Friday 7 May. I wake up at 3 o’clock. My body seems to be ready for early morning prayers even though I hadn’t signed up for them. I wanted to hear those moktaks and chants again, so I crawl into my clothes and stumble out to the main temple courtyard to wait for the prayers to start.

I am rewarded not only with the moktaks and chants, but the main temple bell as well. I sit listening for half an hour, before returning to my room to catch a couple more hours of sleep before breakfast.

Breakfast is pretty similar to supper the previous evening: rice and vegetable side dishes with a rich variety of tastes. I could eat this for every meal, without any problem.

Daewonsa's store of kimchi, doenjang and gochujang

Our next appointment is sutra-painting. Again, we meet in the car park to go to the side chapel meant for use by temple-stayers. Two tables are laid out with black paper and gold paint blocks. Yoseph and I are to do the painting, while Morgan is on translation and camera duty.

Sagyeong (사경) is the practice of copying sutras by hand. In the olden days, it was the only way to disseminate sutras and the Buddha’s teaching among the populace. After printing was developed, people came to regard Sagyeong as a virtuous deed. The practice continued and is now recognised as a form of religious discipline.

We take our seats on the floor and await further instruction. The black paper is faintly marked with an intricate tracery of lines which depict a seated Bodhisattva. We are to paint over these delicate lines with the gold paint and the brush provided. The exercise is in patience, concentration, but because it does not require too much brainpower it is also intended as an aid to meditation, to help you focus on yourself.

The only thing I can focus on is that there’s an awfully large number of lines to paint, and they’re very fiddly, and the driver is coming in an hour’s time to take us away. I wonder where I’m supposed to start, and decide on the eyes.

Restoring the temple paintings at Haeinsa

With hindsight, I realise that was a bit of a faux pas. I later thought back to my visit to Haeinsa the previous year, when a lot of the external temple paintings were being restored. All the paintings were pretty much finished, apart from the Buddha’s faces. The faces and eyes are always the last to be painted.

Never mind. I carry on. The brush seems too thick, the paint seems too dry, and I’m never going to finish it in time.

“Slow down. Relax. Enjoy yourself,” was the constant message from Neunghae Sunim. I try, but I’m torn between wanting to do a good job and wanting to finish it off. Neunghae realises that she’s not going to get me to relax unless she starts helping me out with the picture. I’m amazed by her dexterity, by the smoothness and delicacy of her lines, and by her unhurried execution. I enjoy listening to the musical sound of her voice as she chats and laughs with Morgan. She is totally relaxed, unselfconscious, and helps me to unbend as well.

I ask her about life in the temple: how cut off from the world are they? Do they listen to the news? Apparently it depends. Some of the monks focus on meditation and on their inner lives. These monks don’t follow the news. Other monks go out into the world, or try to introduce people to Buddhism. In order to engage with the world, they need to know what’s happening in it. So yes, they do follow the news.

With Neunghae’s help, the painting is soon finished, and she then embellishes it with an inscription. Yoseph is not far behind.

I’d forgotten that we were due to have more tea before setting off on our travels again. We return to the room at the corner of the courtyard where we had drunk tea the previous evening. There is a large glass bowl of yellow tea with a lotus flower floating in it. On the table is more fruit, and dark green rice cakes made that very morning by the senior monk herself.

We are joined for tea by our local guide and by my local friend Kyung-sook, who has done so much to introduce me to Korean culture. We talk about the history of Daewonsa. Originally built in 548 CE, damaged in the Imjin War, destroyed by fire in 1914, rebuilt in 1917 only to be burned down again in the partisan struggles which preceded the Korean War and rebuilt years later through the dedication of a woman who used to be a banker.

I learn that Park Chan-soo, whose sculpture is currently on display in the Cultural Centre in London, and who is helping to oversee the rebuilding of Gwanghwamun, and who is an advisor to the Bucheon Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo (clearly an important figure in Korean culture), used to live at Daewonsa.

Bangwang-tap pagoda, national treasure number 1112

The temple is a special place, in a beautiful and peaceful location. Before leaving, we have the opportunity to explore the grounds more fully. We see the storage area where the big earthenware jars of kimchi, home-made soy sauce and bean paste are carefully arranged and labelled. We are shown the ancient Bangwang-tap pagoda, national treasure number 1112, and savour to the last the atmosphere of the place in the warm morning sun.

Neunghae tell us that our stay has been too short. She is, of course, right.

Neunghae Sumin says farewell – with Yoseph (left) and Morgan

Further reading:

• Daewonsa Website
• http://www.san-shin.net/Jiri-Daewonsa.html

Thursday 6 May. I’m not sure if the monks do their 108 bows every day. If they do, we did not see it because we did our bows in a separate chapel. And if they do, I’m sure they don’t listen to that CD when they’re doing it.

But I was expecting the 9 o’clock bell and meditation to be a communal experience. As it turned out, it was an activity designed solely for their temple stay guests, of whom there were just the three of us.

We gathered in the courtyard as instructed. Neunghae Sunim had brought crash-mats, blankets and tea for us, for this was to be a deluxe meditation. I had brought my iPhone with me so that I could record the temple bell. But under Neunghae’s watchful eye I didn’t feel able to get it out of my pocket. I had to be doing this meditation thing properly.

First, we have to sit on the mats cross-legged, keeping our backs as straight as possible, and look back in on ourselves. And we wait for the temple bell to sound. The mellow rings possess us, but this time, the bell is only struck three times and the experience was over before we had time to savour it to the full.

After a while, Neunghae instructs us to lie down, and she covers us in the blankets. Very cosy. I feel myself drifting off, lulled by the sound of the river below and the rustling leaves above.

Suddenly, something drops onto the mat beside me from the tree. I wonder what sort of bug it is. What sort of bugs live up in the mountains and drop on you from trees? Probably big scary ones with thick shells. Something else drops. I want to turn to investigate what they are, but I’m meant to be meditating. I want to smash them with my fist (or more realistically, my shoe), but during the course of the 108 bows I have just repented of all the creatures I have needlessly killed in my life, and I don’t want to have to repent all over again so soon. I wait for the bugs to start crawling on my face, and a sequence from a Korean movie flashes before my mind’s eye, where in a brutal training session the North Korean agents have to stay motionless as a scorpion crawls over them. Was it the opening title sequence of Shiri, or was it a brief scene-setter in that exotic but rather dreadful early Lee Young-ae film, Inshallah? Of one thing I’m sure: conducting your own personal Korean Film trivia quiz is not what you’re supposed to be doing when you’re meant to be meditating.

But the bugs, or whatever they are, don’t crawl on my face, and my thoughts drift off somewhere peaceful again. All too soon, Neunghae is back, pouring us some refreshing tea from a thermos flask. It was a pleasant, dreamlike experience, and now it’s time to retire for bed.

I’m sharing my rather palatial guest room with Yoseph, while Morgan has one to herself. After figuring out which bits of bedding are meant for lying on and which are meant as coverings, Yoseph elects for some mutual privacy and occupies the kitchen area. We perform a touching little grooming ritual, removing Mrs Mayor’s acupuncture pins from each other’s skulls, before we turn in for the night. Yoseph, perhaps missing elements of the real world down in the valley and back in Seoul, watches an episode of his favourite TV drama on his media player, while I try to sort out some notes. But soon sleep calls. We turn out the lights and relish the luxurious warmth of the underfloor heating.

Korea is a country of contrasts and contradictions, in which seeming opposites can coexist in harmony with each other: it is a developed modern country with a high standard of living while keeping tradition at the same time; it has world-leading technology, but it is not uncommon for people to consult a shaman for advice. Another good example of this is in traditional Korean Medicine (from now on, let’s just say Korean Medicine): although there is a well developed infrastructure of Western Medicine, Korean Medicine is still an important part in the lives of the vast majority of Koreans. Here are two ways in which the concepts of Korean Medicine make themselves felt in everyday lives.

A Hanok’s ondol system is fully in harmony with Korean Medicine

An ondol (온돌), which is an integral part of the unique traditional architecture in Korea, is basically an under-floor heating system. When Koreans stoke the fire in the stove (agungi; 아궁이), the heat transfers across to the stone (gudeuljang; 구들장) underneath the room and is disseminated throughout the whole house creating a warm cozy atmosphere. Then, the heat weakens and exits out of the chimney.

A simplified diagram of the ondol under-floor heating system

The ondol system is based on a principle in Korean Medicine, namely Suseunghwagang (수승화강). This means that the upper part of the body, particularly the head, has to be cool and the lower part of the body has to be warm. This is one of the most important principles in Korean Medicine. In an ondol room, there’s a winmok (윗목) and an arenmok (아랫목). The arenmok is the place which is closer to the agungi, therefore, it is hot. The winmok is the place which is closer to the chimney, therefore, it is cooler. People direct their heads toward the winmok and put their feet toward the arenmok when they are sleeping. Also, when they sit on the floor (it is still traditional to sit on the floor, even now), their hips are warm and their heads are cool. Thus, ondol makes it easier to achieve the status of Suseunghwagang.

Another good example is the tradition of eating samgyetang in the heat of the summer. Samgyetang (삼계탕) is whole chicken stuffed with Korean ginseng, dates, sticky rice and garlic, slow cooked and served in hot broth. In herbal medicine, chicken is considered to possess hot properties, and other ingredients of samgyetang such as ginseng, dates, sticky rice and garlic are considered to have warm properties. ^[1] In summer the outer part of the body becomes hot in order to adjust our bodies to the hot weather, whereas the inner part of the body remains much cooler. Eating samgyetang is a way to heat up the inner part of our body, thus rebalancing the heat.

It is traditional to have samgyetang in the summer to help endure the oppressive heat

On the other hand, naengmyeon (냉면), cold noodles, used to be the food to have in winter. In order to adjust our bodies to the low temperature in winter, the outer part of our bodies become cold while the inner part become relatively hot. Therefore, naengmyeon is a suitable food to help the cooling process.

