CHUDAHYE CHAGIS describe themselves as a “genre-defying psychedelic shamanic funk band”, a pretty accurate description to the extent that their music and style defy facile definitions.

A disclaimer: I am not a music aficionado, so this review is one of a mere punter who was introduced to Chudahye Chagis’s music for the first time this past Saturday 17^th October, when I attended their concert at Rich Mix, part of the K-Music festival programme taking place at various venues all over London this October.

I went with an open mind albeit some trepidation as to what to expect. Safe to say I was blown away – almost literally in the second song as I was sitting in the front row! The music was definitely loud, but transcendental. A band of four, with Lee Si-mun on guitar, Kim Jae-ho on bass, Kim Da-vin on drums, and the exquisite and ethereal vocals of Chu Dahye, their sound is like Korea itself; familiar in its undertones, yet strange and beguiling in composition and hue. If musical notes emitted colours, theirs dazzle as a kaleidoscope of rich tonal palette.

Chudahye Chagis achieve their quite unique sound through innovative arrangements that seamlessly interweave familiar Western musical forms such as rock and jazz (although a musical ignoramus I could just about discern these) with the other-worldly Muga, the shamanic tonal chants from the Pyeong’an, Jeju, and Hwanghae provinces in Korea. The result is mystical, mellifluous, and unexpectedly hypnotic. I found myself transported by Chu Dahye’s sorikkun (Korean traditional vocalist) intonations, accompanied by the virtuoso playing of the other members of the band, into a spiritual dimension that only music lovingly crafted by sincere artists can create.

It is worth noting that although Chudahye Chagis’s oeuvre is defined by its Shamanic content, it is not all dark as some may expect. On the contrary, their ethos is very much about their music and lyrics bringing light and good fortune and banishing anguish and pain. Their mission is to heal through channelling the soul of the Korean spiritual tradition into a musical secular journey. “I am not a real shaman” Dahye says at one point. I beg to disagree; her voice and the music of her band are in the best shamanic tradition of Korea in the way they connect you to the ethereal world of the soul.

Chudahye Chagis is one of the most bold, creative, and original bands I have experienced. They create a tonal and visual space of joy, exuberance, and connection. By the end of their set, I felt absolved and blessed, as if a Korean shaman had indeed invoked the spirits to watch over me.

Korean Cultural Centre UK announces London Korean Film Festival 2026

• Opening Gala: The Journey to Gyeong-ju
• Closing Gala: Tristes Tropiques
• Special Screening: Possible Love

The 21st edition of London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) will run from 2 November to 16 November across BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Organised by the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) and with the generous support of the Korean Film Council, the festival enters its third decade of celebrating Korean cinema in the UK.

This year’s festival opens with the UK premiere of Kim Mi-jo’s The Journey to Gyeong-ju (2025), a star-studded crime drama with grieving matriarch Ok-sil (Parasite’s Lee Jung-eun) and her three daughters (Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam, Lee Yeon) embarking on a road trip to avenge the murder of the youngest family member, followed by a Q&A with director Kim and actor Lee Jung-eun. Lee will also be attending a special screening of her other new work — Pil Gam-seong’s My Daughter Is a Zombie (2025), an adventurous and heartfelt comedy adapted from Lee Yoon-chang’s hugely popular webtoon about a father caring for his zombie virus infected daughter.

For the Closing Gala, we are delighted to present the UK Premiere of Park Hoon-jung’s Tristes Tropiques (2025), alongside a Q&A with the filmmaker. Well-known for his gritty and ruthless action dramas like New World (2013) and The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (2018), Park returns with a bloodbath triggered by the death of a kill-squad leader. The film won the Nouveau Genre Grand Prize, the top honour in the international competition at the 32nd L’Étrange Festival.

Our Special Screening strand includes a selection of the most anticipated contemporary Korean titles and offers a rare chance to see them on the big screen. This includes Lee Chang-dong’s anticipated new film Possible Love (2026), the winner of Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Lee’s relationship drama delivers a riveting portrait of class and the disparity between the have and have nots in Korean society nowadays. There will be a recorded introduction by director Lee.

