal to all ages. 

Continuing to demonstrate this appeal are the events that will be forming the schedule for this summer's 100 day festival. 

On the Korean art front, Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa will be presenting an outdoor installation at the Southbank Centre which will be there throughout the summer. In addition, this summer the Hayward Gallery will become a temporary summer school; "Wide Open School" is an intriguing experiment into 'what would happen if a school's curriculum was driven by the imagination of artists'. The school will run from mid-June to mid-July and will feature Korean artist Lee Bul. From mid-July, the KCC will run it's own exhibition entitled "Korean Funerary Figures: Companions for the journey to the other world" which will feature 19th and 20th century Kokdu used to decorate funeral biers. 

The main Korean literary event of the summer will see 'Poetry Parnassus' taking place at the Southbank Centre. Poets from each competing Olympic nation have been invited to participate in  the UK's largest ever poetry festival and will present the works of Korean poet, Kim Hyesoon. 

From literature to performing arts, the KCC is covering it all. On the 23rd of July, Be-being's korean music mask project, "Yi-myun-gong-jak", will be performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This concert of traditional  Korean music will include performances of original compositions as well as reinterpretations of traditional Korean mask plays and is definitely something not to be missed!

Another Korean musical extravaganza hitting the London stage on the 28th of July is "Walkabout", presented by GongMyoung, a Korean quartet who perform traditional Korean music with a contemporary music. In a single performance, the audience will hear the sounds of up to 30 different instruments. Having performed all over the world, their arrival is the UK is long overdue so again, definitely worth watching! 

For a full schedule of the other musical events taking place - stay tuned to the KCC website! 

'All Eyes on Korea' will conclude with Korea's stage at the Mayor's Thames Festival on the 8th and the 9th of September later this year. The stage will feature a full programme of events, performances and workshops  for all the family. 

It sounds truly fantastic (and I only wish I was in the country for it!!!)  

At the conclusion of the presentation, I went outside and happened to bump into some friends of mine.... 

As part of the launch, LOKO's Caroline and Deanna led a number of students from the K-pop Academy and other numerous volunteers on a flashmob tour of London all morning. After the press launch, I joined the crew on the very brightly decorated 'All Eyes On Korea' bus to continue the flash mob tour...

We were joined on the bus by some Korean news film crews ! 

However, due to a timely downpour, our tour was cut short and we had to head back to the KCC early! 

On our return, we all sat down to watch a concert DVD and then, before we knew it, it was time to prepare for 태국기 (TaeGukGi), the fourth Korean night hosted by the KCC....(T.B.C)

*For those interested in getting more involved with the KCC-hosted events over the course of the summer, you're in luck as they're currently looking for supporters to help with and attend the events so don't hesitate to get in touch - here's some more information below! 

 

Meet Mr Daddy: An evening with Park Kwang-Su

Aside from studying Korean as part of my degree at university, I've also been taking regular Korean classes at the Korean Cultural Centre in London. Having completed our term one exams, our final class of the term involved an outing to the cinema....  

In addition to running Korean classes, the Korean Cultural Centre, aka the KCC, also runs various other events including weekly screenings of Korean films including a monthly Q&A session with directors of the films and this month, they've been screening a selection of films by director Park Kwangsu. 

KCC Director Won Yonggi with Director Park Kwangsu 

To introduce the director, Park Kwang-su is not particularly well known but is a person whose influence of the development of Korean cinema is indisputable. He founded the Seoul Film Group in the 1980s which was linked to many of the student pro-democracy protests at the time and he  then went on the contribute to the establishment of the Busan Film Festival and also the Busan Film Commission. In between all of this, he created his own body of work, mostly defined by the politics of the 70s-80s, which made him a role model for the many young Korean film directors who have followed in his path.

His works, which have frequently been described as 'socially controversial', all have a common theme of struggles for democracy, freedom of expression and anti-corruption - central topics in the politics of the 1970-80s, a time in Korea that was defined by the censorship and control experienced by the people at the hands of dictatorial rule. 

Now, sorry to disappoint those who saw the title (which, yes, I know, could be slightly misinterpreted!). To clarify, 'Meet Mr Daddy', or '눈부신 날에' in Korean, is in fact the title of Director Park Kwang-Su's wonderful film which I had the honour of going to see last night at the Apollo Theatre in London. Meet Mr Daddy, released in 2007, was Director Park's first step outside the genre of socially / politically controversial film and in my view, it was thoroughly brilliant. 

Jong-Du (Park Shin-yang) is a selfish, lowlife conman and gangster, living in an old trailer on a junkyard. When in jail for yet another conviction, a social worker (Ye Ji-won) appears informing him that he has a daughter. Not exactly parenting material, he initially refuses to have anything to do with the child... only accepting her when money enters the equation. As he slowly opens his heart to her, he finds out she has  serious illness....   

Signed by the director himself!! ^^

While, in true Korean film style, it does get quite graphic (in a violent sense) in some of the gang scenes, it's nothing that could put you off the film and really is only a small amount (none of which is present in the trailer~)

Watch the trailer here: 

 I have to admit, I was totally won over by the acting of little Joon, played by actress Seo Shin-Ae, who stole the show in this film. The quality of her acting, especially considering her age, was phenomenal and there were quite a few teary-eyed faces when the lights came up after the showing! 

I really would recommend watching this film. It's not intellectually challenging nor is it fast paced or exciting but it is smart and funny and at times, heart-breakingly emotive as well.

After the film had ended, we had an opportunity to meet the director and ask him questions regarding his work. I had gone with a few questions, prepared in Korean of course, stored on my phone - only for my phone to run out of battery half way through the showing. (Yes - I've learnt my lesson!) 

Thankfully, I still remembered the most of them!

 I asked him "how did the media censorship in the 70s/80s affect the production of some of your earlier films and your work in general?" To which he replied that it had had a great impact, vastly limiting where and when and what he could film. He mentioned that in one of his earlier films, they'd wanted to shoot a scene featuring a billboard showing a foreign model on it but this was banned until the 1990s. Apparently, while they were filming (with the 'illegal' billboard), the police had arrived and told them to stop and take it down. The rest of the scenes for that set were shot pretty much without a script as they quickly tried to finish the shots they needed before the billboard was forcibly taken down. He said "I told the actors to just do what felt natural and go with it, we didn't have time otherwise". 

When I asked whether working in film at that time had caused him any difficulty personally, he replied "Well of course, I received lots of threats but I was a director. I dealt with it. At that time, you didn't enter film unless you were prepared to make a stand". 

I also asked him what inspired him to suddenly move away from the social / political theme that had been running through all of his pieces up to now. In response, he joked "I'd run out of politically/ socially controversial things to cover" before going on to say that there were many more directors trying to move into the genre and he wanted to try something new, saying "there are lots of things you can make a film about, I want to find some new things". 

When asked what his inspiration was for 'Meet Mr. Daddy', he replied "I didn't have any. It was my investor's idea and he came to me. I wanted to try something new so we went from there". 

Having had the opportunity to meet with him and talk with him, I can't help but feel that he's a fantastic person and he must be a great director to work with. He's extremely humble regarding his very talented work and I hope he receives more appreciation for the films he has made. He is a film maker worthy of rediscovery and I urge you to go and watch some of his work. 

For anyone interested, there are still 9 months left of film magic at the KCC with a different director's films being shown each month. There are screenings weekly at the KCC with a final showing at the end of every month at the Apollo Cinema in Picadilly featuring a Q&A session with the Director.

Coming next month : Director Song Il-gon