Links:

• Beat the heat, Korean style, Korea Times, 15 July 2010

1. In herbal medicine, every type of food or herb has its own property, from extremely hot to extremely cold. It is the basic principle that if the body status is hot, then we complement it with cold substances (herbal food), while if the body status is cold (as the insde of the body is during the summer) then we need to have hot ones.

“I’ve met Tom Cruise, and now I’ve met Sam Mercer. And when I met Sam I was truly star-struck. The man’s a legend.” So said a member of the audience at the Korean Cultural Centre after an instructive talk by Andrew Salmon on the battle of the Imjin on 15 July. Sam Mercer was sitting in the front row of the audience, one of the guests of honour at the event. Private Sam Mercer was one of the survivors of the Glosters’ epic stand on Hill 235, though he lost an eye and ultimately a leg in the battle.

Sam Mercer. Photo courtesy of and © Dan Gordon and Andrew Salmon

A former British ambassador in Pyongyang said he’d been playing chess in Beijing in a public park twenty years ago with a complete stranger. As the conversation progressed, it emerged that his opponent was a retired soldier from the Chinese 63rd Army who had come up against the Glosters at the end of April 1951. The soldier, like most of the troops in that army at the time, had been recruited from the tropical southern provinces of China, while most of the officers were from the north. The thing the Chinese soldier remembered most was the fear (of the Chinese officers and of the enemy), the cold, and the smell. One of the Chinese tactics in the Korean War was to creep up on the enemy close enough to grab him by the belt – this was a way of neutralising the Allies’ overwhelming artillery superiority. But it involved long hours of crawling through muddy ditches, often over the dead bodies of their fallen comrades.

Major General Mike Swindells

The building up of a picture of the war through talking to veterans who experienced it first-hand is certainly a way of bringing it to life. It’s what Andrew Salmon has been doing as part of his ongoing work on the Korean War. His well-received To The Last Round is full of vivid character portraits and received a warm endorsement from the President of the British Korean Veterans Association, Major General Mike Swindells, on Thursday. Salmon has also been working with Dan Gordon – famous for his three films about North Korea – filming interviews with the veterans in preparation for a full length documentary film about the Imjin to mark its 60th anniversary next year. The funding is in place, but reasonably enough the backers won’t release the funds unless there is a confirmed outlet for the film. Scandalously, the BBC will not commit to screening it. There was general mystification among the audience as to why Britain is happy to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain or Dunkirk, but not the 60th of the Korean War – a war that has never finished. And why, in general, the Korean War is known as the Forgotten War when it is so crucial to understanding both the current state of the Korean peninsula and north east Asia more generally.

Andrew Salmon with one of Gobau's watercolours, depicting Dongdaemun market as the North Korean army approaches Seoul on 27 June 1950

Salmon is doing his bit. His talk on the early months of the Korean War and sketch of the situation around the Imjin prior to the onslaught by 300,000 Chinese soliders was riveting, even for those already familiar with the background or for those not in to military history. In a talk illustrated with watercolours from artist Kim Seong-hwan (later known as Gobau), contemporary photographs and just the right amount of maps to provide the context without getting bogged down in detail, the time passed very quickly.

Andrew Salmon listens to a question from a former British Ambassador in Pyongyang

And there were plenty of enthusiastic and well-informed questions and comments from the audience – which included a couple of ex-ambassadors and not a few veterans – which meant that without the disciplined chairmanship of EJ Shin we could easily have carried on for a couple of hours. As it was, it was difficult to drag Salmon away from his book signings to the neighbouring pub.

Andrew Salmon’s book on the Imjin has been a success, and he has being trying to follow up with a number of projects. His book on the Chosin Reservoir break-out will be published next year, and he has also been trying to arrange meetings between British war veterans and veterans from China (again, funding is the problem). Sam Mercer stood up. “If I met any of the Chinese soldiers I faced now, I would welcome them with open arms. I bear no malice at all.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photographs of the evening kindly provided by EJ Shin of the Korean Cultural Centre.

Links:

• Donate to the commemorative display for Imjin 60 at the The Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum
• Buy To the Last Round at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
• Andrew Salmon’s To the Last Round website

Thursday 6 May. The time has arrived for the 108 bows. Strangely, we are told to meet in the car park. But that’s where a large side chapel has recently been built, mainly to minister to visitors on the temple stay programme. The chapel at the moment has none of the internal decoration of the main shrines, and is left plainly simple. Neunghae Sunim is there to welcome us.

The candles on the floor are lit, and we are invited to light some incense sticks and place them on the altar. In front of the candles, cushions are placed on the floor. We are told that there are many woes in the world – as many as 1,080, and we need to repent for each one of them. But beginners are permitted an abbreviated version, only 108.

Neunghae demonstrates the exercise.

Preparing for the 108 Bows

“Put your hands together like a lotus bud. Kneel down, sitting on your heels. Then place your arms on the floor, your elbows beside your knees, first the right, then the left. Then place your forehead on the ground. Turn your hands over and raise your palms from the ground. Now there are five points of your body touching the ground: two knees, two elbows, and forehead. Then place your palms flat on the ground again, raise your body, stand up again and return your hands to the lotus-bud position, first the left, then the right.” It was all a bit much to take in.

“Now you try”

“Put your hands together like a lotus bud.” No problem with that. Although I’ve never knowingly seen a lotus bud, I can see what she means.
“Kneel down, sitting on your heels.” Six cracks, as three pairs of knees protest in unison at the unwonted exercise.
“Place your arms on the floor, your elbows beside your knees, first the right, then the left.” Relatively straightforward.
“Place your forehead on …”
YEEEOOOWWWCH.
Morgan had forgotten the acupuncture needle that was still in her forehead. It rather shattered the mood of the moment, and she retired hurt.

To help us through the 108 bows, Neunghae announced that she was going to put on a CD. The instructions: “Whenever you hear a moktak, bow. And then get up quickly, or you won’t be ready for the next one.”

A quiet, enveloping music started emanating from the speakers. A kind of generic, soothing, anonymous music that you might be played while receiving holistic therapy. I’m not a big fan of whale-song music, and I hoped I wasn’t going to be too distracted.

Even worse was the accent of the voiceover artist who was going to be leading the prayers for the next twenty minutes. “We pray to Boo Dar…” It took me a moment to figure out who he was talking about. Why did I find the accent distracting? I wondered if an American would feel similarly distracted by a voiceover artist speaking the Queen’s English. But what does the accent matter? It’s supposed to be the content that I’m listening to. I resolved to try to filter out these distractions: I had to enter into the spirit of things, and experience it to the full. But my battle against distractions was itself a distraction, and I wondered if I was ever going to settle down.

Toc-toc-toc.

It’s time for the first prostration. The knees crack again. I bow and stagger back up.

Toc-toc-toc.

These prostrations are coming thick and fast. Neunghae wasn’t kidding when she told us to get up quickly.

Toc-toc-toc.

I soon find I’m getting into the rhythm. I might not be doing them perfectly, but it’s good enough for me. Even better, my knees are no longer cracking. But now there’s another distraction: with each prostration my cushion is inching closer and closer to the candle on the floor in front of it, threatening a conflagration. So each time I struggle back up to my feet I try to pull the cushion back towards me.

I gradually settle down into the gentle exercise and start letting the repetitive prayers enter me. We were repenting for our individual and collective sins, against each other, against nature, against the environment, and for all our petty ways. We were vowing to make amends, and seeking healing. For anyone used to the confession and intercessions at Christian church services these prayers were second nature, but somehow the physical rigours of prostrating yourself at every confession reinforced the meaning.

I had no idea how many bows I had done, but they seemed to be passing very quickly. The prayers seemed to be winding up, and then suddenly it was all over. I felt I could have carried on for another 108, and the exercise of confessing seemed remarkably healing. But having stopped, I now felt hot, giddy and slightly nauseous from the exertion. It was good to get out into the dark night air waiting for me outside the chapel.

Further reading:

• The 108 bows as exercise on koreanbuddhism.net

Aashish Gadhvi rolls the red carpet out for the latest Korean footballer to his the British Isles.

Glasgow Celtic have officially made themselves an unofficial Korea Town by signing their second Korean star in the form of right back Cha Du-ri. This is to add to their collection which already consisted of midfield dynamo Ki Sung-yueng. To add to their Korean pride they released Japanese and Chinese flops Koki Mizuno and Zheng Zhi. I can hear Arirang beaming with Glasgow accents right now! One would have thought that Celtic are cheating on their first love of Japanese footballers with once having Mizuno along with the legendary winger Shunsuke Nakamura. But it seems that Koreans are now the flavour of the month in Glasgow, which considering that Scotland invented haggis and the deep-fried Mars bar, should be a welcome break from the norm.

Their latest signing Cha Du-ri is a player with a background that would have Sigmund Freud licking his lips. Simply put; this guy has some serious daddy issues. The 29-year-old right back was born in Frankfurt, Germany which was where his father, the legend Cha Bum-kun, played during the 1970s and 80s. Cha senior was a pioneer for Asian football, in that he was one of the first footballers to make a mark in Europe. His brilliant displays for Eintracht Frankfurt, then later Bayer Leverkusen made him largely regarded as the greatest Korean to ever play the game, and rightly so. It was a never a surprise that the young Du-ri would become a football player, considering the atmosphere he grew up in, but living up to that expectation can be an overwhelming experience. Just look at Jordi Cruyff, who adopted the name ‘Jordi’ on his shirt to separate himself from the name of his father Johan Cruyff, the greatest Dutch player ever and one of the best footballers to ever grace the game. Cha Du-ri is then lucky that the current Korean shirts adopt the players’ forenames rather than surnames. Living in this shadow is something that Du-ri has had to do his whole career. But the fact that he became such an important component for the Korean national team in the historic 2010 World Cup campaign is testament to a man who has stepped out of his father’s shadow.

