An hour before Norimahdang, Stuyvesant’s annual Korean Culture Festival, was scheduled to begin on the night of Wednesday, April 8th, a long and stagnant line of hungry patrons was awakened by an interesting sight: a parade of girls, colorfully dressed in traditional, flowing hanbok robes traipsing past the line into the Stuyvesant cafeteria. While the rest of the around 250 patrons had to wait for the delicious beef and jap chae noodles, steaming gimbap (rice, pickled radish, and carrots rolled into seaweed), spicy kimchi and sweet almond rice cakes, the performers headed into the cafeteria early, as those waiting in line watched and whispered in anticipation of  the night’s entertainments.

After Principal Stanley Teitel and honored guest Korean Consul General Kim Kyung Keun each gave brief speeches on the importance of spreading Korean culture and pride through such events, a taekwondo performance stormed the stage. The group gave this traditional Korean martial art a modern edge with showy tricks, including one that had a student leap nearly the length of the stage, over six other crouching students, to break a board in half with a swift kick before landing.

The Korean language class, whose teacher, Jisun Lee, was the main coordinator of the event, then transformed the stage with a storytelling mask dance, keeping the mysterious tone light with a little slapstick humor. Later on, the white-clad students (this time without their red and blue masks) formed chains of people that danced to the quick beats of small handheld drums.  The night’s recurring technical difficulties began soon after, as the girls wearing hanbok robes had to perform part of their fan dance without music, to the cheers of a sympathetic audience.
“Though students got together on weekends to practice, there was no full run-through in the theater itself,” said senior Jennifer Yeon, emcee and partial coordinator of the event. This, along with losing a few weeks of practice time due to the uncertainty regarding the location of the venue, was a major cause of a few of the show’s problems. “There were even doubts that we were going to use the [Murray Kahn] theater,” said Yeon, referring to the Korean class’s use of The Borough of Manhattan Community College’s auditorium for Norimahdang 2008. Nonetheless, audience members like junior Eileen Kim looked past the microphone and music problems to the heart of the show. “Watching Norimahdang for the third time makes me really love Korean culture and love where I come from,” Kim said, admitting that even though she’s  “not as into [her] heritage as [she] could be,” she wished “more people would appreciate the traditional side.” Her point was certainly illustrated by junior hip hop group Pokemon, which performed four popular songs with high energy moves that, while impressive, might not have been what the Korean Consul General was expecting when he was invited to Korean Culture Night.

Reinforcing the audience’s enthusiastic response to pop culture were the celebrity interviews interspersed throughout performances. Korean Outreach Committee Chair Robert Lee, who has connections to a large Korean entertainment company, interviewed several celebrities, such as comedian Kang Ho Dong, who congratulated the students and wished them luck. The raffle held midway through the show gifted three audience members with signed CDs by KARA, a pop group, and another with an original soundtrack for the hit drama “Boys Before Flowers,” which enticed much friendly competition from girls in the crowd who wanted to win. A short film entitled “Unforgettable Girl,” starring Stuyvesant seniors James Kim, Hyunwook Lim, Philip Kim, and Paul Park, was also played. This comedy about the ups and downs of dating, a parody of a miniseries by popular Korean boy band Dong Bang Shin Ki, got many laughs as well as cheers from established fans of the band.

The break from tradition ended, however, when a large group of students performing the Samulnori, or percussion quartet, took the stage. Using small, ringing gongs, hourglass-shaped drums, bass drums and a large gong, the performers simulated the rising and falling cadences of a thunderstorm with the organized chaos of their drum beats. An earlier group of girls had also used the hourglass-shaped drums, or janggu, to perform a traditional dance while wearing elaborate matching hanbok. The group, including juniors Denise Park, Nael Lee, Elizabeth Lee and Agnes Kim, had experienced members like junior Jane Choi, who has been performing with janggu since she was seven years old.

This commitment to participating in Korean culture outside of school was seen in several of the later musical performances, where students sang and danced to popular modern songs and encouraged most of the audience to sing along. The junior band, Letter, thus did not face much difficulty when their microphones failed—they were saved in their performance of “Oh, My Friend” because the audience joined in to make the song heard.

The night wound down with sophomores Jessica Nam, Jenny Park and Yoon Ju Jo, who represented filial daughters as they sang the emotional “Dear Mom,” while a slideshow of the Korean class played in the background. The students had written notes in Korean to their parents thanking them for their support in creating the show, which were showed on the screen to wild cheers from the audience. “There was a lot of it [parent involvement] because they really want to represent the Korean nation,” Yeo said. The way the night turned out, it seemed like the parents had little to worry about—the Korean students of Stuyvesant really made a showing of both their traditional and popular culture.