[Travel Bits] Festivals, sights across Korea

Hampyeong Butterfly Festival The Hampyeong Butterfly Festival runs through May 8 in Hampyeong, South Jeolla Province, including Hampyeong Expo Park. The annual festival seeks to provide the opportunity to learn about the Korean nature, including flowers, insects and more. The event seeks to entertain the visitors and tourists with VR and hands-on experiences with butterflies, insects, local artists’ performance and other cultural exhibitions. The Hampyeong Expo Park is open from 9 a.m

TravelMay 6, 2022

[Box Office] Movies in theaters this week

I Want to See Your Parent’s Face (Korea) Opened April 27 Drama Directed by Kim Ji-hoon An eighth grade boy, who attends a prestigious middle school, dies by suicide and leaves a note with the names of the four students who bullied him. The parents of the four students are summoned to the school. In the process of finding out what happened to the boy who died, the parents of the alleged offenders team up and try to prevent the truth from being revealed.  Toxic (Korea) Opened Ap

FilmMay 6, 2022

Actress Kang Soo-youn taken to hospital with cardiac arrest

South Korean actress Kang Soo-youn has been taken to hospital with cardiac arrest, according to local reports on Thursday. Citing the police and emergency authorities, local reports said she was found with cardiac arrest at around 5 p.m. in Gangnam and given cardiopulmonary resuscitation while being taken to a nearby hospital. Born in 1966, Kang became the first Korean actor to receive an award at a major international film festival as she was honored with the best actress award at the 1987 V

FilmMay 5, 2022

Learn cultural heritage at Saturday workshops

In hopes of promoting intangible cultural heritage to the public, the National Intangible Heritage Center in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, is holding special workshops onsite every Saturday until November. The program is divided into three sections -- outdoor folklore games, traditional handicraft workshops, and intangible heritage in everyday life. Visitors can learn traditional games, including arrow-throwing “tuho,” traditional board game “yutnori,” “jegichagi

CultureMay 5, 2022

Theme parks jam-packed with families on Children’s day

Theme parks in South Korea are crammed with visitors as the country marks Children’s Day on Thursday, buoyed by relaxed COVID-19 containment measures. On this special holiday for kids, parents play a guessing game in picking places to go to entertain their children, as theme parks and other kid-friendly venues usually get massive crowds. Those who chose Everland as their destination this year seem to have failed on making the right decision, as postings on social networking sites compl

TravelMay 5, 2022

[Book Review] Samsung ex-CEO recalls 'great' chip deal that built Apple empire in memoir

Apple’s ecosystem of a wide array of devices including the iPhone would have remained an elusive dream had Steve Jobs failed to address the memory glitches in iPods in the early 2000s. The idea of iPhone, iPad, iTV and MacBook Air scribbled on Jobs’ whiteboard in December 2004 struck Hwang Chang-gyu, the then-president of semiconductor business at Samsung Electronics, as he was on the verge of a handshake with Jobs in California to replace iPod’s hard disk drives with flash me

BooksMay 5, 2022

Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival returns to the stage

Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival will be held in person this summer as the country takes steps to return to normalcy after more than two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rock festival will be held from Aug. 5 to 7, with performances from some 50 musicians and collectives from home and abroad at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Incheon. While the music festival mainly covers rock and electronic music, musicians who perform other genres such as alternative pop bands, indie bands and K-pop

PerformanceMay 5, 2022

Hito Steyerl unveils new artwork ‘Animal Spirits’ that values ecology, humanity

One of the most influential artists today, German artist Hito Steyerl transcends boundaries – as a visual artist, filmmaker, writer and philosopher. The artist questions where humans fit in an increasingly threatening world, where ever-evolving digital technology and capitalism has expanded to cryptocurrency. She is also a writer who has published academic journals and books such as “Duty Free Art -- Art in the Age of Planetary Civil Wars” and “The Wretched of the Scree

Arts & DesignMay 4, 2022

Traditional Korean musicians protest potential new music curriculum

A total of 12 Intangible Cultural Heritage Masters and dozens of educators gathered Wednesday in southeast Seoul to protest a newly proposed school curriculum, calling it a “massacre of gugak.” Gugak refers to Korean traditional music in Korean. Led by Lee Young-hee, 83, Intangible Cultural Heritage Master of Gayageum Sanjo and Byeongchang, the group condemned an ongoing research project led by the Ministry of Education to revamp school music curriculum. “We have devoted

PerformanceMay 4, 2022

[Herald Interview] Woongsan dreams of reviving ‘golden days of jazz’ in Korea

Jazz was first introduced to Korea when the country’s first jazz act, Korean Jazz Band, began performing in 1926. The first-generation Korean jazz musicians learned the music from the US Eighth Army band, which was assigned to the country to provide music in support of the thousands of US service members stationed in the country in the 1950s. Although jazz has existed in Korea for a little under a century, it remains a niche genre, especially compared to more mainstream forms of music, li