Cha Du-ri with father Cha Bum-kun

Being born in Germany gave Cha Du-ri a very different career path to his fellow Korean footballers. Cha has never played in the K-League and apart from his youth career at Korea University, has only ever played international matches in South Korea. Cha has spent his career in Germany, playing for six different clubs in both the first and second tiers of the German Bundesliga. Being his father’s son meant many people expected him to be a goal machine like his father. But this never happened and during his loan spells to Arminia Bielefeld and Eintracht Frankfurt, he only scored 2 goals in 52 appearances. During this time he played mostly as a striker but was then converted to second striker and wide forward. It was in this position that he played for Korea during the 2002 World Cup but only made a few appearances as a substitute. Cha’s one defining moment in that World Cup was coming off the bench in the Second Round match against Italy when during the dying moments Guus Hiddink decided to send on four strikers. The ball fell to Cha in the box and he performed a spectacular acrobatic overhead kick but hit is straight at Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who calmly bounced it down once and held onto it. Either side of Buffon and it would have been Cha Du-ri’s name living long in history rather than Ahn Jung-hwan’s. A great effort, but the grumbles of ‘his father would have put that away’ were a subconscious thought throughout.

Cha had a decent two years at Eintracht Frankfurt, but surely the club in which his father made such a mark would have taken its toll on the developing footballer. One such moment was a brilliant long range goal which he scored away against Dortmund. The power and precision of the shot was brilliant. So brilliant in fact that many people said he must have his father’s legs. It was a no win situation for him. If he made a mistake it was because he wasn’t as good as his father, if he did well it was because of his father. One always got the feeling with Cha Du-ri that he never really did anything wrong in the Bundesliga, but he also didn’t do anything spectacular in the same way Cha senior did. Perhaps it was for this reason that he felt the need to move on, and in a very sad state of events Cha found himself in the second tier of Bundesliga playing for Koblenz and then Freiburg. However the most important moments of his career were taking shape by this point. After being left out of the 2006 World Cup squad for Korea, Cha reinvented himself in Bundesliga 2. After moving away from the striker position, he became a winger, then a holding midfielder, which exploited his power and strength as well as his defensive abilities. He then cemented his position as a right back, which allowed him to utilise his new found defensive skills as well as bomb forward and attack, using his power and pace. He even became a decent crosser of the ball, something which his father was not.

After an exile from the Korean national team Cha made a brilliant come back, displaying his new skills in his new position. He even ousted up and coming right back Oh Beom-seok out of the team. Nicknames such as ‘The Human Weapon’ and ‘The Terminator’ were coming his way and against Ivory Coast in a friendly in London he was simply outstanding. Having attended that match and watching it from high up is was clear to see the one player who was running the show and that was Cha. He defended brilliantly, attacked with sharp counter attacking skill and suffocated the opposition on the right wing. Calls were soon sent out for him to be in the 2010 World Cup squad and it was no surprise when he put in a brilliant performance against Greece in the opening game. It was strange however to see coach Huh Jung-moo suddenly favour Oh Beom-seok again for the game against Argentina who had a bad game. It was difficult to tell whether Beom-seok was out of his depth because he was against brilliant opposition or if we had just got used to the right back position being an area of defensive safety due to Cha’s presence. Korea lost 4-1 and Beom-seok didn’t make another appearance in the 2010 World Cup. The epic final group game against Nigeria in a way crystallised the entire career of Cha Du-ri. Nigeria’s first goal came from a cross on the right wing and the ball was headed straight to Cha who just lost concentration. Kalu Uche sprung up from behind him and stabbed the ball into the back of the net. So much for new-found defensive skills. But this was Cha version 2.0. He sprung into life spurred on by the set back, much the same as he has done his whole career. His attacking prowess down the right wing was one of the most effective counter attack tools against Nigeria, which he also took into the Second Round match against Uruguay. Again Cha put in a brilliant display, but the Luis Suarez wonder goal put an end to the Korean campaign. While history dawned on the Korean team who had finally emerged from the group stages for the first time on foreign soil, Cha Du-ri had been reborn a new man, or rather a boy who had become a man.

The end of the World Cup has seen the beginning of a new challenge for him and the call from Glasgow Celtic. Scottish football is not at the height of its powers but there is no doubt its still an aggressive league with a lot of physical football and this is something that Cha will want to test himself against and something Korean footballers need to experience more. Ki Sung-yueng so far has had little joy at Celtic but it is too early to judge how good a player he will become. Something tells me that the mentality that Cha Du-ri has developed after a life time of fighting against the odds will make him as good a battler in the Scottish league as anyone else. Let’s just hope we he can stay away from those deep-fried Mars bars.

News of an unusual exhibition at the KCC, starting today:

The 12th KSKD Knit Invitational Exhibition 2010:
“Fashion & Passion”, 26th July – 31st July 2010 at the Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK.

KSKD stands for Korean Society of Knitting Design which aims to encourage access to knitwear design trends in various different ways.

KSKD has held annual invitation exhibitions in various countries such as Canada, France, USA, Italy and Japan
since the first regular exhibition in Seoul in 1999.

This exhibition at the Korean Cultural Centre UK, featuring the collections of 44 artists including Korean academics,
designers and invited artists from other countries will give you a great opportunity to see an interesting and innovative knitting collection.

The colour red will feature prominently in the exhibits, reflecting the “Fashion and Passion” theme.

Please come and see our work!!

1. Study tour of Japan for European “Youth” (age 25-35). Looks great and seems to be free. Apply by 29 July. http://bit.ly/dbbcXm #
2. Looks like a fascinating book on North Korean arts. Michael Rank reviews “Illusive Utopia” by Suk-young Kim: http://bit.ly/96S7hq #
3. Donate to the commemorative display for the Imjin 60th anniversary at the The Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum: http://bit.ly/cxaJzr #
4. RT @indiefulrok Missing the sound of MOT(못)? Check out @eaeon‘s trailer for Kim Young-ha’s new novel “(Nobody knows) what happened” from @timemuseum http://is.gd/dwIK7 #

   Click here to view the embedded video.

5. Kim Young-ha’s newly translated “Your Republic is Calling You” just arrived on my doorstep. Really enjoying it so far. #
6. Can’t believe it’s 5 years since “Girls on Top”. BoA will soon release her 6th Korean album. http://bit.ly/bIWVeT #
7. Doing the maths, does this mean around 6 million Koreans will be heading to the East Coast at the end of July? http://bit.ly/9HYiuk #
8. Kang Woo-suk (of Silmido fame) is the most popular director in Korean box office history: tops 30-million viewer mark http://bit.ly/91Sabj #
9. Korean men want to go on holiday with Girls’ Generation. Now that’s being greedy. http://bit.ly/a4zZ4O #
10. Well, the North Koreans don’t pay their parking tickets http://bit.ly/9L6j6j so I don’t think they’re going to pay their $300m fine http://bit.ly/b2VKnv #
11. When does a female entertainer become a “veteran”? Baek Ji-young, “veteran singer”, models her new bikini brand in the Chosun Ilbo. http://bit.ly/absixK #
12. Does anyone have any good audio editing software? I need to filter white noise (a waterfall) from a recording of temple bells and chant. #

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Thursday 6 May 2010. A monk sits in the corner of the room, brewing yellow tea, while we sit on the floor around the main table. Perfectly ripe fruits are laid out in front of us, including some of Sancheong’s famous strawberries.

The conversation rumbles on, I’m not sure about what, because it was all in Korean and my interpreter rightly didn’t feel the need to give me a running commentary. Maybe it turned towards acupuncture. For whatever reason, the lady mayor reaches into her bag and gets out her acupuncture needles.

First, Neunghae Sunim bows her head towards Mrs Mayor, to accept the needle in the middle of her bald pate. She makes all sorts of agonised grimaces to express the pain as the sharp steel went in. But she was just kidding. It’s soon clear that we are all to be treated in this way. Apparently a needle in the centre of the skull takes away your tiredness. To be honest, I didn’t feel a thing when the needle went in (and neither did I feel appreciably less tired), but maybe this was a long-term thing. We were told to leave the needles in until we went to bed for the night. Morgan had extra special treatment. As well as a needle in the top of her head, she also had a needle in the middle of her forehead.

Bbbbbbonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

It’s 6:45pm, and the temple bell is ringing to signal the end of the day, and banish down the valley any worldly cares and thoughts.

Bbbbbbonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

The rich, round sound resonates around the courtyard, and with each peal a different set of harmonics make themselves heard. Ultimately, as the echo decays, the shifting soundscape settles on a melancholy minor third.

Bbbbbbonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

Somehow the tone is unlike any sound produced by a western church bell. Maybe it’s the fact that the bell is suspended in the open air, not in an enclosed belfry. Or that it’s hit with a wooden hammer rather than a metal clapper.

Bbbbbbonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

I just want to listen in silence to the sound of the bell. But the conversation around the table rattles on regardless. I wonder if it would be impolite to get up and go outside for a bit of peace and reflection. But my good manners get the better of me and I continue to try to pay attention, drinking my tea and picking at the melon, while wishing I was outside.

It’s now time to work out my schedule for the next fifteen hours. Just one night is obviously not enough to be introduced to what Buddhism is all about. And with nothing to go on, Neunghae Sunim asks me what I would like to do, and what I wanted to get out of my visit.

That’s a tricky question, because I’m not really sure what temple stays are all about, and to be perfectly honest if I’d been in charge of booking the schedule myself I wouldn’t have booked myself a temple stay. Three o’clock in the morning is not my time of day, and everything I’d heard about temple stays involved getting up at that hour to do some prayers and meditation. How you’re supposed to meditate when you’re more than half asleep I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t really say that I was only here at the temple because it was on my schedule, so I improvised something non-committal about wanting to find out more about the Buddhist way of life (and that if it involved eating sancho every day they might have a recruit).

Neunghae Sunim read me out the options. I was invited to choose as many or as few as I wanted.

