[Herald Interview] Black Pink still finding its color

Returning with another EP just three months after its debut, YG Entertainment’s newest girl group Black Pink hopes to differentiate itself from other female K-pop performers through its dance skills. “We practiced on our performances a lot during our time off,” Jennie, 20, told reporters at a press interview Wednesday in Samcheong-dong, Seoul.The four-member group’s second album, “Square Two,” was released Tuesday with two new tracks, “Playing with Fire” and “Stay.” The album comes after the gro

PerformanceNov. 3, 2016

Astro, Snuper to return this month

More K-pop stars are returning with new releases this month.Coming out with a new release next week is rookie boy band Astro, which debuted in February with the single “Hide & Seek.” In the run-up to the group’s return, the six-member act had released teaser images for the upcoming album “Autumn Story” and its title track “Confession” on social media Thursday.  The five-track album will be available online from midnight on Nov. 9.Meanwhile, another boy band Snuper is gearing up for the release o

PerformanceNov. 3, 2016

IU to hold solo concert next month

Singer-songwriter IU is set to return to the stage next month.　Known for her girl-next-door image, the musician will be holding a solo year-end concert at Olympic Park’s SK Olympic Handball Gymnasium in Bangi-dong, Seoul from Dec. 3-4.“The upcoming concert is an opportunity to look back on the past 24 years of IU’s life,” according to the artist’s agency Fave Entertainment on Thursday. “She will also be performing never-before-heard tracks.”　 Although she has held concerts abroad in China, Taiwa

PerformanceNov. 3, 2016

Actor Park Bo-gum to embark on Asia tour

Park Bo-gum, the star of TV series “Love in the Moonlight,” will soon travel across Asia to meet with fans, his management agency said Thursday.Park, who played the charming Crown Prince Lee Yeong, will kick off his tour in Malaysia and then travel to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and China, Blossom Entertainment said. The tour will wrap up with a fan meeting in South Korea before the end of the year.Details of his visits to each country will be announced through Bloss

PerformanceNov. 3, 2016

Florence recalls its 'Angels of the Mud' 50 years later

FLORENCE, Italy (AFP) -- Fifty years after the river Arno burst its banks with devastating consequences, Florence will this week remember the “Angels of the Mud” who came to save the Italian city's artistic treasures.The army of cultural rescue volunteers came from all over and, half a century later, the events of Nov. 4, 1966 and its aftermath still burn bright in the memory of Antonina Bargellini.“There is not one Florentine who is not moved when the subject of the disaster comes up,” recalls

CultureNov. 3, 2016

German YouTube alive with sound of music after copyright deal

FRANKFURT (AFP) -- One of the world’s most restrictive countries on access to music videos opened up Tuesday as YouTube announced a deal with musicians’ body GEMA to pay when people stream music in Germany.YouTube users in the country had for years been confronted with a red sad-face emoticon and messages announcing “this video is not available in Germany” when trying to view videos ranging from the latest pop clips to films with GEMA-controlled background music.Now the blockages should largely

PerformanceNov. 2, 2016

Sony Music, producer apologize over Nazi-like outfits

TOKYO (AFP) -- Sony Music and the producer behind a Japanese girl band that performed in military-style costumes resembling Nazi uniforms apologized Tuesday following a protest lodged by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.Teeny-boppers Keyakizaka46 had sparked anger with their black one-piece dresses and capes -- complete with peaked caps bearing a golden bird symbol resembling the Nazi eagle above a swastika -- donned at a Halloween concert in Yokohama on Oct. 22.The Jewish documentation, monitoring a

PerformanceNov. 2, 2016

Korean filmmaker to receive French cultural order

Bong Joon-ho, the director of “The Host” and “Snowpiercer,” will receive one of the highest French cultural orders in Seoul next week for his contributions to the arts, the French Embassy in South Korea said Wednesday.Bong will be honored the “Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters” by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication during the opening ceremony of the French Cinema Tour 2016 on Nov. 10, according to the embassy. It is the second-highest cultural honor awarded by the French gov

