Daughter. Sister. Friend. Explorer.

Film Review: Concrete Utopia

Concrete Utopia from Director Um Tae-hwa has been selected as Korea’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Oscars, and with good reason. Inspired by a Webtoon titled ‘Cheerful Outcast’, Director Um uses this disaster thriller as a means of…

Film Review: Day Off

The premise for the film is simple: It focuses on A-Rui (Lu Hsiao-fen) who has been running a barbershop for forty years. One day, A-Rui receives a phone call from the family of a regular client who moved to the countryside following…

Film Review: Road to Boston

The premise behind Road to Boston was the desire to re-tell and pay homage to the inspiring real-life story of 3 national athletes: The trio forming two runners Suh Yun-bok (Im Si-wan) and Nam Sung-yong (Bae Sung-woo) and coach Sohn Kee-chung (Ha…

Film Review: Killing Romance

Killing Romance from Director Lee Won-suk is a riot. More specifically, it is a ‘Wes Anderson’ inspired 106 minutes of a story which gets weirder and more unpredictable as it unfolds. Straight from the start Killing Romance is bizarre and chaotic but…

Film Review: The Boys

The Boys is the latest feature film from ‘activist filmmaker’ and cinematic visionary Chung Ji-young. Through this film, Chung continues to push boundaries and tackle corruption within society, or in this case within the ranks of the Police. Blending fact with fiction,…

Book Talk with Beth Eunhee Hong: Seoul Like a Local

Beth Eunhee Hong (“Beth”) was one of the first people I had the privilege to speak to after I started this website. Our first conversation was over Zoom and I was immediately struck by how kind, and eloquent she is, so I…

In conversation with: Yollin Lee

It’s not every day you get the chance to meet a magician (or, Ma-sul-sa (마술사) in Korean), so I was delighted to be invited to speak with Theatre Maker and Illusionist Yollin Lee where he performs in residence at Bermondsey’s The Last…