ROME (AP) -- Friends, Romans, countrymen! Oh yes, and countrywomen. And people in far-flung nations. Everyone, basically. Rome is seeking all the sponsors it can find to fund the monumental job of restoring and maintaining its hundreds of fountains, statues, archaeological sites and historic palazzos.　Perennially short of funds to properly care for the sprawling, two-millennia legacy of art and history, city officials on Tuesday offered their thanks to corporate sponsors of ambitious restoration

CultureMay 25, 2016

English teachers and scholars from across Korea will meet Saturday in Wonju, Gangwon Province, for KOTESOL’s annual national conference.Korea Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages is an association of around 600 teachers of English, one-third of whom are Korean. The national conference is its second-largest event behind the fall international conference, and is expected to attract more than 200 participants. Theron MullerDesigned for practical applications, useful experiences and fr

Expat LivingMay 25, 2016

Established last year to bring pansori (traditional narrative singing) and classical music to some of the country’s remote villages, this year’s “Art World Village Project” will bring together two masters in a fusion of pansori and cello this summer. 　The project was launched by Hyundai Motor’s Chung Mong-koo Foundation in collaboration with a team of professors from the Korea National University of Arts, with the aim of creating an arts project as part of the company’s corporate social responsi

PerformanceMay 25, 2016

The play is known as a classic battle of the sexes comedy, but when the Busan English Theatre Association stages “The Taming of the Shrew” from Sunday, the battle lines will be a little more blurred than usual, with some gender-swapped roles.And for director Patrick Sanders, the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death was an opportunity to take BETA back to its roots, having started out with Shakespeare productions in the park. But the main thing for Sanders was his affection for its timeless – an

Expat LivingMay 25, 2016

As a tale of lovestruck Italian nobles, some may mistake “Much Ado About Nothing” for one of the bard’s lighter plays -- but remember things are not always as they seem. Seoul Shakespeare Company’s annual main stage production is stuffed with acting robust enough to go beyond frivolity -- doing justice to a script that, while never short on wit, travels from love to sterner matters of shame, honor and death. Young count Claudio loves the fair Hero, while sharp-tongued Beatrice and Benedick swear

Expat LivingMay 25, 2016

Actress Hwang Jung-eum and actor Ryu Jun-yeol have returned to the small screen with MBC’s romantic comedy drama “Lucky Romance.”　“Lucky Romance” is based on a webtoon by the same title which was published on Naver in 2014. The drama centers on the romantic but bizarre interactions between Shim Bo-nui (Hwang) and Je Soo-ho (Ryu) who have very different personalities. Shim is an optimistic and confident office worker who has blind faith in superstitions and fortune-telling, while Je, a CEO and pr

TelevisionMay 25, 2016

Korean actor Park Hae-jin will treat his Taiwanese fans to a meal during a meeting next month, his publicist said Wednesday.　The event is part of a broader fan meeting event that will take place on June 9 at the Taipei International Convention Center, HNS HQ said. Actor Park Hae-jin (Yonhap)　After choosing some of the Taiwanese dishes recommended online by local fans, the “Cheese in the Trap” actor will provide food to lucky fans who will be chosen during the meeting.　Park introduced the idea of

TelevisionMay 25, 2016

A handful of world-class soul singers and Korea’s trendiest alternative musicians will take to the stage at this year’s Seoul Jazz Festival, which is set to take place this weekend at Seoul’s Olympic Park.　One significant new feature of the annual music fest this year is the “Royal Night Out” program, slated for Friday night. It will feature globally-known artists Damien Rice, Jamie Cullum, Kings of Convenience and Wouter Hamel.   British pop musician Mika performs at the 2015 Seoul Jazz Festiva

PerformanceMay 25, 2016

ABU DHABI (AFP) -- The Middle East’s poetry equivalent of “Pop Idol” is helping to keep alive an age-old tradition using bedouin dialect, which is barely understood outside the Arabian Gulf.　Apart from the glory, a Kuwaiti student took home five million dirhams ($1.4 million), the top prize in a television show followed by millions of poetry lovers across the region.　With his Nabati poem, Rajih al-Hamidani was crowned 2016 champion of “Million’s Poet,” staged in oil-rich Abu Dhabi for a seventh

BooksMay 25, 2016

Novelist Han Kang is receiving a level of media attention that few in the literary profession have experienced.　Fellow writers and critics welcome the international breakthrough for Korean literature that her Man Booker International Award win is anticipated to bring. Local papers are analyzing her award-winning novel, “The Vegetarian,” first published in 2007, sentence by sentence. There is even newfound interest in the field of literary translation. 　Amid the frenzy, however, what Han wants to

BooksMay 25, 2016

“A Country Road, A Tree: A Novel”　By Jo Baker　Knopf (304 pages, $26.95)　When war came to Europe in 1939, Samuel Beckett was a published but largely unknown and unread Irish writer working in the long shadow of James Joyce, for whom he’d served as a literary secretary in Paris while the great man was writing “Finnegans Wake.”　By war’s end six years later, Beckett was well on his way to becoming the markedly different writer who would shortly unveil “Waiting for Godot” and who is now justly rememb

BooksMay 25, 2016

“The Gene: An Intimate History” 　By Siddhartha Mukherjee　Scribner (592 pages, $30)　“Like Pythagoras’s triangle, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, like the Pyramids in Giza, like the image of a fragile blue planet seen from outer space, the double helix of DNA is an iconic image, etched permanently into human history and memory,” Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in “The Gene: An Intimate History,” a fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making

BooksMay 25, 2016