We are also delighted to present a special screening of Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love (2025), a moving portrayal of a high school student’s life that was hailed by many critics as the best Korean new release last year, ahead of its UK and Ireland cinema release on 27 November. Another much-looked-forward-to film is Frederik Sølberg’s Hana Korea (2025), in which Kim Minha (Pachinko) delivered an astonishing performance playing a young North Korean refugee who is trying to adjust to her new life. The festival will also see the UK premiere of Once We Were Us (2025), the latest romantic drama — a remake of Rene Liu’s acclaimed Us and Them (2018) — by director Kim Do-young, whose debut feature Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (2019) was a major success.

Apart from the exciting special screenings, our Cinema Now strand showcases a wide range of newly released Korean films that cannot be missed.

Time of Cinema (2025) is a love letter to the movie theatre directed by three leading filmmakers in contemporary Korean cinema, Lee Jong-pil, Yoon Ga-eun, and Jang Kun-jae. This reflexive anthology poses questions about what movies are for and where their magic lies.

Kim Tae-kyeong’s Home A Loan (2026) is a psychological thriller about a woman who moved into an abandoned, semi-derelict building with her two children in the belief that it will soon be developed but then started to see and hear strange things that turns her into an entire different person. Another title that would satisfy a craving of gripping suspense is Yoo Jong-seok’s debut feature Be My Baby (2025), a tense tale of two not-quite sisters, both desperate and in trouble.

This year also we welcome two brilliant coming-of-age stories: Yoo Jae-wook’s punkish The Gorals (2025) is a joyous celebration of four female misfits turning its sylvan rites of passage into social allegory, while Son Kyeong-su’s The Accordion Door (2025) is story about a high-schooler who acquired a prodigious talent for writing after a mysterious incident behind an accordion door.

The cinema of the Korean diaspora has been flourishing in recent years, with successes like Minari (2020). This year, we’re delighted to host the UK premieres of two films about the diasporic experience: Korean Canadian filmmaker Jerome Yoo’s feature debut Mongrels (2024), a tripartite drama that turns the diasporic experience into dreamy magical realism; and Korean American writer-director Stephanie Ahn’s feature debut Bedford Park (2026), which centres on the encounter between two second-generation Korean Americans: New Yorker Audrey Park (Moon Choi) and New Jersey ex-wrestler Eli (Son Sukku), who met through a car accident. Ahn’s film delves into the complex issues of identity and generational trauma and won the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Debut Feature at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Kim Hye-ok and Justin H. Min (The Umbrella Academy, After Yang) star in Kim Jin-yu’s elegant drama Journey There (2025). Min-jun, a young conductor searching for his birth mother, finds frequent reasons to meet Chun-hee, gradually drawing her into the life of an orphaned boy with a gift for music. Director Kim Jin-yu will attend the Q&A following the screening.

Women’s Voices is a strand dedicated to up-and-coming independent women filmmakers. Yoo Jaein’s widely lauded first feature En Route To (2025) — took home New Currents Award and Best Actor (Lee Ji-won) at Busan International Film Festival and selected by Berlin International Film Festival — will screen to UK audiences for the first time. Yoo’s sophisticated drama confronts societal blind spots around the termination of adolescent pregnancies through a gentle depiction of the friendship between two high school students.

Shin Su-won’s The Mutation (2025) follows on a journey of two strangers each haunted by their own past — Se-oh, who is of black, mixed-race descent but feels that it is safer for him to live in society wearing a mask and So-ra, who has lived in the shadows following the death of her same-sex lover. Mad Dance Office (2026) by Cho Hyeon-jin tells the story of District Office director Guk-hee (Yeom Hye-ran), who has lived her whole life without a moment of respite but finds an unexpected refuge in dance one day.

The strand also features a curated shorts programme including four exceptional new films across fiction, documentary and animation: co-directed by Wi Eun-kyoung and Son Gwang-min, My Aunt (2026) captures tender nephew-aunt relationship; in Speak, Young Granny (2026), filmmaker Chang Seoyun documents her experience of getting diagnosed with premature menopause at the young age of 24; My Killing Erotic Video (2026) directed by Seo Saerom and Bae Issac portrays women’s desires and fears in a cheerful and witty manner; Choi Eunsoo’s Kick It (2026) follows the story of high school girl who loves soccer and wants to participate in a semi-competitive football match that is open only to male students.

