South Korea
Saskia Baron
The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda chose to make Broker in South Korea, with Parasite star, Song Kang-ho. He plays one of two dodgy chaps who make a living selling abandoned babies to desperate couples. Although the landscape is different – their business sees them driving a minivan all over the country – the sly sentiment that informs Kore-eda’s style will be familiar to the audiences that loved his earlier films, including Shoplifters, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2018. Broker isn’t as obviously quirky as Shoplifters, which Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Even those with the most tangential connection to pop music will be aware that K-Pop is all conquering, and the likes of BTS and BlackPink are on some metrics the most successful of recent acts anywhere. But at the same time, there is also a growing awareness that there is a burgeoning Korean indie and art music scene, the flames of which have been fanned by what has become one of London’s most interesting and enterprising annual festivals, K-Music.This year's K-Music had another bumper crop of talent, the most intriguing being Park Jiha, a Korean multi-instrumentalist who creates immensely Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A minute before coming on stage, the audience is asked to observe a minute’s silence for the victims of the Halloween tragedy in the central Itaewon district of the South Korean capital of Seoul. The stage is dark, clouds of dry ice forming a vignette around the three sets of instruments – Ham Minhwi’s bass guitar and pedals, Jang Dohyuk’s drums and Yun Eunhwa’s personalised yanggeum, or hammered dulcimer – and when they walk on stage and set themselves up, we in the audience remain silent until Yun Eunhwa starts to play.It’s a sombre and focused start to a striking and arresting journey in Read more ...
Nick Hasted
In Park Chan-wook’s strange Cannes prize-winning thriller, a husband is discovered mangled beneath a mountain, and pretty widow Seo-rae (Tang Wei) isn’t noticeably upset.Brilliant young detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) becomes obsessed as their breaths synchronise in the interrogation room, a piquant tremor after the erotic floods and earthquakes of Park’s The Handmaiden (2016) and Stoker (2013). Back home, Hae-jun cooks sensuous food for his quick-witted, beautiful wife, domestic and sex life decent enough. Yet even as the murder case closes, he spies on the widow, voyeurism Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Twenty-four hours in the life of a Korean woman, Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung), are caught in scenes which feel like real time in Hong Sangsoo’s latest. Moments and personal connections fall in and out of focus, the film seems sober then drunk. Hong learned from old masters such as Robert Bresson, and there is a similar spiritual focus to objectively small, ineffable moments in his 26th film of a prize-winning career.Sangok is a former film actress who has returned from the US to Seoul to stay with her sister Jeongok (Cho Yunhee, pictured below right with Lee). Though secretly carrying a heavy Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Remember Gangnam Style, the music video that went viral in 2012? PSY’s cheeky lyrics and daft moves attracted 1.6 billion hits on YouTube, sparked dozens of parodies and turned the world on to K-pop. And that was just the beginning; K-pop has since mushroomed into a global phenomenon characterised by catchy tunes and fast-paced dance routines performed by beautiful young people in snappy outfits.Hallyu! The Korean Wave traces the development of K-pop from early bands like H.O.T and SEOTAIJI and Boys to K-pop idols such as BIGBANG, NCT and ATEEZ. Their success is fuelled by stunning visuals Read more ...
joe.muggs
This album – and its already multi-100 million stream single “Pink Venom” – starts off with a twang of Korean traditional instruments, a background chant of “blaaaackpink”, a monumentally crunching hip hop beat and – OH DEAR GOD ARE THEY DOING A JAMAICAN ACCENT? Well yes, Korean pop gigastar Jennie of Blackpink does indeed start their second album with a patois-inflected “kick in the door, waving the Coco”. Amazingly that’s not even the weirdest thing about the opening either. That line is an interpolation of a classic Notorious B.I.G. intro: “kick in the door, waving the four-four”, but Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Netflix is sometimes criticised for bringing too much of everything to its online feast, but the way it’s opening up previously under-exposed territories is becoming seriously impressive. Suddenly, South Korea is beginning to look like a powerhouse in the making, with consecutive big ratings hits with Squid Game and now Hellbound.Directed by Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan), Hellbound is derived from the “webtoon” series he created with cartoonist Choi Gyuseok. It depicts a nightmarish society where “sinners” are picked out seemingly at random by a mysterious “angel” and informed that they will Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The Korean-American writer Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, currently enjoying its UK debut at Southwark Playhouse, is presented within a frame that cleverly and radically alters what’s inside it. That would be a sparkly prologue provided by two Persons in Charge: cabaret performers of colour in glittery outfits and spiky headgear that references the Statue of Liberty and African tribal collars; one uses the pronouns he/his, the other she/her. They coquettishly reveal that all the other characters onstage will be straight white men, and each will stay in character for the whole Read more ...
peter.quinn
This second full-length album from South Korean 10-piece Golden Child moves seamlessly from pop balladry to anthemic EDM without ever losing its footing.With ghostly, submerged bell noises, ominous-sounding low brass, joined by strings and pounding drums that reaches a riotous crescendo, the pithy opener “Game Changer” certainly packs an incendiary charge, a figurative grabbing of the listener’s lapel which nicely sets up the dynamic rhythmic power of “Ra Pam Pam”.Incorporating 1980s-style power guitar riffs, cowbell hits and a squiggly synth line embedded into its chorus, “Bottom Of The Read more ...
peter.quinn
This second full-length album from South Korean quintet TXT scrambles musical genres in rich and fascinating ways. From the fizzing hi-hats and dreamy chords of opener “Anti-Romantic” to the harmonic stasis and minimalist groove of “Frost” which brings the eight-track collection to an impressive close, textures, timbres and tempos are impressively varied throughout.Beginning with the merest hint of vinyl crackle before bass and drums kick in, “Magic” is a bona fide summer banger which packs an enormous amount of detail into just a shade over two and a half minutes – a killing vocal Read more ...
Tom Baily
Since launching his directing career in 2011 with The Showdown, Park Hoon-jung has established himself as a promising devotee of the bloody gangster genre. The pandemic may have slowed the South Korean director’s momentum, as the producers were forced to release the film belatedly on Netflix. Still, the move could provide an auspicious entry into the American market.The lonesome lead is Tae-gu (Eom Tae-goo), a lowly member of a notorious Seoul gang who is eager to up his rank. His cockiness is concerning to his sister, who worries that he may be killed. Tae-gu shrugs off the warnings. Soon Read more ...