The annual Hampyeong Butterfly Festival opens at Hampyeong Expo Park, an eco-themed tourist attraction in Hampyeong, South Jeolla Province, Friday. The 11-day spring festival beckons visitors who wish to learn about the flora and fauna of Korea via various programs, including virtual reality and hands-on experiences with butterflies and insects. There will be performances by local artists, banana harvesting, pizza making and exhibitions.

More than a library Throw yourself into the endless rows of bookshelves filled with various kinds of books. Located in Jung-gu, Seoul, near major transportation hub Seoul Station, Sohn Kee-chung Culture Library is a calm, peaceful library surrounded by a beautifully landscaped park and a walking track. In fact, you might even skip the library and just go for a leisurely stroll there. The library reopened in 2021 after an extensive renovation. The library, now spanning over 771 square meters, has

Grace Iriberri, a Filipina kindergarten principal, on how Korean language put her on an unintended but fascinating path

The Culture Ministry will take the lead in combining Korea's major art events slated for September and promoting them nationwide under the "K-Art Festival" umbrella, according to the culture minister on Monday. Culture Minister Yoo In-chon said the ministry will step up its support to foster collaboration between major players in the art world, including the organizers of biennales, museums and commercial art fairs. “(Declaring cooperation) is the first step in forging coll

Online reservations for the biannual nighttime tours of Gyeongbokgung will open on April 30 at 10 a.m. This special opportunity to take a moonlight stroll around Seoul’s main Joseon-era (1392-1910) palace will be available from May 8 to June 2, except for Mondays and Tuesdays. Tours will take place between 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. While the tours will not include guides, the palace’s gates, halls, pavilions and garden will be open to visitors. One person can buy up to four tickets at tic

“A Thousand Blues,” a science fiction novel by young writer Cheon Seon-ran, has been reborn as not one but two different stage performances just less than one month apart. Cheon, 31, had received offers for the adaptation of her award-winning novel, but she had rejected turning it into a movie or drama for a reason. “The aspect that I was most worried about, if ‘A Thousand Blues’ were adapted into a drama or movie, was the use of animals. For a movie or drama, it se

First Decca studio album of 20-year-old pianist released on April 19; Lim to kick off national recital tour in June

A group of senior South Korean Buddhist monks entered the Memorial Hall of Korean Buddhism History and Culture in Seoul one by one on Friday, the tranquil mood interrupted only by the sounds of the camera crews that had come to record the event. The solemn ceremony, presided by the Ven. Jinwoo, president of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, Korea’s largest Buddhist sect, highlighted why the gathering mattered so much. The monks and Buddhist followers took turns studying the cremated re

Life in miniature Miniatures, or tiny meticulous artworks, are intuitive. No one has to be schooled about the way they should be looked at or studied. And that only puts added pressure on the artist to create a message navigating analogies and twists, without losing anyone in the process. Tatsuya Tanaka is a Japanese artist doing just that. At the IFC Mall in Seoul, the exhibit “Miniature Life” showcases over 200 miniatures spanning seven themes, including home, life and the world.

When the Gyechon Music Festival was being considered over a decade ago, residents of the village Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province, expressed a preference for popular music genres like trot, rather than classical music -- or at least a mix of the two. Ten years on, no one is talking about a pop music festival. Rather, the village hopes to solidify its identity as an art village, with the rare outdoor classic music festival as the catalyst, according to Lee Dong-yeun, director of the festival and p

Gyeongseong, as present-day Seoul was called during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945, is the background of many popular TV shows, including “Mr. Sunshine" (2018) and “Gyeongseong Creature" (2023), or even in the musical “Il Tenoro" (2023). While watching “Mr. Sunshine,” the head and artistic director of the Seoul Metropolitan Opera, Park Hye-jin, envisioned Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” set in 1900s to 1930s Korea

Amid heightened interest in Hangeul, the King Sejong Institute, which is at the forefront of Korean-language education abroad, saw a surge in the number of students last year, according to the King Sejong Institute on Friday. The number of online students rose 44 percent to about 88,000 last year. Including some 128,000 offline students, the King Sejong Institute now serves well more than 200,000 Korean-language students. “This shows digital innovation for the King Sejong Institute is very

South Korean Buddhist monks will bring back long-sought 14th-century Buddhist relics from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, following a transfer ceremony there Tuesday. The event is the latest highlight from a deal struck in February in which the museum agreed to “donate” the sarira, or bead-shaped objects found among cremated remains of Buddhist masters. The agreement between the museum and a delegation of Cultural Heritage Administration officials and monks from the Jogye Order of K

Outreach to the young will be the focus of this year’s Buddhist Lantern Festival in Seoul, which starts Wednesday in the run-up to Buddha’s Birthday on May 15. The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, the organizer of the annual festival, is betting big on an electronic dance music performance by the Ven. New Jean, a comedian who gained a following after he delivered Buddhist verses to EDM at last year’s event. The name, meaning a “fresh move forward,” is a wordplay on t

From suseok to pet stones, Korea’s rock-collecting culture makes a turn