Bermuda’s gentle beauty, easygoing lifestyle makes being shipwrecked enticing

HAMILTON, Bermuda — This small island — only 55 square kilometers in size and 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina — gave the world its eponymous shorts (still used as part of the island uniform), onions (still used in island cuisine), and grass (still used on the island’s ubiquitous golf courses).　Bermuda has earned literary cred as well. An early chronicler of its infamous Triangle, William Shakespeare used it as the shipwreck setting for his play “The Tempest,” maki

TravelJuly 29, 2016

Unreleased songs part of companion album to Springsteen book

NEW YORK (AP) -- Songs Bruce Springsteen recorded in the 1960s and early ’70s will be released in September.Five previously unreleased tracks from the Boss will be released on Sept. 23 on a companion album to the icon’s autobiography, “Born to Run,” which will be released Sept. 27.　  The compilation album “Chapter and Verse” will include the unreleased songs “Baby I” and “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover,” recorded in 1966 and 1967 when Springsteen was a teenager in the band the Castiles. The

PerformanceJuly 29, 2016

HyunA returns to spotlight as solo artist

HyunA, a former member of the disbanded K-pop group 4Minute, is getting ready to unleash new releases.After marking her debut as a solo artist at the Viral Fest Asia 2016 in Bali, Indonesia earlier this month, the 24-year-old singer is scheduled to perform the track “How Is It?” from her upcoming mini album “A’wesome” on KBS2’s “Music Bank” on Aug. 5, according to her management agency Cube Entertainment on Thursday. 　“Starting with ‘Music Bank,’ HyunA will continue to make more broadcast appear

PerformanceJuly 29, 2016

Hollywood honors Michael Keaton's rollercoaster career

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Michael Keaton capped a glorious late-career return from the wilderness Thursday when he finally received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, almost four decades after his first movie. The 64-year-old actor gave a crowd-pleasing but political speech, mixing self-effacing jokes with a show of support for efforts to improve relations between black communities and police in the United States.Dressed in a green sports jacket and open-neck shirt in the steamy California sunshi

FilmJuly 29, 2016

Kim Soo-ja explores body, mind with clay

A huge wooden table fills an entire exhibition hall at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, overwhelming visitors with its scale. A museum employee hands visitors a lump of clay and asks them to make a ball with it on the elliptical wooden table that has a diameter of 19 meters. “I don’t think I have made anything out of a lump of clay for many years. It used to be a familiar material when we were young,” said artist Kim Soo-ja at the press preview for her solo exhibition a

PerformanceJuly 28, 2016

K-dramatized ‘Good Wife’ is expressive, direct

The popular U.S. legal drama “The Good Wife” starts out with its heroine Alicia Florrick, played by Juliana Margulies, standing rigidly next to her disgraced politician husband at a press conference, her expression unfathomable. The show which aired from 2009 to May this year traced Florrick’s growth as she heads out into the workplace to support her family when her husband is sent to prison, after 15 years as a stay-at-home wife. Margulies’ nuanced portrayal of the heroine’s steely composure co

TelevisionJuly 28, 2016

EXID to perform at Chinese digital game expo

K-pop group EXID will perform at the 2016 China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference -- also known as ChinaJoy -- on Thursday and Friday at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. This is the first time the event organizers have invited a Korean girl group to the global conference.  Held every year in Shanghai since 2004, ChinaJoy is a multiday expo that brings together companies from the digital gaming industry. This year’s event is expected to attract over 300,000 participants and att

PerformanceJuly 28, 2016

‘Operation Chromite’ tops local box office

War drama film “Operation Chromite” topped the Korean box office on the first day of its release, according to the Korean Film Council on Thursday. On Wednesday, the movie attracted 477,033 viewers across 899 theaters, while “Train to Busan” ranked second with 422,303 moviegoers. The apocalyptic thriller “Train to Busan” released on July 20 set opening day and single day viewership records for all films ever screened in Korea. The American spy action film “Jason Bourne,” which also opened Wednes

