Hallyu! rides the Korean wave. It’s a fun exhibition with depth – but misses the Australian story |
As a K-drama tragic I have long wondered what qualities it has that make me marvel so. K-drama and K-pop are the clearest manifestations of the Korean cultural wave sweeping the world, but it also includes fashion, food, beauty, film, art, webtoons and more – culture in all its forms.
The exhibition Hallyu!, named after the Korean phrase for Korean wave, was prepared by the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London. It is now in Canberra, and seems like fun, fun, fun – but it is much more than this.
The exhibition conveys the range possible within hallyu, from tightly controlled but dynamic visual and sound choreography to subtle emotion displayed by just a flicker of the eye or a tightened lip. These underlie the fast pace, brilliant colour and vibrant sound that attracts us so.
Those beautiful young singers and dancers seem like gossamer on the breeze – but they got there with years of relentless practice.
For centuries, Korea was a society run under strict Confucianism: top-down, highly controlled and restrained, with the group working together for the greater good.
This was followed by a stoic resistance to harsh Japanese colonial control from 1905 to 1945, and the country being split into North Korea and South Korea after the end of World War Two. The two countries spent three years of war in the early 1950s that nearly destroyed........