Korea Politicians: Corruption, cynicism and criminality at the LKFF 2016 contains capsules of Inside Men: The Original, A Violent Prosecutor and Asura: The City of Madness There’s something rotten in the state of Korea. Currently the incumbent President, Park Geun-hye – daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee who helped transform the country into an industrial powerhouse – is embroiled…
Text version of an introduction to a screening of Lee Seok-hoon’s The Himalayas that I gave at a screening put on by the Korean Cultural Centre UK on 4 Aug 2016. “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” This was the question that a New York Times journalist once asked of seasoned mountaineer George Mallory. It’s…
Review of film that formed part of the ‘0th’ Edition of the London East Asian Film Festival (LEAFF 2015) “No police has ever touched one of the superrich,” team chief Oh (Oh Dal-su) tells his detective Seo Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min) in Veteran. Still, Ryoo Seung-wan‘s eleventh feature carefully teases out the points of contact between…