Carrying into the room a large square canvas exploding with bold colors, Fayez Barakat declares, beaming, “This is this morning’s work.” It is 10:30 a.m. on Monday, a public holiday. He started painting at 3:30 in the morning, he explains. “I am very proud of what I accomplished today,” he says and turns around to ask his wife, Hwasun, if she likes it. Painting in the early morning hours is a daily routine for Barakat, an internationally recognized dealer and collector of ancient art. Employing

Oct. 7, 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

Oct. 6, 2016

The globalization of the South Korean webtoon industry now seems to be in full swing. On Sept. 28, the webtoon agency Tooneed Entertainment announced that it would be publishing webtoons and running intellectual-property-related businesses in Southeast Asia as well as China, Japan, and North America. Tooneed provides webtoons to KTooN, the third-largest webtoon service provider in the country, and operates intellectual property procurement and protection businesses.  Tooneed EntertainmentTooneed

Oct. 4, 2016

Tourists seeking to immerse themselves in the natural beauty of Korea’s autumn may want to visit the city of Ulsan in the upcoming months. Nestled in the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula, the city is famous for its wide range of scenery that includes vast fields, mountains, quaint villages and a booming maritime commercial district. Traditional dancers perform at the 50th Cheoyong Culture Festival, which ran from Sept. 29-Oct. 3. (Ulsan Metropolitan City)One noteworthy event is the Ulju

Oct. 3, 2016

ROUEN, France (AFP) - Annick Colette-Fremond is the fifth generation of her family to practise the art of ivory carving -- and she may be the last of her line, due to new rules in France.She is one of just a handful of French ivory carvers left, plying a trade that conservationists say spurs the slaughter of elephants and rhinos. Colette-Fremond and her fellow craftspeople work with ivory imported before a ban over four decades ago, but say their future will be doomed when a new decree takes eff

Sept. 29, 2016

THE HAGUE (AFP) -- War crimes judges jailed a Malian jihadist Tuesday for nine years for demolishing Timbuktu’s fabled shrines, a landmark ruling seen as a warning that destroying mankind’s heritage will not go unpunished.In the first such case to focus on cultural destruction as a war crime, the International Criminal Court found Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi guilty of directing attacks on the UNESCO world heritage site during the jihadist takeover of northern Mali in 2012.Mahdi “supervised the destru

Sept. 28, 2016

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraq opened a new antiquities museum in the southern city of Basra on Tuesday with pottery, coins and other artifacts dating back more than 2,000 years.Only one hall was opened due to a shortage of funds, Qahtan al-Obaid, the museum director, told the Associated Press by telephone. It will showcase artifacts dating back to 400 B.C. that tell the history of the oil-rich city on the Persian Gulf.He said there are plans to open other wings that would exhibit Babylonian, Assyrian and

Sept. 28, 2016

The Han River’s multipurpose cruise ship Araho will continue to expand its onboard cultural services to lure more visitors, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said Monday.Akin to the well-known Bateau Mouche boats on the River Seine in Paris, the Araho has since July been operated by the travel agency Lets Go Korea. (Yonhap)According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the private company has diversified cultural content available on the ship, resulting in an increase in visitors. The city gove

Sept. 27, 2016

Soong Meiling was born in 1898 as the third daughter of a wealthy businessman in Shanghai, China.She was educated in the West and threw herself into assisting her husband Chiang Kai-shek when he became China’s top political leader of the time. She was an especially proactive supporter of Korea’s independence movement. Soong’s father, Charlie Jones Soong, studied abroad in the United States and graduated from a Methodist theological seminary. He returned to his country as a missionary, starting a

Sept. 27, 2016

Seventeen more cases of damage have been found on historical artifacts following the Gyeongju earthquake Monday, bringing the total to 97, the Cultural Heritage Administration announced Wednesday.The additional damage includes a crack on the sitting stone Buddha statue (Gwanbong Seokjo Yeorae-jwasang) on Palgongsan near Daegu, damage to the walls of the Daegwangjeon Hall in Yangsan’s Sinheungsa Temple and gaps in stone pagodas on Gyeongju’s Namsan.Cheomseongdae Observatory was also found with ad

Sept. 22, 2016

MIAMI (AFP) - An extremely fragile, ancient Hebrew scroll has been digitally unwrapped for the first time, revealing the earliest copy ever found of an Old Testament Bible scripture, researchers said Wednesday.Known as the En-Gedi scroll, it contains text from the Book of Leviticus, and dates at least to the third or fourth century, possibly earlier, according to the report in the journal Science Advances.The deciphering of its contents is described in the journal as a “significant discovery in

Sept. 22, 2016

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture opens this week alongside the Washington Monument and the National Museum of American History, it will firmly -- and finally --anchor the black experience in the nation’s narrative.“In 1915 … they say, ‘There should be a monument. There should be a memorial that honors our contribution,’” said Michelle Wilkinson, one of the museum’s curators. “Not just a pile of stone, or a shaft. It needs to be a museum.”Fift

Sept. 22, 2016

GYEONGJU, North Gyeongsang Province -- Over 60 historical sites in southeast Korea, including national treasures Bulguksa Temple and Cheomseongdae Observatory, were found to be damaged after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the historical city of Gyeongju last Monday, followed by over 400 aftershocks -- the largest of which occurred Monday evening measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale. The Cultural Heritage Administration, the Gyeongju city government and a number of relevant organizations are scra

Sept. 20, 2016

MONTPELIER, Vermont (AP) -- Vermont in the 1970s was a hotbed for the counterculture, and the influx of young people had a lasting influence on the state’s politics, agriculture and food and offbeat culture.After two years of research, the Vermont Historical Society’s exhibit “Freaks, Radicals & Hippies: Counterculture in the 1970s in Vermont” opens at the Vermont History Center in Barre on Sept. 24.“We quickly realized it was more than just getting back to the land and living on a commune and h

Sept. 20, 2016