This was really embarrassing. Was I expected to go for the full works? Or could I really just go to bed, have breakfast, have a stroll round the area and then leave for the next attraction? Better wait to hear what the options were. They were as follows:

1. Join the monks for their regular 7:00pm and 3:30am prayers, followed by early morning meditation. It was now 6:55pm, so I’d kind of missed this already, but Neunghae said that was no problem. But 3:30am is definitely not my time of day. And despite my wanting to take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves to me, I considered what other opportunities would be presenting themselves later on during the following day, and how much better I would appreciate them with an extra few hours sleep. So thumbs down to this option.
2. The 108 bows. I’d heard about this one. People had said what was in store, and how crippling it was. But I thought to myself: how hard can it be? 8pm-8:30pm sounded like a doddle, so that option was on. Besides which, I was told that I could do the 108 bows in a separate chapel so that no-one would see me making a fool of myself and laugh. Even better.
3. The 9pm bell. This involved sitting in the courtyard listening to the bell. Now that sounded easy. And just right up my street. I was told I also had to meditate, to look in on myself. But they couldn’t really check, could they? Tick, another one for the list. If I could listen to that bell again in perfect peace, that now was really all I wanted from my visit. Forget about anything else.
4. Some sutra-painting. This would enable me to … well, I can’t really remember what, but it sounded different, and there was some spare time in between breakfast and when we had to leave, so there was nothing to lose.

I even had a choice of breakfast times. Now this was REAL luxury. “What time do you normally get up at home?” I was asked. I could sense that there was the invisible hand of Mrs Mayor involved in this incredible flexibility. Breakfast time at the temple is 6am, and I was quite prepared to fit in with this in the interests of experiencing things to the full. They tried to push me towards an 8am breakfast, and we ended up compromising on 7am.

Toc-toc-toc

It’s 7pm and the prayers are starting. The magical sound of the moktak (목탁), the little prayer-drum, floats over the courtyard from the nearest shrine.

Toc-toc-toc
           Tac-tac-tac

Another monk joins in. Before long it sounds as if a prayerful company of woodpeckers have taken over the temple, as the sounds seem to come from all directions.

Soon, an infinitely thin strain of chant, like a wisp of smoke rising from an extinguished candle, reaches the ears. Then another strain.

But the conversation over the tea table carries on, swamping the sounds from outside. I can bear it no longer. I make my excuses and walk out into the courtyard to immerse myself in these new sounds.

I take my seat on the stone steps outside the main shrine. The evening is still warm. There’s a gentle breeze which rustles the leaves of the trees, but even louder is the white noise rising from the rapids in the valley below, which almost drowns out the sound of anything else.

A monk tries to usher me into the chapel, but I resist and stay where I am, just listening, with my eyes closed, though I do get out my iPhone and try to record what I am hearing.

I sit facing down the valley, where the sound of the river is coming from. Behind me is the main shrine, where most of the monks seem to be praying. But over to the right, on the far side of the courtyard, there’s another shrine from which more chant and more toc-toc-toc sounds are emanating.

Messiaen could not have conjured up a more magical aural experience. When you try to notate sounds on a sheet of paper lined with musical staves, no matter how much you instruct the musicians to improvise or act spontaneously, there is an element of predictability in the outcome. But I now know towards what effect such music is unattainably striving.

Behind me and to the right, the moktaks were being struck whenever a monk had a prayer come into her head. Another monk felt moved to express her prayer in chant. This was not the rich, sonorous baritone chant of a Benedictine monastery, but a timid, wasted sound, but nevertheless quietly insistent, in a waveringly thin contralto. The wisps of chant wrapped themselves around the sharp hollow taps of the moktaks. In the trees, an occasional songbird twittered, almost inaudible against the roaring torrent in the valley below. The tiny bells hanging under the eaves of the shrines occasionally tinkled in the wind. And then a new bird joined the symphony, D-C-C-A, repeated once, carefully phrased, and then silence for a few minutes, while she listened to the prayers, before returning to reprise her simple solo.

News of an upcoming exhibition at the Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ, 2 – 7 August.

Seeing: 5 female artists from Korea
Artists: Honey Im, Hyemin Park, Jeehee Park, Jihee Kim, Woorim Chu

Press Release:

Honey Im: Mother Earth-Green. Acrylic on Canvas, 130 x 100cm, 2009

I am pleased to present “Seeing: 5 female artists from Korea.” the group exhibition in London of work by influential South Korean artists working in various countries including UK, Korea and Germany. This exhibition features 5 female artists from cross cultural background working with variety of materials including painting, drawing, photography and print. This exhibition will be on view from 2 August – 7 August 2010.

The show is about how the artists face the object with their own perspectives. As the sense of sight influences everything we experience, this show is showcasing stories how each artist sees and feels the world, the objects, each others, or themselves. The term ‘Seeing’ simply reflects the individual’s attitude towards the world we live in. As we generally see things in a boundary of our sight and understanding, all works that artists produce embody their ways of seeing. The artists newly made or reproduced so-called ‘sight’ with their own stories and challenged viewers’ understanding of the real and the perceived, the operation of different systems, and ultimately, what qualifies as art. Despite these elevated philosophical ideas, their works remain accessible to the viewers.

Hyemin Park: Argos Room. Pen on Canvas, 30 x 30cm, 2010

This exhibition will allow the viewer to explore the works of these emerging Korean artists while gaining a better understanding of the origins of ‘Perspective’. Furthermore, this show will create an open discourse regarding these five artists’ works and how we comprehend objects and other systems that we are ‘seeing’ in our life.

Ahyoung Baek, Curator

Private View Evening: 6pm to 9:30 pm, Monday 2nd August
Duration: From 2nd to 7th of August 2010
Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday, 8:30 am – 6:30 pm

Honey Im’s paintings explore the territory of unconscious thoughts and the feminine psyche, most recently surrounding the identity of “Mother Nature”, in which nature has the same power as women to create new life. Her paintings illustrate that nature such as plants and birds represents the goddesses of ancient belief systems which create the world.

Jeehee Park: Drawings of travel photograph (Iceland), Paper tape on Digital print, 11 x 14 inch, 2010

Hyemin Park’s drawings feature image of mass produced objects from IKEA and ARGOS catalogues. During the exhibition period, there will be an artist’s performance showing as her practice is concerned with exploring innovative methods of interaction with the audience. Each individual piece is going be sold for the exactly same price of the object drawn. Her works present not merely our daily life as a consumer but also the value of contemporary art in society.

Jeehee Park’s works are often described as the efforts and the process to complete the perfect travel photography. Travel photos often exist only as a kind of evidence of the trip and often limited to show only a few parts of visual images amongst all of the events people experiences at the time the photos were taken. When the artist encountered the landscape of the Iceland while she was traveling, she intuitively selected various images of the landscape into the frame and recognised the place itself. She tries to reinterpret the landscape with her own sight by adding and deleting some new scene and elements with taping, overlapping directly on the photographs themselves.

Jihee Kim: Sealed smile. Color on Korean paper, 40cm x 30cm, 2009

Jihee Kim mainly works with painting filling with the girl’s face with braces, sheep-shaped hat, odd eye and sunglasses on. Is she smiling or crying beyond the sunglass? As we look through her paintings over and over, we realise the smile of the girl in the painting is unnatural. Jihee, the artist, talks about the contradictory situation which people have and face in modern life such as loneliness, not being able to tell the truth and hide themselves behind so-called “mask”. The subject matter of her works is quite serious and dark but she describes it in an ironic way while using sweet and fairytale-like colours.

Woorim Chu’s works are based on oriental energy and a unique tradition that inspires her to discover endless vitality of the world. She uses Calligraphy which represents Chinese characters as the starting point of her works. She defines so-called abstract beauty of calligraphy by looking back at how Chinese characters established in ancient period. She realised and developed the idea of the shape of letters come from the shape of nature and they can be abstract art themselves. The artist, Woorim, once mentioned, “If you encounter the letter in a sentence, it only exists as a means of language. However, in art works, the letter image portrays the narrative ability of Chinese characters and their unique artistic traits. Through the creative process of transforming, distorting, superimposing and unifying the letters, it changes to essence of letters. It can be an independent art work when the coincidental effect of ink meets my own thinking.” By using the effect of ink bleeding, her works not only talk about the spirit of herself, but also mystery of the universe. Her language will be complete when all these processes are done.

Woorim Chu: The Beautiful Ending, Collography, 40cm x 60cm, 2010

Honey Im completed PG dip and MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London in 2008 and 2009. She currently lives and works in London and Seoul, Korea. Exhibitions include: Distorted space, Waterloo Gallery, London, 2009; Collision, Gallery77, London, 2009; Condensation, Bodhi Gallery, London, 2009; Gift, 10 Vyner street Gallery, London, 2009; 3rd 4482 SASAPARI, Bargehouse, London, 2010; New Normal Life, Kimi Art, Seoul, Korea, 2010

Hyemin Park completed MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London in 2009. She currently lives and works in London. Exhibitions include: Good form, Insa Art Space, Korea, 2005; Seoul Young Artists Festival: Portfolio 2005, Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, Korea, 2005; Place and Memory, Gallery CAVE, Japan, 2009; Supervisions, Korean Cultural Centre UK, London, 2009; 3rd 4482 SASAPARI, Bargehouse, London, 2010; The 1st DIGIFESTA [ROOKIE], Gwangju Museum of Art, Korea, 2010

Jeehee Park completed MA in Fine Art at Ewha Womans University in Korea in 2010. She currently lives and works in Seoul, Korea. Exhibitions include: Summer art workshop finale, Schloss Lelkendorf, Güstrow, Germany, 2006; Play, Yonhe-Dong 195 Gallery, Korea, 2007; Ideal Real, Welcome Gallery, Korea, 2007; NES Artist Residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland,2010; VCU Summer studio program, Virginia, USA, 2008; Treading Water, Virginia Commonwealth University, VA, U.S., 2009; Reflecting the light, Hongik University, Korea, 2009; Each and every paragraph, Hongik modern art museum, Korea, 2009; Monopoly, Coesfeld Kunstverein, Coesfeld, Germany, 2010; Looking at the north han river, Seoho museum of art, Korea, 2010

Jihee Kim completed MA in Fine Art at Ewha Womans University in Korea in 2009. She currently lives and works in Seoul, Korea. She has exhibited internationally including 3 solo shows and 5o group exhibitions: Qingdao International Art Expo, China, 2007; Passage Rites, Suwon Museum of Art, Korea, 2008; Korean Pavilion, The Cultural&Arts Festival of Songzhaung, Beijing, China, 2009; Happy New Year From the East, Tacoma Contemporary, Washington, U.S., 2010; Meeting Asian Artists, Art Haus66 Gallery, Santafe, U.S., 2010; Busan Biennale, Shinsegae Gallery, Korea, 2010; Art Daegu Art fair, Daegu EXCO, Korea, 2010. Collections include: Gallery Homeland, Oregon, U.S.; Ustech, Vaimi, ARCK, Blume Gallery, The K Gallery, Gallery Unofficial Preview, Korea and private collections.