Last month the British Museum’s most talked-about exhibition was the Bayeux Tapestry, which celebrates the bloody conquest of Britain by invaders from France in 1066. This month a new exhibition celebrates a much more peaceful invasion that Britain has been experiencing over the past decade or so: the pervasive reach of Korean culture that has gradually been extending its influence over our lives, particularly among the younger generation. Nearly four years ago, the Victoria and Albert Museum hosted Hallyu! The Korean Wave, which focused on the contemporary aspects of Korean culture such as fashion, film and K-pop that have gripped the attention of the younger audience. The new exhibition at the British Museum is Korea: 2,000 years of creativity, which is the most comprehensive chronological survey of Korean visual and material culture seen in Europe for over 40 years.

The exhibition celebrates the remarkable vision of the late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee who, together with his father Lee Byung-Chull and wife Hong Ra-Hee, assembled an unrivalled collection of Korean artefacts and artworks over the course of seventy years. In 2021 the bereaved family of the late chairman donated over 23,000 objects to the nation: most of those objects are now in the collection of the National Museum of Korea, while the more contemporary items are with National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and five regional art museums. On show in the British Museum exhibition are over 160 individual objects from the National Museum plus some highlights from the MMCA’s collection, along with a handful of objects from the British Museum’s own collection.

The exhibition includes objects from around the second or third century BCE – bronze bells and ritual rattles likely to have been used in shamanistic ceremonies – through to the 21^st century, and from religious and royal artefacts through to 1980s minjung political protest art. With such a diverse collection on display, it is difficult to highlight major trends or themes – other than the high quality of the exhibits themselves and the expert eye of the collectors who acquired them.

The exhibition is organised largely chronologically. The first section examines the Iron Age through to Unified Silla, focusing on golden ear-rings and small gilt-bronze Bodhisattvas; the exhibition then moves on to the Goryeo period, continuing a Buddhist theme and including some rare ceramics; the Joseon section includes buncheong and porcelain ceramics together with scholars’ implements and some fine ink paintings; the final section looks at the 20^th century and beyond, showing how Korean art has adapted to the modern world.

Within that chronological organization are some surprises, where contemporary pieces are juxtaposed alongside historical works, providing an interesting dialogue between past and present. Thus, next to some Goryeo celadon is a new work by Yeesookyung (Translated Vase, 번역된 도자기, 2018) in which celadon shards from both North and South Korea are glued together with epoxy and gold leaf to create an ungainly sculptural form; and a contemporary geometrical onggi vase by Cho Chung-hyun is displayed alongside a Three Kingdoms period stoneware pedestal.

Other modern exhibits also specifically reference major works from the past. One of the most interesting sculptures presented is Thinking Woman (생각하는 여인, 1992) by Choi Jongtae, which perhaps for a Westerner superficially might initially bring to mind Rodin’s Le Penseur, but which was inspired by the famous Silla dynasty Pensive Bodhisattvas and was created especially for its collector Hong Ra-hee. Similarly, a folding screen by Paik Namsoon entitled Paradise (낙원, painted c1936) combines stylistic elements from modern French painting while referencing traditional Oriental landscapes, perhaps even calling to mind An Gyeon’s Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land.

Of course, not all of the modern works in the exhibition are in dialogue with the past. Paik Nam June was very much at the forefront of international video art, while Kim Whanki’s abstract paintings also look outside of Korea for inspiration rather than the past. Both of these artists are well-known outside of Korea. But one of the real treats in the exhibition is to see the work of artists rarely exhibited in the West: among these are the tiny drawings by Lee Jung-seop, powerful in their innocence, from the time of the Korean War, including Bound People (묶인 사람들, c 1950-56) a horrifying sketch of bodies tied up with barbed wire, made by scratching on foil chocolate wrapper – the only artist material he had available at the time. Also welcome by its inclusion is a small work by Chang Ucchin, also from the time of the Korean War but showing a more peaceful scene of villagers returning from a market (Ferryboat, 나룻배, 1951).

The exhibition reminds visitors, too, that Korean artists and craftsmen of the past were not content to continue along established methods and practices: the exhibition shows how Goryeo celadon artists led in the development of inlay technique (상감 기법), while one of the centrepieces of the whole show is Jeong Seon’s Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang (인왕제색도, 1751) – a major work of “true view” landscape painting, which broke from the tradition of depicting imaginary and mythical landscapes.

