Everyone loves beautiful pictures. Groove Korea is teaming up with the Seoul Photo Club to give readers tips on where to get the best snaps on the peninsula. Our photographers will share tips on how and where they shoot.
Groove Korea: Give us a little insight into Greg the photographer, and Greg the man.
Post-rock in Korea has undergone quite a transformation in the last year or so. After the success of local acts Apollo 18 and Frenzy in circles outside the Korean underground, eyes are set on Hongdae and beyond to see what other gems lurk in the shadows. For someone who doesn’t speak Korean, discovering and unearthing these bearers of new music is hard work.
So we’ve done the work for you. This month, Groove Korea reveals some of the most relevant and recent developments in Korea’s post-rock scene.
No Respect for Beauty
Escape from Camp 14
By Blaine Harden
Viking Books, 224 pp
Available at What the Book? in Itaewon
Street Art in South Korea is certainly not a “revolution of signs” as the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once characterized the cryptic lettering (tags, writing) at the beginning of the graffiti culture. But there is a small, lively and innovative cultural scene in Seoul.
Some of the murals are modern-time testimonies. They are, albeit with a quiet tone, political statements, pointed observations of recent social circumstances or expressions of an attitude to life.
Education costs
Korea is an easy place to throw caution to the wind when it comes to too much to eat and drink. Crazy work hours, stress from immersing into a new culture, lots of new friends and places to explore and maybe pressure to have soju with the boss: It can all lead to unhealthy choices.
Friday
Exhibit “reduction”
check out the new work by Matt Gale at his exhibition “reduction.” From his Faccebook page: These images represent a synthetic love affair between mechanized optical machinery and the mechanized structures which house the fancies of mankind: an ultimate reduction of the buzzing urban landscape to a series of intimate portraits, figure on sky, portraits of the melancholy intersection between longing and beauty.
When: 8 pm
Where: Seoul Salon
During one of the most appetizing dinners of my summer so far, a chef delighted us with a tasting of several kinds of fish cooked using different techniques. If you have read this column before, you already know my passion for fish. I believe it is cultural. Spain, my country, is the fifth-largest consumer of fish in the world, after Japan, China, Norway and Portugal.
Innovation, talent and education collide in an upcoming collaboration between activist adoptees and a center for alternative culture in Seoul. Designed as a unique skills-sharing workshop, the event is being held to showcase the wealth of talent among adoptees from various cultural backgrounds living in Seoul and lend financial support to Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK), in partnership with Haja Center. While many fundraisers have found success proffering food and drink, this one is modeled trade school and skill-sharing concepts that have taken root in the United States.
Friday
Chicken and beer
This is an organized meet-up for those who like to spend Friday nights in the Hongdae area. Crispy chicken, Korean beer and meeting interesting people. If that is what sounds good to you, then join this hangout at BBQ Café.
When: 8PM
Where: BBQ Café, B2 LG Palace Building, Donggyo-dong, Mapo-Gu, Hongdae Sta., exit 9, line 2
Price: 8,000 won