Woorim Chu completed MA in Fine Art at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Germany in 2010. She currently lives and works in Dresden and Berlin. Exhibitions include: „Der Sommernachtstraum“ , am Theater Köln – Shakespeare, Germany, 2007, „Die Gläser der Erinnerungen“, Osten Ausstellung beim Ge8, die Ateliergemeinschaft, Germany,2008; Die fotografiesche Bilder „Geburt“, Die Jahresausstellung an der Hfbk, Germany, 2008; „Was ist es hässlich“, an der Hfbk, Germany, 2010

by Paul O’Kane

For London’s Artspace gallery, South Korean artist Soon Yul Kang exhibits a display of tapestries along with some paintings and collages. The works date from the mid-1990s to the present. The Artspace gallery has two rectangular floors, upstairs and downstairs, and on each of these Soon Yul and her curator have lined the walls with a series of images. Upstairs the audience is greeted with pale, bright works, appropriate to the summer sun peering in from Maddox Street W1, while downstairs, where only artificial light is available, some of Soon Yul’s works date from an earlier period and are deeper and darker.

The more recent works on the ground floor are mostly hand-woven tapestries. Soon Yul utilises this traditional medium to create contemporary images while promoting its value and relevance in the 21st century. The word ‘tapestry’ may conjure for some a medieval castle wall, Bayeux (which is in fact a work of embroidery) and a sense of grand scale, but Soon Yul’s works are closer to the scale of most modern paintings. Within this limited space the artist skilfully wields her ability to produce pale eye-scapes of subtly changing shades and colours. Using soft gradations of hue and tone Soon Yul patiently builds up a surface that invites more than it asserts, leaving the audience with an opportunity to contemplate – even meditate – in response. And if the audience is led into a meditative state, this would only echo or reflect the mind into which the artist herself is drawn by her repetitious, thoughtful and gentle art.

Like a Romantic landscape (perhaps the wide skies and shorelines of Caspar David Friedrich), an absence of figures and man-made forms here offers only a horizon or field of colour into which we can gaze. This might turn our mind to thoughts of the infinite or possibly divine; thoughts of scales and forces over which we can have no control. Into these minimal panoramas -which sometimes invoke a strip of grassland or beach- the artist occasionally inserts the line of a large circle which reveals itself only by a slight difference in tone or texture, in such a way that, from a certain distance or angle we might not even notice its presence. The line of the circle, like the line of the horizon, also eludes any desire the viewer might have to recognise, to ‘grasp’, to point-out, claim and evaluate. Like the horizon, the circle invokes another infinity, and by asking us to contemplate both horizon and circle Soon Yul seems to ask us to consider the mind-boggling equation ‘infinity multiplied by infinity’, leaving us with a kind of vertigo. If so then surely this is the aim of art, to communicate possibilities beyond, behind and within the practical surface of our everyday reality, as other worlds emerge mysteriously from the artist’s manipulation of materials which themselves are not extraordinary.

Perhaps it is appropriate that as you leave behind the sun-lit ground-floor of Artspace and descend into the basement you are confronted by a huge ornate mirror dominating the wall of the staircase; ‘appropriate’ because the upstairs and downstairs galleries give us a sense of following the artist’s journey toward increasing familiarity with her medium’s potential, interwoven with her own life and developing identity. The slightly dimmer, artificially-lit space below harbours some history. Here we find one or two larger, bulkier tapestries, hung less like paintings and more like skins or rugs and robust enough to shun the glass and frames that protect most of the works here. They remind us briefly of tapestry’s traditional function in offering protection and comfort as well as being decorative. There are also small collages into which we now peer rather than gaze, finding evidence there of experiments involving destruction and re-composition where the artist has manipulated torn papers and paint to arrive at a textured form. The sublime, soft and elusive circle encountered upstairs is evident again here but now asserts itself more forcefully and often has a dark centre, like an un-erasable stain that the artist somehow managed to remove in her later works.

If pressed, Soon Yul will confess that some of the works downstairs are indeed more figurative and autobiographical, more subjective and motivated by a slightly more traumatic dialogue between conscious and subconscious mind. She also tells us that the dark heart within the circles downstairs could invoke a particularly Korean cultural memory as it recalls the intuitive traditional medicine of a Korean mothers’ hands, softly rubbing away pains in children’s bellies while chanting reassuring words. Downstairs we do encounter darker tones, cavernous forms and evocations of disruptive forces, all of which nevertheless promotes the graceful thought that the artist is here revealing her own hopeful journey through a struggling stage of life and practice to one that visibly matures into the more reconciled and objective imagery we see upstairs.

At Artspace 2010, Soon Yul Kang’s private discoveries are shared; we are allowed to see some catharsis set aside, giving way to a more clarified channelling of her gifts. And this greater symbiosis between artist and medium seems to free Soon Yul’s language to speak to all, as clearly as the light passing through and beyond the gallery windows.

Time for Stillness… Time for Silence – Soon Yul Kang Solo Exhibition
June 21st – July 3rd 2010
Artspace Galleries, 18 Maddox Street, Mayfair, London W1S 1PL
Tel: +44(0)207-993-2721

Inkun Kim, 26, from Seoul, Korea, is the newest chef to have joined the Dining Room (or as many locals still know it, Arthur Purchase’s) in a beautiful Georgian building on Chichester, West Sussex. And he’s already put kimbap on the menu. I’m impressed.

Inkun Kim's Kimbap dish

He graduated at Korea Culinary Arts Science High School, the best of its kind in South Korea, and trained in Sydney’s Three-Michelin-Star Bilson’s. His first job at 17 was at the prestigious Westin COEX Hotel, Seoul. For his two years military service, he was private chef to the minister. He’s earned those nasty-looking kitchen burn-scars up his forearms.

Inkun Kim in the kitchens of Chichester's Dining Room

Because he studied cooking instead of English at school, last year he started taking a course in English at an institute in downtown Seoul, in addition to working long hours as a chef. He was sleeping only three hours a night and not eating properly, and eventually he collapsed one day and was taken to hospital.

When he recovered, he spent two months travelling around his own country and then decided to go and live somewhere far away. Not a big capital city like London or Sydney, where everything’s too loud and aggressive. He gets enough of shouting working in an upscale kitchen. And not in New Malden, surrounded by other Koreans, either, because the whole point was to experience something completely different.

‘In Chichester I can think, I have time for me.’ He started out studying Hospitality at Chichester College and met a group of Korean students who begged him to make kimchi, gochujang and doenjang for them. Are you good at making them, I ask, thinking he’s been cooking in international restaurants for a while now.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I learned from my mother.’ These essentials of Korean cuisine are passed down from generation to generation within a family.

‘So many foreigners think Korean food is dangerous,’ he says. Really? ‘They think because it is cooked for a long time, left for a long time to ferment, it cannot be good or healthy!’

He’s also found many foreigners found Korean food too spicy, though I’m surprised, as it really isn’t, and so many Brits like spicy food. So what about that kimbap on the summer menu of perhaps the oldest, most established restaurant in Chichester? Or ‘Rolls of Seasonal Vegetables and rice wrapped in seaweed with crispy sweet potato and celeriac puree, finished with a Radish and sesame dressing’.

‘Before our vegetarian main course was pesto pasta, which used lots of oil. Kimbap is very healthy: seaweed, fresh vegetables, ginger…’

I say if he can encourage British people to eat seaweed, I’ll be very happy. Why, when we live on an island, don’t we eat such a great source of nutrients?

‘Yes, you know, there is… samphire? No-one complained yet about the seaweed – we will see!’

Darren Southcott finds the Korean Wave alive and kicking in South-East Asia

Had I heard of the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, while I was in the UK I would probably have assumed it was an Asian take on a Central American football terrace tradition. The closest I ever came to being subsumed by it was when hiring a copy of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring from a North Liverpool Blockbusters. A good film it was, but it hardly seemed at the forefront of a pop-culture tsunami hitting the shores of Asia.

When I moved to Korea my ignorance matured into scepticism. In the Land of the Morning Calm, where everything from the genes to the ginger are considered the best in the world, you learn to take things with a pinch of salt – even the MSG. Recently, however, after moving to South East Asia, my Wave-scepticism has begun to lift.

Girls Generation: Oh! - singing to you through your phone

I was sitting in a Kuala Lumpur coffee shop when it first hit me; jangling away, the tune took a while to ring any bells. I turned to see a group of fashionable twenty-somethings sipping their mochas. The jingle didn’t abate and a girl reached into her handbag in a bid to silence it. It was as her triumphant phone-clasping hand emerged that it hit me – ‘Oh, oh, oh, o-ba-leul sa-rang hae. Oh, oh, oh, man-hi man-hi hae’! It made me Korea-sick in a homesick kind of way.

That was the first of many Wave moments on my journey through South East Asia. As long as the phones kept ringing, Girls Generation et al wouldn’t stop singing. K-pop-by-mobile is more unpleasant than you’d imagine.

It’s hard to describe just how popular Korean culture is in South East Asia. Go to any market from Phnom Penh to Vientiane and visit the DVD sellers – photocopied sleeves piled high, the poor quality techni-colour screams ‘pirated in China,’ It takes no small amount of courage to hunch over and penetrate these shaded grottos, shielded from the sun and prying eyes. Amongst the digital harvest there will always be at least one side dedicated to Korean films, and at least two to the music; then there are the dramas.