The exhibition is supported by Samsung and is the outcome of a long-standing collaboration with the National Museum of Korea. The British Museum will be arranging a number of events associated with the exhibition, including a sleepover in the museum on Halloween, giving youngsters the chance to explore a special trail through the exhibition and engage in traditional craft workshops. Some of the signage in the exhibition explains how the popular movie K-pop Demon Hunters references elements of Korean traditional culture such as the tiger and magpie folk paintings. It is to be hoped that an audience that has engaged with contemporary Korean culture through music and movies will gain a deeper understanding of Korea’s past through this unique exhibition that displays the Lee family’s artistic judgement.

This article was written for the JoongAng Ilbo and appears in Korean in today’s print edition and online. The print version is slightly edited to fit onto the page but the online version is the full translated text. It is uploaded here in its original English version by agreement with the newspaper. Thanks to the British Museum press team for their support. The catalogue, edited by British Museum curator Sang-ah Kim, is highly recommended and I found Sukyung Lee’s chapter on the Lee Kun-hee Collection particularly useful in writing this article

The K-music Festival opened on 28 September with a triple bill at Evolutionary Arts Hackney. Scheduled at the start of the busy autumn Korean cultural season, the concert clashed with the reception to celebrate the launch of the big Korea exhibition at the British Museum. For those who had to be at the British Museum, the KCCUK offered an alternative the day before. And a very special experience it was, too: a personal encounter with Chang Kiha, who introduced his latest album to a small group of around 30 people. In an intimate setting, we sat down to listen to a vinyl pressing of the album played on a superb audiophile system in a listening room in the Strand.

It is many years since I last had a chance to listen to an album in complete silence, focusing entirely on the music itself rather than having the music as an accompaniment to conversation or other activity, and I had forgotten what a pleasant experience it is. We sat listening intently, moving our bodies to the beat of the music, in unison with the artist himself who sat there with us as the album gently rotated on the turntable.

Chang Kiha came to the first official K-music Festival back in 2013 with his band The Faces (LKL review here. His 2026 comeback celebrated his first solo album, San San Jo Gak (산산조각).

The evening started with Chang Kiha explaining creative process for the new album, which was the opposite of what you might typically expect:

First, I looked into my mind, watching thoughts come and go. I gathered the clearest ones and put them into a single poem.

Then, I made a silent film based on that poem. I didn’t make any plans for the music until the final edit was nailed down. Once I got the final cut, I composed the music by layering sounds onto each scene. During that process, I didn’t touch or edit the film at all.

The resulting work he christened “Video Music” rather than a music video, because the video came first rather than the music. But that evening, we were focusing solely on the music, and I have to be honest: I think I’d rather experience the music as I did that evening, with the sound perfectly balanced – not too loud, not too soft, and no distortion – the vocals crisply articulated and the full resonance of the singer’s voice perfectly reproduced, than hear it at a live venue with all the compromises in sound quality that entails. Of course, the experience was hugely enhanced by having the artist sit with us in the room as we listened together.

One minor quirk with the logistics of the evening: the album is designed to be listened to without a break, one song leading seamlessly into the next, and it ends as it begins, in a pleasing circularity, with “Wake up each day at 7am / And at midnight, I go back to bed.” The realities of a vinyl LP mean that it has to be turned over half way through the album. If we’d been watching the video at the same time that might have been a little problem. But that evening we were focusing on the music itself, and having the listening room supervisor carefully flip the record and dust the stylus before starting the second side evoked happy memories of peaceful listening parties from the days of my youth.

Chang is known for his well-crafted lyrics, and given their importance to the artistic end result he wanted his Anglophone audience to have a decent translation of his words. To that end he commissioned literary translators Paige Aniyah Morris (who inter alia is one of the co-translators of Han Kang’s Light and Thread) and John Park to produce English lyrics, and attendees were given a nice lyrics booklet which you can see next to the turntable in the above photos.

The full music video Video Music is available on YouTube (embedded below), but I’ll bet it won’t sound as good on your system as we heard it that evening.

Thanks to the KCCUK for organising such a special evening.