FilmJuly 28, 2016

Chicken and beer festival kicks off in Daegu

Fans of fried chicken and beer will gather in this sizzling hot city of Daegu this week as it holds a festival wholly dedicated to the hugely popular summer night snack in South Korea with various concerts and events. The combination of chicken and beer is called "chimac" in Korean, and it's the theme of the "Daegu Chimac Festival," which runs from Wednesday to Sunday. (Visit Korea)The Korea Chimac Industry Association Corp. hosts the event in the city, located some 300 kilometers southeast of S

CultureJuly 27, 2016

World leisure sports festival to kick off in Chuncheon next month

The world's biggest leisure sports festival will be held in the country's northeastern lake city of Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, next month with foreign and local participants competing in 14 sports events, organizers said Wednesday. The fifth edition of the Chuncheon International Leisure Sports Festival will run from Aug. 12-15 at Songam Sports Town in Chuncheon, 85 kilometers northeast of Seoul, with some 5,600 local and foreign athletes from 31 nations to compete. (Visit Korea)This year's in

CultureJuly 27, 2016

Nam June Paik in the age of social media

Nam June Paik, a pioneer of video art, is both famous and unknown to many in Korea. A query on the name “Nam June Paik” on Korean web portal Naver brings up several questions posted by young students asking who the artist is for their schoolwork. “My son, who is a first-year middle school student, doesn’t really know much about him either,” said Kim Bang-eun, president of Gallery Yeh, currently hosting the Nam June Paik exhibition at Seoul’s landmark Dongdaemun Design Plaza. “I think it’s becaus

PerformanceJuly 27, 2016

‘Treasure Island’ musical arrives in time for school holidays

A young boy’s wildest dreams become a reality in the Seoul Arts Center‘s new musical play, “Treasure Island.”Based on the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson's novel by the same title, the musical follows the life of the young Jim Hawkins, a wide-eyed cabin boy aboard the Hispanola. In a desperate search for adventure, Hawkins decides to make his way to the dangerously mysterious Skeleton Island in search of treasure. During his travels, Hawkins encounters a string of unworldly characters inc

PerformanceJuly 27, 2016

[Herald Interview] Biffy Clyro is done making ‘weird’ music

When three childhood friends, including a pair of siblings, started the band Biffy Clyro over 10 years ago in Kilmarnock, Scotland, they strived to make music that was “as weird as possible.”“That’s what we thought was good,” said Simon Neil, the group’s lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter, in an interview. The band, which is also made up of twin brothers drummer James Johnston and bassist Ben Johnston, met with The Korea Herald before performing at its first show in Korea at the Jisan Valle

PerformanceJuly 27, 2016

‘The Age of Shadows’ invited to Toronto film festival

“The Age of Shadows” by director Kim Ji-won has been invited to screen under the Special Presentations program at the 41st annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).“The Age of Shadows” follows members of an independence group in the 1920s as they fight for Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule.In addition to the historical thriller, Park Chan-wook’s globally-acclaimed production “The Handmaiden” and Kim Sung-soo’s “Asura: The City of Madness” have also been invited to the Speci

PerformanceJuly 27, 2016

Duty and dreams in ‘Light of Paris’

“The Light of Paris” By Eleanor BrownG.P. Putnam’s Sons (320 pages, $26)Macalester alumna Eleanor Brown’s second novel (her first was the delightful best-seller “The Weird Sisters”) recapitulates an old and sometimes hackneyed plot -- the transformation of an American woman in Paris -- in a fresh, endearing way. It is two stories in one -- the first set in 1999, when Madeleine, a thirty-something, drifting, unhappily married Chicago woman, visits her aging, crotchety mother in their small Southe

BooksJuly 27, 2016

‘The Invoice,’ refreshingly original satire

“The Invoice” By Jonas Karlsson, translated from Swedish by Neil SmithHogarth Press (204 pages, $24)The narrator of Jonas Karlsson’s “The Invoice” is a nice, mild guy. He works part-time in a video store, rides his bike everywhere, enjoys watching movies, gets along fine. He’s not very ambitious, but he’s pretty happy -- which is his downfall. Because one day he gets a bill in the mail that says that he owes nearly 6 million kroner (about $750,000), although it’s not immediately clear why, or to

BooksJuly 27, 2016