Dining in a noodle bar it is not uncommon to see three generations sat round a DVD player, watching the latest dramas of the Seoul socialites. Turn on Thai TV and be hit with daily, hour-long specials on Korean music, with live rundowns from Seoul every week. Walk past comic book stores, deep with lurking Manga maniacs, and eye the racks of pop-culture magazines, sporting names such as Seoul and K-Idols, adorned with collages of The Wonder Girls and Big Bang. If this is the Wave on its retreat, its advance must have been frightening.

Pirated DVDs in a store in Laos

What explains this continuing Asian zeal for Korean pop-culture? Amongst the teeny boppers, haircuts and (pirated) DVD sales, does the Wave have a deeper significance as we begin what many commentators believe will be the ‘Asian century’?

A Chinese revolution

The Wave began in the late-90s when a compilation CD of that name was released in China. The name was picked up by Chinese media and it stuck. It wasn’t long before Korean ‘maniac groups’ were formed to emulate their idols and Korean music was the only foreign representative in the Chinese charts. Korean actors topped popularity polls and the mania spread throughout East and South East Asia.

Graphic courtesy of Korea.net magazine

During industrialisation, the ‘Asian Tiger’ economies initially looked to the West and Japan for their cultural icons, but with growing confidence the cultural flow over the East Sea has arguably reverted to west-east, something the Koreans and Chinese may claim is a reversion to type.

Korea now seems to have usurped Japan as the arbiter of cool in the region and there is increasing interest in Korean food, language and culture. Korean teacher, Kim Young-Il, a one-time journalist with the Choson Ilbo and long-time South-East-Asian resident has seen the changes around him.

“As Korea developed people became more interested in our language and trade. I have seen it in Vietnam, Thailand and now Laos. More recently there has been interest in our culture, too,” he said, proudly. “Here in Laos the main cultural influences are Thailand and Korea.”

Letting the rabbit out of the hat?

As the sleeping tiger (or is it a rabbit?) has awoken, everywhere from Shanghai to Singapore has begun playing to the Korean cultural tune. Seoul, amongst the youth of South East Asia, is seen as a glamour capital, rivalling Tokyo in the fashion, movie and music stakes.

The tendency to look to the West has decreased and a modernised, self-defined Korean identity is being expressed. Korea may offer Asia something to relate to in the way the West, or even Japan – with its colonial legacy – cannot.

Super Junior pencil case - Big Bang is also available!

As a teacher in a (Korean-owned) Vientiane language school, it is hard not to notice the Big Bang pencil cases and K-pop paraphernalia that accompany students into the classroom. I asked students why there was such a strong identification with Korean pop culture.

“It just seems natural for us to listen to Korean music. I don’t know why but it seems more accessible than American pop. We like American pop, but we more follow K-pop,” one said.

Another, more mature, student, said that she has seen the change and feels the Korean stars are better role models for the younger generation than most pop stars.

“I quite like Korean music and the groups are good role models so I let my children listen,” she said. “We can see Korean influence in many places today. Many people buy Korean make-up and get Korean hairstyles.”

K-Wave paves the way

The Wave may be defined by pop culture, that most throwaway of exports, but it isn’t stopping there. The whole of Indochina is, even in this age of austerity, feeling the finger of Korean investment.

Drive down Cambodia’s country-dissecting rural expressways, and keep your eyes peeled for Korean factories. Once you hit the suburbs you’ll see the expected Hyundai car dealerships, then once downtown the banks start popping up.

Korea set up Cambodia’s newly opened stock exchange and is currently leading the investment in its Lao equivalent. Investment by Korea in what are known as the CLMV ASEAN countries (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) has risen exponentially in the last decade.

Alongside being the number one foreign investor in Cambodia, Korea has been among the top investors in Vietnam and Laos in recent years, according to most sources. Japan, so long the regional powerhouse, ranks below Korea on most measures of foreign direct investment in the region, although it remains top in terms of donor assistance.

This regional expression of cultural and economic power is certainly intriguing to those of us who feared the hegemony of Westernisation and although it may only be a matter of years before China starts to flex its cultural muscles, the success of Korea may give hope to CLMV countries.

It is Korea’s unique path to development that can in some ways serve as a role model to neighbouring nations, prompting admiration and hope, rather than fear. A Cambodian NGO worker, Sophat agreed,

“The appeal of Korean development is that they have gone from being least developed to rivalling the top economies in the world. We can relate to them for that and we want to emulate their growth,” he said.

It was in November 2009 that Korea officially joined the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and as such became the first country ever to have graduated from a receiver of aid to an official donor within the OECD. Teacher Kim Young-Il also believes that such economic growth is inextricably linked to cultural resurgence.

Big Bang - Big in Laos

“The Wave seems to be steadying now, but we can see a growth of Korean investment on its back. It is almost like one helped the other. People come to know Korea through our music and dramas, so they are more willing to do business with us. This is certainly true for teaching Korean. All of the girls in my class were inspired by Big Bang, or some other group,” Kim said.

The fact that Korea has become a leading cultural and economic light in Asia is not to be lauded for its own sake, but when an Asian identity is only going to strengthen in the coming decades why shouldn’t Korea be at the forefront of what it means to be Asian in the 21st century?

Suffice to say, the next time I hear The Wondergirls plead ‘tell me, tell me, t-t-t-t-t-tell me,’ rather than mutter my dislike for bubblegum pop, I might just tell them “thank God you’re not Girls Aloud.”

It’s at or near the top of many people’s list of the best Korean weepie films. You can judge for yourself on Thursday 22 July at the KCC. One thing’s for certain: Cecilia Chung is very pretty.

Failan

7pm, Thursday 22nd July 2010

Director: Song Hae-sung
Cast: Choi Min-sik, Cecilia Chung
Genre: Drama / Romance
Certificate: 15 (South Korea)
Running Time: 115 mins
Venue: The Korean Cultural Centre UK Ground Floor, Grand Buildings 1-3 Strand, London WC2N 5BW
RSVP: Booking is required, please email info@kccuk.org.uk or call 020 7004 2600 to reserve your place. Admission is free.

The Film

Kang-jae is a third-rate thug whose only joy in life is playing games at the local arcade. Unlike his buddy who is now the head of a local organisation, all he has to show for his life of petty crime is a small video store. Kang-jae is a push-over and gets pushed around by neighbourhood punks.

One day, he is offered a deal he cannot refuse. To the hope-filled Kang-jae, a letter arrives. It reads: Dear Kang-jae. Thank you for giving me a chance to live in Korea. Everyone here is so nice. But you are the nicest of them all for marrying me. Marriage….Wife….Failan….? Kang-jae had a wife, a wife he had forgotten that he had married. In fact, he had married her for a measly amount of money in exchange for Korean residency. A contractual marriage. A simple letter will make Kang-jae realise the meaning of life, love and fate…

Source: KMDB

We hope you will join us for this night, the second in our Love Story: Who Are You? theme running throughout July. To reserve your place please rsvp to info@kccuk.org.uk or call +44 (0)20 7004 2600. Admission is free.

Please be advised that visitors cannot be admitted after 7.10pm.

For more information please visit:
www.koreanfilm.co.uk/film-nights-and-events

http://london.korean-culture.org

Details of a group exhibition opening in the St Martin-in-the-Fields crypt starting on Monday:

Down the road of Globalisation

Artists: Tina Hage, Ayoung Kim, Jörg Obergfell, Beltran Obregon, Yo Okada, Gunwoo Shin, Hyemin Son
Curator: Anna Miyoung Kim
Venue: Crypt Gallery, St. Martin-in-the-Fields church, Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 4JJ
Date: 19th Jul 2010 – 1st Aug 2010

Globalisation has been repeatedly staged, weakened and re-staged throughout history in different forms and so far one undeniable outcome: vast economic prosperity for certain nations or empires. Although its historical origins are still debatable, the Hellenistic period, the Age of discovery and the European colonization of America have all been regarded as eras of Globalisation.

In each of these periods parts of the world have tasted the sweetness of the fruits (abundant products and accumulation of wealth), while others have had to endure various forms of exploitation, inequality and depletion of natural resources.

Since World War II, what is known as ‘Globalisation’ is supposed to be the result of planning by certain world leaders to eliminate borders and facilitate trade, thus creating interdependence and reducing the chances of conflict. Initially triggered through international treaties and regulations, Globalisation is assumed to function as an engine that pursues coexistence and global prosperity through free trade, exchange of technologies, people and ideas, while simultaneously diminishing the imbalance between strong nations and the so called “underdeveloped countries”.

After decades of modern Globalisation, are we on the way to achieving peaceful coexistence and true global prosperity?

Through the eyes of seven artists, the exhibition Down the road of Globalisation will attempt to mirror our societies and cultures, having undergone several stages of Globalisation. The works in this exhibition deal with various aspects of the post-modern metropolis, ranging from territorial conquest and expansion, to the role of the media, some of which are often overlooked in today’s hectic daily life.

Tina Hage’s photographs explore the so called “imperialist practices” by addressing the influential power that the media has been rapidly gaining. Questions are raised about the integrity of the media and the freedom of the press -as their links with the corporate world become increasingly blurred- making it more and more complex to identify the true intentions of what is being presented.

The subjects in Tina’s photographs are represented by the artist herself. Her re-enactments provide an original context for the evaluation of photojournalistic images which are published to serve a specific purpose. Her work questions this very purpose and the way it has been conceived, by creating a space for the audience to revalue what they are seeing.

Ayoung Kim’s video work makes the viewers suspicious of the reality of her images. Her fictive miniature models made of photographs are employed to make surrealistic film scenes which focus on specific incidents or accidents that have occurred in the UK. The work Not in the wrong place at the wrong time is based on the tragic incident of the shooting at Stockwell tube station in London in 2005, where an innocent Brazilian man was shot dead by police after being mistaken for a terrorist. In the aftermath of the shooting the society plunged into a fierce debate about the root causes of the incident. Whether it is simply a failure of police procedures or the socio-cultural degradation of a multicultural society with widespread fear of terrorism is still debatable.

