Thames Festival

Chuseok is Korea’s harvest festival, celebrate for over 2,000 years, Families get together to visit ancestral graves and to hold a memorial service to thank ancestors for a plentiful harvest. Relatives share food such as Song-pyon. A crescent-shaped rice cake, and play folk games such as Gang-gang-sullae. The year 2008 followed the success of last year’s Korean Village at the Thames Festival. With a sell-out performance of Jump being revived at the stage, as well as B-Boy World Champion team Last For One’s hiphop dances, the Korean Cultural Centre UK organised the “Korean New Moon Festival” with exciting programmes, coinciding with one of the most important holidays of Korea being Chuseok.The Mayor’s Thames Festival was a spectacular, free celebration of London and its river. It took place on 13-14 September 2008, 12pm-10pm on the south bank of the Thames between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge.

LAST FOR ONE

Last For One is a break dancing crew that formed in 1997.With their win in the 2005 Battle of the Year, they have been recognised as a worldwide known name and a contributor to the Korean wave, their fans respectively calling them the ‘Dancing Taeguk Warriors’.They were heavily featured in the film Planet B-Boys, which documents the 2005 Battle of the Year.

TAE KWON DO
The British Taekwondo Control Board (BTCB) was established in 1982 and is the Governing Body for World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) Taekwondo in the United Kingdom. The BTCB is a member of the WTF, British Olympic Association (BOA), the European Taekwondo (ETU) and recognised by UK Sport, the government agency for High Performance Sport.The BTCB is responsible for all aspects of WTF/Olympic style taekwondo in the UK. This includes selecting National Teams to compete at the European and World Championships, and the Olympic Games.The Chi Taekwondo Demonstration team, who are a member a member of the BTCB, have had national success with their demonstration team which features a mixture of taekwondo and gymnastics.

JUMP

Presenting Korean new hit show, the spectacular Martial Arts Performance JUMP. This dynamic show fuses the ancient Korean fighting arts of Tae-kwon-do with Tae-Kyun and other Asian martial arts. JUMP is Non-Verbal performance that is the first show of its kind to blend martial arts performance with a compelling and hilarious narrative. Fantasy and fighting come together as acrobatics and martial arts combine in a dazzling and jaw dropping performance usually seen just on movie screens. With three years of extensive training in acting and mime and more than 1,500 performances under their belts, the champion gymnasts and martial artists in the show have honed their skills to perfection. The concept for the show was first conceived in October 1999. The sixth scenario of the show CRAZY FAMILY was written in March 2001. Eight months later, the team started their acrobatics training under the guidance of Oak Soo Chung, the Women’s National Gymnastics team coach. In August 2002, the non-verbal performance of CRAZY FAMILY was previewed and the team was invited to perform at the Kyushu Festival in Japan. That same year, they premiered at the National Theatre of Seoul. In April 2003, the show was renamed JUMP and performed to various theatres in Korea. Now the show in running on at the ‘Jump Theatre’ built in Seoul in September 2006.

TRADITIONAL KOREAN FOOD EXHIBITION:

The Institute of Traditional Korean Food

Since a country’s traditional food is an artifact naturally formed under the influence of its environment and along its historical vicissitudes in which its history, culture, and life style of its people are dissolved, it can provide easy and important access to other people when they want to understand the country as a whole.Korea has an excellent food culture which has been developed along with its history of five thousand years. Recently, with the emergence of “Korean Wave” and its culmination, interests in Korean food and culture have been augmented rapidly.The staffs of The Institute of Traditional Korean Food are proud of the merits of beautiful and tasty Korean food and its culture while confirming more than ever its value and merits, sine they have won high praise from diplomats, journalists and people of many countries through such events as the Korean Food Festival at the UN Headquarters, the Paris Food Exhibition in France, the German Food Exhibition, the Tokyo Food Exhibition, North-South Summit Talks, and APEC dinners during the past few years.The Institute of Traditional Korean Food has completed the project for the standardisation of Korean recipes and also hosted numerous events to promote the merits of Korean food within and without the country so as to diffuse accurate and authentic information on Korean food to many people of the world interested in Korean food and help them enjoy it.