Past Programs

Crossing The Line

  WithNicholas Bonner, Producer of Crossing the Line In the 1960s, four U.S. soldiers serving in the Korean Demilitarized Zone crossed the most heavily fortified border on earth and defected to Communist North Korea. Trapped in the most secretive country on earth, their life was hidden from the outside world for 40 years. Not even the U.S. […]

Power and Beauty: KBS’s ‘Hwang Jin Yi’

    The blockbuster TV Drama from KoreaMonthly Screening Series In an age when women were treated as if they were invisible, Hwang Jin Yi, the celebrated Korean courtesan-singer-poet of the 16th century, was larger than life. Her beauty, wit and intellect propelled her from obscurity into the company of Korea’s most powerful aristocrats. The […]

Cabaret Cinema: Kim Ki-duk’s ‘The Bow’

Presented with the Korea Society Friday, November 28, 2008 | 9:30 PM Rubin Museum of Art150 West 17th StreetNew York, NY 10011   THE BOW (90 min) 2005활 Dir. Kim Ki-duk. Starring Jeon Sung-Hwan, Han Yeo-Reum, Seo Ji-Seok. With a bow and arrow, a sixty-year old man protects the young girl he plans to marry when she turns […]

Encountering North Korea Through Its Art

Gallery Talk with   Jane PortalMatsutaro Shoriki Chair of the Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Thursday, December 4, 2008 We might think that we know about North Korea – it has been so much in the news recently, presenting a nuclear threat to the region. But in fact we […]

Korean Films Made During the Japanese Occupation

  The Korea Society and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) are proud to present seven films from one of the earliest, and most complex, periods of Korean cinema. Recently discovered in a Chinese warehouse and restored by The Korean Film Archive, the films date from the 1930s and ’40s, a period when Korea was dominated by […]

Pojagi: Cloth, Color and Beyond

Join us for a panel discussion on the art and history of Korean wrapping cloths, or pojagi, with Lee Talbot, assistant curator of The Textile Museum; Chunghie Lee, fiber artist; and Seta K. Wehbé, assistant collection manager of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Linking pojagi aesthetics to both traditional […]

TradINNOVAtion: New Trends in Contemporary Korean Architecture

Korea’s dizzying economic and urban growth over the past 50 years has seen the country exchange its traditional architectural landscape for Westernized office towers and apartment blocks. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, a few Korean architects are embracing buildings visibly rooted in history and synthesizing traditional forms and the demands of modern life. […]

The Religious Revolution in Modern Korean History

On May 5, 2009, Don Baker, Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, spoke about the history of Christianity and religion in Korea with Fred Carriere, The Korea Society’s Executive Vice President. The interview is in support of ‘Missionary Photography in Korea: Encountering the West through Christianity,’ an […]

Quick & Easy Korean Cooking Podcast

  On May 7, 2009, Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, author of Eating Korean: From Barbecue to Kimchi, Recipes from my Home, visited The Korea Society to speak about about her latest cookbook, Quick & Easy Korean Cooking (Chronicle Books). Lee is also the author of several travel guides and her writing has been featured in Food […]

Missionary Photography in Korea: Encountering the West Through Christianity

    The arrival of the first Western missionaries in Korea in the late 19th century was a pivotal moment in the history of Christianity in Korea and the history of Korea as a whole. The missionaries established new religious identities and stoked early culture clashes. They also documented their mission and the society around […]