Ayoung KIM, Accept North Korea into the Nuclear Club or Bomb it Now, 2007

In Jörg Obergfell’s untitled triptych we see lonely flags fluttering in the wind. They are made of simple materials, branches and bright plastic bags. But the flags are not, as one might assume, placed on unknown territories or in the wilderness to show the broadening of human civilisation. Obergfell fixed them in the gaps between concrete surfaces of a big city. Standing there between anonymous facades they symbolise the reaction of an individual to the overwhelming environment of the contemporary metropolis; here as well one tries to claim own spaces.

Beltran Obregon‘s video entitled UNEP Manual 1.1 experiments with the effects of simultaneous visual and auditory information. Colorful abstract animation graphics accompany a sober and precise background voice similar to that of an audio guide, delivering what seems to be a Latin American organization’s spoken instruction manual. The “Manual for Possession of Domain and Exertion of Power” contains a set of strategic guidelines for successfully taking possession of a piece of land and dominating its inhabitants.
The elegantly tailored animation initially seems to complement but at times appears to distract and therefore distance the viewer from the content of the highly structured speech, leaving one suspended in a sort of uncharted territory between politics and aesthetics.

Yo Okada employs the image of Chewbacca from the Hollywood film Star Wars, which has been acknowledged as an example of cultural imperialism. The film admires America’s myth and implies a desire for world domination in which the aliens are regarded as foreigners to be dominated or, like Chewbacca, they play the role of a subaltern sidekick of the hero. Chewbacca is pictured as a half-civilized animal with massive hair and a deep voice, who speaks a different language. The imperialistic view on Chewbacca may be obsolete nowadays but the question remains of whether any vestiges still survive and live among us with difference faces.

Gunwoo Shin examines the relationship between two contrasting elements by juxtaposing them in his work. Myth and reality have been adopted simultaneously in the work Sinker, in which the angel has been depicted not only as a religious icon but as a dangerous being with missiles on his back. It could imply the ‘religious imperialism’ that Christianity has spread all over Asia since the 19th century, where traditional religions have been replaced with the ‘new religion’ in an act of cultural supremacy.

Hyemin Son’s collage entitled Sunny places explores service industries concentrated in metropolitan areas. It appropriates and re-interprets images from magazines, newspapers and internet advertisements of luxury restaurants, hotels, resorts and real estate agencies. Highly industrialised cities produce man-made ‘leisure space’ available only for certain social classes, and those mass-produced ‘paradises’ get confused with the ‘Paradise’ everyone dreams of. Sunny places pays attention to that confusion and through the appropriation of images attempts to bring to light some of the hidden politics of global industries.

• So what's the soundtrack to the Korean summer? What's everyone listening to on Haeundae beach or wherever? Anyone know? #kpop #
  • Indieful RoK: @lklinks Haven’t really kept up, but right now I would go for Ukulele Picnic: #kindie

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• If ever you're on holiday in Cambodia this looks like the restaurant to visit. A North Korean noodle restaurant known for its beautiful waitresses – including the “North Korean Kim Tae-hee:” http://bit.ly/bHmvzR #
• …but if you work in South Korea you haven't got long to get there: only 4.1 days for your summer hols http://bit.ly/cNT0Gw #
• Fascinating talk by Andrew Salmon at the KCC tonight about the Imjin battle. Totally riveting. #
• ROK Drop Book Review: Yin Yang Tattoo By Ron McMillan. Looks like a good novel for summer holiday reading. http://bit.ly/9hxn6M #

• Walk the Baekdu-Daegan: Korea's mountain backbone: new book on the hiking trail. http://bit.ly/b9cmsu #
• RT @KTLit: An article about Brother Anthony (brilliant translator) and his new book about tea (not my cuppa!): http://www.ktlit.com/?p=1377
• Good to see 2009 서태지 (Seo Taiji) Band Live Tour – The Möbius on iTunes (released today, 16 July) http://bit.ly/cDWFIH #. Here’s “Morning Snow” from the album:

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• RT @CoolstuffKorea: Korean cultural treasures now on YouTube (SKorea): http://www.youtube.com/user/koreanheritage
• RT @CoolstuffKorea:Video from Day One of the R-16 bboyz championship, courtesy of Benjamin Thomas, via Korea Tourism Organization: http://vimeo.com/13061593
• RT @newkoreancinema: Director Kim Tae-kyun shoots ‘Barefoot’ in East Timor http://bit.ly/crPoyB
• Totally stunned at the South Koreans who don't believe that the North sunk the Cheonan. #
  • Darren: Are they convinced it was an inside job?
  • Philip: I was too busy rubbing my chin – bruised from hitting the floor so hard – that I wasn’t really focusing. And to be honest they weren’t making much sense anyway. But the general gist is that Kwangju proved the government aren’t above killing their own citizens…
    All I can say is, them NORKs are doing a really good job spreading urban myth and misinformation…
  • Aashish: There’s quite a lot who think it’s an inside job. I think this speaks of the deep distrust towards Lee Myung-bak more than anything else.
  • Jiyoung: Philip, I don’t think you really get the gist. A great number of SKs don’t give credit for the unprofessional investigation process and inconsistent evidence provided by the SK army and the MB administration, which leads to this worrisome doubt on the MB government’s rushed conclusion that it was done by the North. This doesn’t mean that many SKs think it was an inside job, either. There maybe some. Many SKs thought it was a terrible incident during the joint SK-US military exercise which was happening at that time. You should know more before you say something like this. Watch the SK army’s first press conference and see what they’re suggesting as the critical evidence. Watch “No. 1″ marker-pen written on the torpedo in Korean which survived after more than a month, for example–that’s a joke. The investigation team was completely inconsistent giving its evidence (“this is the evidence/oh, sorry this wasn’t/there is no such thing/oh, sorry, yes there was, but we can’t share that with you). There was no clear role what the international investigation team did. We don’t even know who they were. MB decided not to share the final report with his fellow Koreans in Korean. After all these, I wish I could trust my government, but I can’t be convinced. Can you? I’m stunned if you are.
  • Aashish: I must say that some of the evidence that was given did seem a little suspect to me. I understand what everyones saying though. Governments in Asia are very hard to trust and I dont think that’s too controversial to say. I wouldn’t trust the Indian government with baby sitting my pet hamster. Koreans may feel the same about their government, which given incidents like Gwangju isn’t hard to understand.
  • Philip: Jiyoung, I was really surprised at the emotion that the subject elicited, and if I’d had more energy I would have joined in the conversation more. But I was so stunned, on top of being tired, that I couldn’t really focus. If I remember right the same person who thought the SKs sunk the Cheonan was also prepared to believe that the South Korean government blew up its own airliner in 1987.
    I too was not wholly convinced by the presentation of the evidence, but I am convinced the North did it. I am also persuaded by the unequivocal statements made by the UK ambassador in Seoul and by an authoritative Swedish source – both countries provided experts to the investigation team and were keen that there were the highest standards of evidence. For the sceptics, the endorsement provided by Sweden, a neutral country with plenty of experience having to deal with unauthorised submarine incursion in its territorial waters, should carry extra weight.
    I don’t believe everything my government tells me, but I do believe the combined statements of the different countries involved in the investigation process. And I also believe the statements of well-placed people citing evidence confirming that the North Koreans spread stories in South Korean chatrooms. Indeed, it would be incredible if the North were NOT doing such things.

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We’ll remember this summer heat: after so many Korean summer festivals in London marred by rain and cold, this one was a scorcher. Blue skies, Tower Bridge in the background heaving with tourists, the Gherkin to the north, and on the south side on some of the greenest lawns I’ve seen for weeks during this long dry spell, and a colourful array of food stalls set around a simple stage to showcase Asian culture.

Taste The East was the brand new brainchild of Hyun-wook Lee, creator of The East newspaper, and rivalled the New Malden Korean Food Festival on the same day. But setting it a short walk from the Tower, the London Dungeon and the fleshpots of every trendy Thames wharf was a daring stroke of genius, as was tying together Korean and Japanese food and culture.

I’m sometimes disappointed by the abundance of greasy fried chicken and overpriced fast food at big cultural events. What kind of impression do people new to Korean food get from that? The price of the concessions makes it tricky to provide the best food. But here there was a variety of options, and hallelujah, one Japanese stall even advertised free range chicken.

After all, Taste the East also aimed to be ‘part of an East Asian Healthy Food campaign’, to share with the rest of the world some healthy ingredients undiscovered in the west. Information came mainly through the cookery demonstrations and literature on offer there. For example, I learned that sushi doesn’t mean raw fish but the combination of vinegar with rice, and the vinegar not only brings out the full flavour of the fish but kills bacteria.

The Korean chef created a superb dish of rolled rib of beef, marinated in a reduction of red wine, soy sauce and sake; garnished with a crispy stick of gonbu, a seaweed usually used for making stock. There was no shortage of visitors waiting to sample his creations. Another dish had a delicate fish mousse sitting on a bed of delicious kimchi chopped with tofu.

‘Little Korea’ restaurant offered one of the best £5 buffet plates that included a nicely spicy chaeyupokum, pork stir-fried with vegetables in a red sauce. A stall set up by a group of New Malden business owners was selling perhaps the healthiest fare, and usually had the biggest queue. I watched a lean cyclist pile his plate with tteokbokki, cucumber in a sesame oil marinade, japchae and lots of crunchy vegetables. For a little indulgence, there were the Japanese rice cakes including a supremely decadent chocolate ganache mochi that melted in the mouth – apparently available at Yo! Sushi. Yami had the coolest outfits and, apparently, the coolest beer.

