KPop Academy Week 8: Korean Literature

I arrived late for this session of KPop Academy, so I missed the first bit of the class. However, I shall try and tell you as much as I can.

I came in to find Dr Grace Koh giving a lecture on Korean Literature. She is also from the School of African and Oriental Studies.

You can check out the links below for more in depth information. I have compiled as much as I can from the lecture below as well.

Korean literature

Korean Poetry

The first example of Korean Literary script using vernacular Korean was titled "Songs of Flying dragons". A comparison to these vernacular songs in modern times is KPop. Vernacular songs were the popular songs of Ancient times. The picture below is an example of the script.

Lost at Sea: Tragic Accident in South Korea.

Source: RT

I woke up this morning to the sad news that a South Korean Ferry capsized 20km off the coast of Jeju Island. The 146m-long vessel has a capacity of about 900 people but was carrying about 459 people when it capsized.  It was travelling from the port of Incheon, in the north-west, to the southern resort island of Jeju. It sank within two hours of sending a distress signal, reports said. It is not yet clear what caused the incident, but witnesses described hearing an impact, before the ship listed and quickly sank.

Why Korea?

This is a question I have received countless of times from different people, at first even my family. They were all curious and surprised as to how and why I had so much passion for a country and its culture which transgressed to music, food, drama and even history. They were astounded at the level of commitment I put into learning a language that I might not even get to make use of in my faraway country in the west of Africa where the likelihood of coming across a Korean was slim to none.

And I say to them because I love it, because I have passion for it and because to me it isn’t just a hobby, rather it has manifested into a lifestyle. I gush about how similar my culture is from the Korean culture and how fascinating it is to me. Here are two countries miles and miles away from each other, you would think them to be different for the most part but the odds of them being so similar are baffling. You realize that we may look different but underneath we are the same and we have a lot to learn from each other. This open-minded disclosure gets most people surprised and peaks their interest wanting to know more.

Webtoon: A New Trend in Korean Digital Comics with Yoon Tae-ho

Photo Credit: LBF.

The London Book fair is a large book-publishing trade fair held annually. This year the focus was on Korea. Our assignment for KPop Academy was to attend one of the events and write a review about it. I chose to attend the Toon Talk with Yoon Tae-ho hosted by the Korean Cultural Centre.

First off a Webtoon is an animated cartoon that is published online in episodes. The Korean term for it is Manhwa. This is fast becoming an important trend reaching a lot of adult audience. An estimated 10 million Koreans are downloading webtoons everyday. The comics are published on a website known as Portal.

Yoon Tae-ho is a renowned graphic artist who works both in the traditional media print and Webtoon. He is from Gwangju, South Korea. From an early age he had shown keen interest in drawing, which led him to apprentice under Jo Woon-Hak and Huh Young-man who are Known as some of greatest in the field. In 1993 he debuted his first work Emergency Landing. He later became popular for writing the Webtoons Moss and Misaeng leading literary critics to call him as one of the leading voices of the next generation of Korean cartoonists.

KPop Academy Week 7: K-Dance with Team LoKo.

Photo Credit: KCCUK

Hey guys :)

I arrived at KCC both nervous and excited on Saturday, as expected!!! The class started with a review of our Origami Assignment, a couple were shown including mine. If you're curious as to what it is, you can read all about it here.

This week at KPop Academy it was all about K-Dance or KPop Dance to be exact. We were all anticipating this day for about 3 weeks already when we started deciding on the song choreography we wanted to learn. There was a lot of choices most of which were EXO :). In the end it was decided that we'll learn EXO's Growl and Orange Caramel's Catallena.

I thought there were great choices, that was before I watched the choreography on YouTube!!!!
The moves to EXO's Growl looked complicated for a girl like me who always believed she had two left feet!! I tried it a few times in the week leading up to the class but it was an epic fail. But I was reassured by the discussion on the facebook group and was looking forward to a fun and hilarious class which BTW was exactly what we had!!

KPop Academy Week 6 Assignment: Hanbok Origami and Ttakji.

 

To finish off the Korean Art & Craft week, our Assignment was to make Hanbok Origami~한복종이접기. I remember when I was younger I did a lot of paper folding both in school and for fun. I didn't call it Origami but it is basically the same thing I guess. Anyways it was a bit difficult finding Origami paper in my neck of the words but I finally did and I saw some patterned paper that reminded me of the Hanbok we wore a few weeks back. I thought it will be interesting to use and it will add character to my finished product.

KPop Academy Week 6: Korean Art.

Craft: Colour of Korea

Photo Credit: Pure Travel.

I can't believe how fast the past couple of weeks have been. We are already halfway through the KPop Academy. It has been an enjoyable experience that has exceeded my expectations. I have had the chance to experience Korea in a totally new way, and I am glad I was able to let you guys in on the fun we've been having. I hope you are enjoying reading about all the different aspects of Korea that I've been able to offer in the past few weeks.

On that note, I'll go on to tell you about our last session...

As per usual, I arrived at the Academy before 2pm. We headed into the hall which was already laid out for the Craft class. At 2pm, Last week's assignments were shown and then we were introduced to Kim Yu Jin who is a Jogakbo specialist. I don't know if I was the only one who noticed, but she had the same name as the Korean actress Eugene who was in 'Can we love' and a '100 year inheritance'. I thought that was an interesting fact :)