hermit suburbs

I'll post about President Park later: for now, check out the semi-detached in Acton which has the honour to serve as the London Embassy of North Korea. It's the kind of place where they used to film sitcoms.

Korean expat/emigre life in London has a pleasingly Graham Greenish quality, based as it seems to be around obscure outer suburbs: outposts of tyranny near South Acton tube station, small apartments in new Malden from whence the ouster of the Kim Dynasty is plotted, exhibits of dissident literature held at small venues in Croydon... 

Comments

[Phil]

"Terry and Kim"

[des von bladet]

Humbly report, sir, that isn't a semi.

Also: The Kim Jong-un Ones.

(I'll get my coat.)

[Chris Williams]

Funnier if it was a semi, if the ROK and the DPRK had drawn a demarcation line through a single embassy building in 1952 . . . with hilarious consequences!!!! Episode eight from series five ('Pruning') was a bit OTT though.

[Barry Freed]

'Pruning'

Too soon.

[jamie]

'The Really Terrible Life: this week, Tom and Barbara go off on an Arduous March before sitting down to a lovely meal of stewed tree bark'

[Igor Belanov]

IIRC the Tankie breakway 'New Communist Party' had its stronghold in the Surrey CPGB, though I assume it must have included Greater London south of the river rather than basing itself around a revolutionary cell in Virginia Water.

[Chris Williams]

I always thought that they were biggest in Southampton? Only NCPer I ever knew was an ex-docker there, though he mainly worked as a bingo caller. 'Five - years in the plan - five', '56 - year of revisionist lies - 56', '88 - two fat ladies: collectivise their village! - 88', etc

[Strategist]

It's the kind of place where they used to film sitcoms.

And do so again , praise the Lord.

[Laban]

My mother in law was cross when all the restaurants in New Malden became (expensive) Korean ones.

It was fun when the World Cup was in Korea - they'd march en masse down the High Street to the Fountain pub for each televised game.

But it has its darker side. On Sundays gangs of Korean youth block the pavements, playing guitars and inviting you to their particular church service. Every church has notices in Korean.

[Tom]

Ealing, rather than Acton, although not the most salubrious end (there was a murder-suicide a couple of nights ago on Rowan Close); also that's the North Circular Road.

The Moldovans, on the other hand, have a nice embassy next to Chiswick's swimming pool, in a po-mo 80s office development all built on the long-lost Chiswick Lido (a Thatcher-era casualty that would probably be an ultra-trendy summer weekend destination by now). I remember taking the kid to the pool a few years back and having to dodge lines of exiles voting in a constitutional referendum, which isn't going to be happening outside No. 73 for a while.

[Chris Williams]

It must be shit being Laban - forever searching, searching, for anything that can be mobilised to support the thesis that life is a zero-sum game of ethnic identity politics that we are losing.