FilmNov. 2, 2016

Lebanon's national museum reveals long-hidden treasures

BEIRUT (AFP) -- Beirut’s National Museum has opened its basement of ancient treasures for the first time in four decades to show the public its stunning array of funerary art, including the world’s largest collection of anthropoid sarcophagi.The new exhibition‘s 520 pieces range from the Paleolithic period to the Ottoman Empire. They include Phoenician stelae and rare medieval Christian mummies along with the anthropoid coffins, which display a human face on the sarcophagus and were long a stand

CultureNov. 2, 2016

Louvre could house treasures from Iraq, Syria: Hollande

LENS (AFP) - French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday said the Louvre could house threatened treasures from Iraq, Syria and other war-torn countries at a secure site in northern France.The precious items could be placed in safekeeping at a conservation facility due to open in 2019 in Lievin, 200 kilometers north of Paris, he said.“The prime mission of the Lievin site will be to house the Louvre Museum’s stored collection,” Hollande said at a ceremony to unveil a plaque marking the site.But,

CultureNov. 2, 2016

[Herald Design Forum 2016] ‘Kickstarter, a snapshot of future culture’

According to Yancey Strickler, his company Kickstarter offers a kind of intimate patron-artist relationship in the digital age, on a global platform with no geographical limits.“A community of patrons supporting artists as they made their newest work -- this is the way authors like Alexander Pope and Mark Twain, and composers like Mozart and Beethoven brought their work to life,” the firm’s co-founder and CEO told The Korea Herald in an email interview last week. Strickler, who propelled Kicksta

Arts & DesignNov. 2, 2016

Straddling fantasy and reality in ‘Vanishing Time’

Director Um Tae-hwa’s “Vanishing Time: a Boy who Returned” offers a mix of genres unfamiliar to Korean cinema -- it is fairy tale-like in its plot, fantasy-esque in its computer graphics, but also firmly rooted in reality.　Um has always been interested in “the area where the real and surreal clash, or influence one another,” he told reporters after a press screening on Tuesday in Seoul. “I imagined what it would be like to live in a place where time stops. I imagined it would be a lonely existen

FilmNov. 2, 2016

[Herald Design Forum 2016] Experts to discuss collaborative design at Herald Design Premium Talk

Four design gurus will speak about expanding the horizons of design through collaboration at the Herald Design Premium Talk. At the exclusive event, set to take place at the Grand Hyatt Seoul Regency Room on Nov. 8 at 6 p.m., attendees will be able to gather inspiration from the experts’ experiences and network with one another. 　 The featured speakers for the first session are Alberto Alessi, the CEO of Italian houseware company Alessi, and Ko Tae-yong, a fashion designer and CEO of Beyond Clos

Arts & DesignNov. 1, 2016

[Foreigners Who Loved Korea] Mary F.B. Scranton: Fostering education for women

Mary F.B. Scranton was born to a Methodist Episcopal minister’s family in Massachusetts in 1832. She married William Talcott Scranton in 1853, only to lose him at the age of 40. In 1885, she was dispatched as the first female missionary to Korea by the US Methodist Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, and dedicated her life toward raising the status of Korean women.Establishing values through missionary workProtestant missionary work emphasized education, medical care and welfare. Early Methodist

CultureNov. 1, 2016

[Herald Design Forum 2016] Future of design industry hinges on convergence

Design is more than just a tool for expressing aesthetics. Boosted by fast-changing technology and talented innovators, design is one of the core factors that affect not only the identity of products and brands, but also people‘s everyday lives.Global design gurus emphasize that the future of the industry depends on how designers incorporate design into other fields, suggesting that the design industry is limitless. “The philosophy of the future is ‘convergence,’ which is the title of my show ne

Arts & DesignNov. 1, 2016

[Herald Interview] Filming on North Korea’s ‘perfect, fake’ stage

When director David Kinsella first set foot in North Korea in 2014, what struck him most was not its expected desolation, the small army of government officials that met him at every turn, or how he was led to a hotel built exclusively for foreign visitors on an isolated island. Rather, it was how obsessed with its “image” the hermit nation seemed -- how it strived to stage everything to perfection for the Irishman. One of the first sites Kinsella was taken to was the giant mausoleum where the “

FilmNov. 1, 2016