PerformanceMay 4, 2022

39th Busan International Short Film Festival wraps up

The 39th Busan International Short Film Festival, which was held in person for the first time in three years, closed Monday at the Busan Cinema Center with Mehrdad Hassani’s ”Adjustment“ winning the International Competition prize and the Korean Competition prize going to “Nowhere Else” directed by Lee Kyeong-won. “At this year’s film festival, which was held at the beginning of a process to return to normal, we realized the value of watching a movie

FilmMay 4, 2022

Netflix’s ‘The Sound of Magic’ talks about childhood innocence, dreams

For director Kim Sung-youn, 46, of Netflix’s “The Sound of Magic,” adapting a renowned fantasy webtoon was a long-awaited project. “I have been talking with the webtoon ‘The Sound of Magic’ author Ha Il-kwon for almost 8 years. It took some time to solve some problems like copyright issues, but I am excited to showcase the fantasy series to the viewers at last,” Kim said during an online press conference Tuesday. The director said that some adjustmen

TelevisionMay 4, 2022

Dine like a king at Gyeongbokgung starlight tour

Gyeongbokgung, the Joseon royal palace, will host its spring season starlight tour from May 18 to 29. Organized by the Cultural Heritage Administration’s Royal Palaces and Tombs Center and the Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation, the tour takes visitors through the northern area of Gyeongbokgung, where they can enjoy a dining experience, watch a traditional music performance and go for a stroll under the stars by the moonlit palace. Tours will be held twice a day starting at 6:40 p.m. an

CultureMay 4, 2022

Performing arts scene sees sharp rise in revenue after lifting of distancing rules

The South Korean performing arts scene has experienced a sharp rise in revenue thanks to the lifting of nearly all social distancing rules, like gathering limits, about two weeks ago, industry data showed Wednesday. The combined revenue of 2,051 theatrical plays, musicals, classical concerts and other performances reached 17.3 billion won ($13.7 million) from April 18 to Sunday, according to the data by the Korea Performing Arts Box Office Information System. The numbers more than trebled from 3

PerformanceMay 4, 2022

Korean National Symphony Orchestra announces changes commensurate with its new name

From introducing forgotten female composers to crossing over beyond classical music into K-culture, the Korean National Symphony Orchestra unveiled plans to impress its name on the minds of music lovers at home and abroad. The orchestra’s artistic director David Reiland introduced various artistic plans and initiatives to reporters during a press conference at Seoul Arts Center on Tuesday. Reiland plans to help discover forgotten female composers, a continuation of a project with Franc

PerformanceMay 3, 2022

Korean animation “Tae-il-i’ to compete at Annecy International Animated Film Festival

The Korean animated film “Tae-il-i” will compete in the Contrechamp section at the 2022 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the town of Annecy, France. The Contrechamp Award is dedicated to feature-length animated films. The film depicts the life of Jeon Tae-il, an emblematic figure of the Korean garment manufacturing sector labor movement. He immolated himself in 1970 at age 22, to protest the brutal working conditions at factories, especially for female workers. Jeon

FilmMay 3, 2022

Korea Arboreta and Gardens Institute makes splash at World Forestry Congress

The Korea Arboreta and Gardens Institute is participating in the 15th World Forestry Congress, which runs at Seoul’s Coex for five days until Friday. The institute’s chairperson Ryu Kwang-soo said, “I hope the World Forestry Congress will serve as an opportunity to directly or indirectly experience the arboretum and garden cultures designed by the Korea Arboreta and Gardens Institute.” At the conference the institute will have exhibition booths of its arboretum, botan

CultureMay 3, 2022

[Herald Interview] ‘D.P.’ star Koo Kyo-hwan wishes to live up to his name as go-to actor

While Koo Kyo-hwan stays humble and tries not to dwell too much on the public’s praise, his fans already consider him one of the go-to actors with an impressive list of successive hits. His hits include “Peninsula” (2020), “Kingdom: Ashin of the North” (2021), “D.P.” (2021) and “Escape from Mogadishu” (2021). “I am grateful (to the viewers) for loving my performances. Whenever I hear such feedback and expressions like ‘go-to act

TelevisionMay 3, 2022

Legoland ready to open, but historical artifacts nearby ‘neglected’

 After 11 years of numerous obstacles and criticisms, the Lego blocks are finally stacked and Legoland Korea Resort is ready to open on Children’s Day. However, historical artifacts found near the site and the surrounding areas -- the source of opposition to the theme park in Chungcheon, Gangwon Province -- remain neglected inside plastic greenhouses. As Legoland Korea Resort’s Thursday grand opening nears, the amusement park is under fire once again for dragging its feet wit

CultureMay 3, 2022

[Exclusive] Tiger JK eyes return with new digital single as early as June

Korean hip-hop legend Tiger JK is gearing up for the release of a new digital single sometime in June, an industry source told The Korea Herald on Tuesday. “Tiger JK has completed recording and is going to start mastering the record and film a music video for the upcoming song,” the source said. It will likely to mark the musician’s return to music nearly nine months after the release of “Love Peace Movement,” the remix of “Love Peace” which dropped

PerformanceMay 3, 2022