For the last four years, Park Hye-sang, an emerging South Korean soprano, has lived as a cultural nomad, bouncing between New York, Berlin and Seoul to further her career as an opera singer. The first four months of this year alone were a whirlwind of concerts and long-haul flights for Park. In January, she was in New York to perform Pamina in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” with the Metropolitan Opera and in Prague for an Opera Gala with Prague Philharmonia. From there, she hop

Netflix’s new Korean fantasy series, “The Sound of Magic,” made a successful debut on the platform, soaring to No. 4 on the service’s global top 10 chart. The musical drama ranked seventh on Netflix’s global chart as of Saturday, a day after its release, before climbing up to land at the fourth slot on Sunday, according to data released by streaming analytics firm FlixPatrol. “The Sound of Magic,” helmed by director Kim Seong-yoon who was behind hit w

Beautiful Mint Life 2022, an annual outdoor indie music festival, will take place from Friday through Sunday at the Olympic Park’s 88 Jandi Madang in southeastern Seoul. This year’s Beautiful Mint Life was originally planned as a two-day event, but additional performances have been scheduled for Friday on huge demand for stage performances amid the eased quarantine measures. The tickets for Saturday and Sunday sold out in just five minutes, according to the festival organizer Mint

Le Sserafim, the first girl group from K-pop powerhouse Hybe, has recorded the most first-week sales of any debut album by girl groups in South Korea ever, the group's management agency said Monday. "Fearless," the group's first EP released last Monday, sold 307,450 copies in the first week of its release, Source Music said, citing data from Hanteo, a local album sales tracker. The opening-week figure is the highest among all debut albums by South Korean girl groups and ninth highest f

Boy group NCT Dream will release "Beatbox," a repackage of its second full-length album, this month, the group's management agency said Monday. The new album will come out on May 30 and has a total of 15 tracks, including four new songs, SM Entertainment said. NCT Dream's second LP "Glitch Mode" was released on March 28 and sold 2.1 million copies in the first week of its release. The group debuted in 2016 as the third subunit of K-pop supergroup NCT with its song "Chewi

Hollywood blockbuster "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" has topped a cumulative 3 million admissions at the fastest pace in the pandemic era, box-office data showed Monday. The latest Marvel Studios' flick attracted 1.7 million people from Friday to Sunday, bringing its combined total to 3.5 million, according to the data by the Korea Film Council. It surpassed the 3 million threshold Saturday, the fourth day of its theatrical release, becoming the sixth film to achieve the

Kang Soo-youn, the iconic Korean movie star who brought home the nation’s first acting award from the Venice film festival, died on Saturday at the age of 55. The tragic news came two days after she was taken to hospital on Thursday for a cardiac arrest. Kang died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 3 p.m. at a hospital in southern Seoul, her family said. Kang’s funeral committee is led by Kim Dong-ho, founder of the Busan International Film Festival and the current Gangneung Internatio

Preliminary shows to hit Tokyo and Chicago, ahead of ‘KCON 2022’ in LA in August

The Netflix sensation “Squid Game” and director Ryoo Seung-wan of the period action thriller “Mogadishu” have won grand prizes at this year‘s Baeksang Arts Awards. The Netflix’s South Korean original series and Ryoo were honored respectively in the TV and film categories during the 58th awards ceremony at the Korea International Exhibition Center in Goyang, just northwest of Seoul, on Friday night. The advances made by the streaming service‘s original

Star-studded awards ceremony seeks to celebrate global success of Korean creative content

   　 WJSN will host a standalone concert in June for the first time in over three years, said agency Starship Entertainment on Friday. 　 The concert will be held in Seoul on June 11-12 and is titled “Wonderland.” 　 The 10-member act debuted in 2016 with “MoMoMo.” It originally planned to hold the concert “Obliviate” in 2020, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its previous concert was “Secret Box” from 2019. 　 “

Best international film goes to Canadian nature documentary ‘Geographies of Solitude’ and best Korean feature film ‘Jeong-Sun’

Idol trainee-turned-soloist talks about turning his back on idol ambitions and finding his musical direction

Korean movie stars, directors and fans are praying for Kang Soo-youn’s recovery after the veteran actor was taken to a hospital with cardiac arrest on Thursday. According to a Gangnam Severance Hospital official, the actor remains unconscious while detailed information is yet to be announced. Director Yeon Sang-ho, who is scheduled to make his Netflix return with Kang in an upcoming sci-fi film “Jung_E,” was shocked to hear about the actor. “I was really surprised when

Hollywood blockbuster "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" garnered a 2 1/2-year high of over 1 million moviegoers on Children's Day, data showed Friday. Marvel Studios' latest superhero movie drew 1.06 million viewers on Thursday alone, accounting for 82.5 percent of the day's total ticket sales at local theaters, according to the data from the Korean Film Council. It is the first time that a flick has topped the 1 million mark in attendance on one day since Nov. 30, 2019, wh