Entertainment was a mixed affair, ranging from Koreans Ji-eun Jung and Sung-min Jeon playing a mixture of Korean classical and western pop on kayageum and guitar (look out for Ji-eun Jung’s CD coming out later this year), to some non-professional but enthusiastic Taeko drummers with rather unfocused dancers, to a bizarre display of perhaps the slowest martial art I’ve seen, the Japanese Jikiden Iaido, with a group of East London blokes in priest-like black robes lunging forward and drawing swords, to a talk on the practicality of the kimono.

We took shelter from the blazing sun in the shade of the trees, and caught up with old friends, one of the greatest pleasures of these summer festivals. To those who organised it and to those who supported it, a big thank you and congratulations: I’m looking forward to the next.

For the second year running, the Anglo Korean Society organised a fascinating Korea update in the Houses of Parliament, provided by three ambassadors: Martin Uden and Peter Hughes, our representatives in Seoul and Pyongyang respectively, and Choo Kyu Ho, Seoul’s representative in London. Simon Hughes MP hosted at the event held on 8 July.

Sir Stephen Brown, in the chair, noted that the Anglo Korean Society is a non-political organisation which exists to foster understanding between Britain and the Korean peninsula. Accordingly, the Society had extended an invitation to Pyongyang’s representative in London, Ja Song-nam, to complete the ambassadorial quartet.

Wisely, Ambassador Ja decided not to attend this year. Sir Henry Wotton’s famous dictum is that an ambassador is a decent man sent abroad ad mentiendum rei publicae causa, and one feels some sympathy at the positions that some ambassadors have to maintain. Last year, the main issue in North-South relations was the North’s missile tests. Ambassador Ja presented the DPRK’s position that this was not military technology, but part of a bona fide space programme: if the North didn’t manage to get a satellite into orbit soon, there wouldn’t be any Space left for it. If none of last year’s audience believed that the North has a bona fida space programme, the mere statement of the claim in such formal surroundings at least provided some grim humour.

This year, with the main issue souring relations being the sinking of the Cheonan, and given the official UK view that it was the North that carried out the deliberate attack which resulted in the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors, any of Ambassador Ja’s Pyongyang-sanctioned statements would have been in distinctly bad taste. He was therefore wise not to attend this time round. It is hoped that relations will be more normal next year so that we will be able to have all four ambassadors. But who can tell what relations will be like next year?

Is this North Korean propaganda poster all about the Cheonan? Source: Chosun Ilbo

In fact, Aidan Foster-Carter’s question from the floor was precisely that: How do we move on from the Cheonan incident? The North strongly denied wiping out three South Korean cabinet members and narrowly failing to assassinate the South Korean president in 1983 (link), and then a year later offered an olive branch in the form of some humanitarian aid following some regional flooding in the South (link). The South accepted the offer, thus showing that it is possible to move on from such enormities.

The consensus of the panel was that what was most needed is a strong statement from the UN Security Council – to get endorsement that the attack was not a minor local difficulty but something with international security implications: a nuclear armed state thinking it can carry out random acts of hostility with complete impunity.

It is not clear whether the subsequent 9 July UN Security Council Statement will fit the bill. The statement condemned the attack, and noted that it threatened security both “in the region and beyond” (link), but also included compromise wording (presumably aimed at satisfying China) which noted that the DPRK denied the whole thing.

“Do we know anything more about North Korea than we did 10 or 20 years ago?” asked Sunny Lee of the Korea Times. Another excellent question. Martin Uden pointed out that we have defector testimonies; and Peter Hughes said that NGOs and other organisations also helped in building up a picture of what was happening on the ground. But the bigger questions such as Who ordered the sinking of the Cheonan and why? What is the significance of the upcoming special meeting of the Workers Party? And countless others about the inner workings of the DPRK hierarchy… There are just no authoritative answers.

The discussion turned briefly to China, who were seemingly not concerned with the Cheonan incident but were much more upset last year that they were unable to control the North in respect of the nuclear tests, threatening an arms race in their back yard. Hence the weak Security Council statement this year, but a strong response including strengthened sanctions last year.

Other messages from the evening were more positive from the perspective south of the border: leadership of the G20, strong GDP growth, strong policies on the environment, green growth and climate change, the country’s progression from being an aid recipient to being a significant aid donor, and the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean war (including the visit to Korea of Bill Speakman VC and Derek Kinne GC. “Genuine celebrities,” commented Ambassador Uden). Plenty of good news then, but as is often the case more attention is grabbed by the bad news from the North.

Links:

• UN Security Council Statement on the attack on the Cheonan

Thursday 6 May 2010. We drive up a winding road, through woodland on the side of a valley until we arrive in the car park of Daewonsa Temple, in the foothills of Jirisan mountain. We are met in the car park by a monk well known to our local guide. “She’s my favourite monk,” he tells us.

She. This is something I wasn’t expecting. Yes, it seems that Daewonsa is almost exclusively inhabited by female monks.

“Our” monk, who later introduces herself as Neunghae, is in charge of temple-stayers and other visitors. Shaven-headed like all the monks, she has a wonderful smile and radiates an incredible warmth.

With Neunghae Sunim at Daewonsa

We are more than an hour late, and the scheduled evening meal has finished. But whether it’s divine intervention, or the local mayor gently pulling strings, they have kept the refectory open for us.

I follow wherever I am led. And before we do anything else it seems the first thing we must do is pay our respects to Buddha. Not for the first time on this trip, and definitely not for the last, I wish I was wearing slip-on shoes. We enter one of the shrines, having of course taken off our shoes, grab a cushion each from the pile in the corner (two piles for guests, two piles for the monks), and lay them side by side in front of the Buddha statue. I’m not sure what comes next, so I watch my guide out of the corner of my eye. We are going to do some bows, but I’m not sure how many, or what type of bow. If you’re not used to it, keeping your balance as you kneel down, placing your forehead to the ground, turning your palms upwards, and then standing up again, is difficult enough. But when you try to do it while watching what your neighbour is doing, to see what comes next, it’s doubly difficult.

It was only three prostrations, and I managed to stumble twice. Not a good introduction to the life of peace at the temple. But it was a got me in training for what was to come.

Exiting the shrine, I grumbled as I tried to get my feet back into my shoes, and decided to give up, instead breaking their heels and using them henceforth as slippers. We are shown to our rooms and then directed to the refectory.

Waiting for us at the table is the mayor’s wife, obviously a well-known figure at the temple. Although there’s generally a segregation of the sexes at mealtimes, I was allowed to sit with my interpreter, the mayor’s wife and the local guide, Mr Min. Yoseph and the driver bond on a separate table.

I like my meat, but I would be perfectly happy being a vegetarian if every day I was fed the type of food I was given at Daewonsa. Countless side-dishes of every conceivable herb and vegetable, in all kinds of dressings, are laid out, together with a doenjang jjigae and rice. My own favourite herb was represented: the pungent and fragrant sancho (산초, zanthoxylum schinifolium), both in leaf form and berry form. It is said that only Southerners can appreciate sancho. If so, I was a Southerner in a previous life. Morgan, who has never tasted sancho before, and who according to my friend Jin-gu was a monk in a previous life, almost spat it out. She’s obviously a Seoulite through and through.

After supper, our privileged group adjourned to a small room in a corner of the main courtyard, next to the main temple bell, for tea.

Jennifer Barclay pays a quick visit to the varied exhibition of contemporary Korean art at the Saatchi Gallery

Korean Eye was founded by David Ciclitira, who became a fan of contemporary Korean art when visiting South Korea on business, and decided to bring an exhibition to the UK for the first time last year. As an admirer of the South Korean art scene, he hunted in vain for a book that brought together the current stars, and unable to find one, he created the Korean Eye book also, on sale at this year’s exhibition which lasts only until 21 July.

Kim Hyun-soo: Breik, 2008

The theme is ‘Fantastic Ordinary’, and I’m afraid I failed to discover the reason behind the name. But it’s well worth a half an hour’s visit. Most striking, I think, were the sculptures by Kim Hyun Soo of ‘Dryad and Young Dryad’ (2008). In Greek mythology, the dryad is a nymph or divinity of the woods. Kim’s interpretation shows realistic life-size figures of some creature half human, half deer, and naked to the hairless skin made lifelike with veins and human elbows, made from polyester resin. Accompanying these is a child with human hair and deer horns, which he is breaking off. Fantastic: yes. Ordinary? No.

Gwon Osang. Clockwise from foreground: Fuse (2007-8), Harpers Bazaar (2008), Metabo (2009)

Almost as arresting, iconic and beautiful were the shiny human figures by Gwon Osang: a tall woman in a pose reminiscent of an Ancient Egypt; a woman with a chain saw and an inquisitive expression; a man in motor-racing gear and helmet, curled almost in foetal position. No explanatory commentary was offered.

Two views of the same work by Bae Joon Sung: clothed or naked?

Other noteworthy pieces were the paintings by Bae Joon Sung, whose ‘Costume of Painter Kiss’ appeared at the Korean Cultural Centre in the brilliant show ‘Good Morning Mr Nam June Paik’ in 2008. Bae’s trick is to insert panels in the painting that change depending on the angle of viewing, so demure classic figures in draped robes transform into naked, sexy girls. The titles always sound a little lost in translation, and I wonder if Bae is too much of a one-trick pony, but there’s no denying the pieces are good fun.

Ji Yong-ho: Minotaur

Hong Young In’s embroidery works were unfathomable to me but interesting; Kim Dong Yoo’s homages to Warhol seemed unnecessary, but Park Eun Young’s Dali-esque ‘Brainwash’ was worth seeing, and Ji Yong-ho’s minotaur and shark made from old tyres really worked. On the whole, the Korean Eye exhibition stood out as far more valuable than much else in the gallery, except perhaps the building itself, a gorgeous space that makes the most of natural light and exposed old brickwork. There’s no advertising to draw visitors to this section of the gallery, but plenty of people seemed to have made their way up to the second floor and I hope they came away with their eyes opened to the fun and creativity in contemporary Korean art.

Korean Eye 2: Fantastic Ordinary runs on the top floor of the Saatchi Gallery, off Kings Road, until July 18th

The Saatchi Gallery, off London's Kings Road

Links:

• Korean Eye website