Global K-pop icon Big Bang is looking back at the group’s 10-year career in an old-fashioned way. 　In partnership with Hyundai Card, the boy band will release 5,000 copies of limited-edition vinyl containing some of their greatest hits, including “La La La,” “Fantastic Baby,” “Bang Bang Bang” and more, next week, according to the group’s management agency YG Entertainment on Thursday.  The vinyl package will also include five posters, a ticket to Big Bang’s multimedia exhibition “Big Bang 10 the

PerformanceOct. 6, 2016

Asia's largest film festival will open in this southern South Korean city of Busan Thursday with the local film scene remaining divided after a two-year-long dispute over the festival's artistic freedom.This year's festival will run though next Saturday, featuring 299 films from 69 countries from around the world, a scale almost as large as last year's 304 films from 75 countries.  (BIFF 2016)Leading the 299 titles will be Korean-Chinese director Zhang Lu's "A Quiet Dream," which depicts the sto

CultureOct. 6, 2016

The Spring/Summer 2017 Hera Seoul Fashion Week will kick off Oct. 17 at Dongdaemun Design Plaza with an opening reception honoring designer Han Hye-ja, the visionary behind Korean couture brand HANEZA.“There will be a heavy focus on recording and archiving,” said Seoul Fashion Week executive director Jung Ku-ho at a press conference held at DDP in Seoul on Wednesday, concerning the exhibition of Han’s work titled “Tactus.” In fact, creating and maintaining an archive of Korean fashion is a new g

Arts & DesignOct. 5, 2016

Playing host to roughly 250,000 visitors, this year’s Seoul Design Week came to a close this week, highlighting some of the world’s leading designs in “smart city” technology. Held from Sept. 22 to Oct. 2 at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the annual event hosted by the Seoul Design Foundation was organized under the theme “Smart City, Smart Design, Smart Life.” “Through this forum we have attempted to address the sudden changes in modern, contemporary living by providing various problem-solving so

Arts & DesignOct. 5, 2016

Park Kyung of K-pop group Block B has a lot to celebrate this week.　On Tuesday, coinciding with the boy band’s 2,000th day since their debut, Park received the invitation to join Mensa International, the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world. 　“Park Kyung was recommended to take the Mensa test on tvN’s ‘Problematic Men,’” said Block B’s management agency Seven Seasons on Tuesday. Since joining the variety show last year, the 24-year-old singer has showcased his talents beyond music-mak

PerformanceOct. 5, 2016

Doyenne of classical music Chung Kyung-wha has made a return to the recording studio, releasing her first album in 15 years. Released Wednesday, the world-acclaimed violinist’s new album, “Sonatas & Partitas Bach,” features unaccompanied renditions of Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas repertoires for violin in a two-hour-plus, two-disc album compilation.“I consider this a project that I have been working toward since 1961, the year when I first starting learning the works of Bach,” said the 68-ye

PerformanceOct. 5, 2016

As part of a move to help promote Korean literature abroad, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea is hosting book launch events in various US cities.The books to be unveiled are Bae Su-ah’s “The Essayist’s Desk” and “Recitation,” which will be released by Open Letter Books in October and Deep Vellum Publishing in January next year, respectively. Korean novelist Bae Su-ah (Literature Translation Institute of Korea)The marketing events will be held between Oct. 5 and Oct. 14 in New York, S

BooksOct. 5, 2016

“Whether the cow is brown, black or spotted, its milk is all white,” Kim Dong-ho muses in “White Milk,” included in his newly published compilation of translated poems “Belly Button Disc.”The book comprises 56 selected poems originally written by Kim in Korean and co-translated into English by Kim Won-chung, professor of English literature at Sungkyunkwan University, and poet-translator Ko Chang-soo. 　In his work, 82-year-old poet Kim examines life’s mysteries and the world from a Taoistic persp

BooksOct. 5, 2016

“Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?” By Ian BrownThe Experiment (320 pages, $24.95)As a cranky wit and a wondrous observer, Ian Brown has a compelling take on the joys and agonies of growing older. His pleasures are your pleasures, and his fears will feel as familiar as old friends.Does Brown relish having turned 60? Hardly. He seems a little stunned by it — ambushed and wounded. It’s as if the thought of turning 60 caught up with him in

BooksOct. 5, 2016

Over an election season dominated by blatant flip-flops and lofty claims, there is one position that Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has stood by firmly: He hates the media.But his strong and often times brutal disdain for reporters is surprising, given that in his four decades in the public light, no one has been able to take him down. Not a single newspaper article has prevented him from getting this close to the presidency, and for that he should be thankful.Because Trump has

BooksOct. 5, 2016

NEW YORK (AP) -- Nearly 50 years have passed since police raided New York’s Stonewall Inn, touching off protests on Christopher Street that fueled the LGBT movement.To mark the moment, the popular bar and haven for homeless youth, sex workers, trans people and others in search of community and self was designated a national park in June by President Barack Obama.It’s against that backdrop that longtime resident of the Greenwich Village neighborhood, famed photographer Mark Seliger, decided on a

BooksOct. 5, 2016

Tate Taylor’s “The Girl on the Train” may be technically set in the Westchester suburb of Ardsley-on-Hudson, but its cocktail of commuter trains, marital infidelity and alcoholism make its proper setting Cheever Country. The unhappy, martini-stained lives of New York suburbanites have long been a rich vein for writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates and Paula Fox. “The Girl on the Train” is the trashier, paperback version. Its old-school title may suggest Hitchcock or maybe Fincher (who himself

FilmOct. 5, 2016

K-pop boy band SHINee has come back with its fifth album “1 of 1” which, both visually and musically, spins a hyper-modernized twist on the retro genre, according to its members.　The band appeared onstage in full embodiments of the new concept -- sporting multicolored bell bottoms, golden neck chains and slicked back hairstyles at the press showcase. Sooyoung of Girls’ Generation served as the MC for the event marking the release of the latest album held at SMTOWN Coex Artium theater in southeas

PerformanceOct. 4, 2016