“Baby Shark Dance” a YouTube videofeaturing the titular song and playful choreography, surpassed 10 billion views Thursday. Beloved by both children and adults, the two-minute video tells the story of a shark family going on an underwater hunt. The English-language version of the video came out in June 2016, soon after its success in Korean in 2015. The English version of ”Baby Shark Dance“ record far exceeds the 2.3 billion views of the Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee&rs

Krafton’s battle royal shooter “PUBG: Battlegrounds” topped the most played games chart on Steam, a digital distribution platform for PC gaming, Thursday. According to Krafton, the number of concurrent users doubled after the game switched to free-to-play mode Wednesday, recording a maximum number of 660,000 users. “Under the new theme of ‘Battlegrounds for all,’ we believe that the switch to free service allowed many users from various backgrounds to enjoy

Special Delivery (Korea) Opened Jan. 12 Action Directed by Park Dae-min Special delivery driver Eun-ha (Park So-dam) mainly works for a criminal group. She delivers anything that cannot be delivered legally. One day, Eun-ha receives a mission to deliver Seo-won (Jung Hyeon-jun), a young boy that a criminal group is chasing after. When she decides to save him, she becomes a target of not only the crime group, but also associated corrupt police officers. The Policeman’s Lineage (Korea) Ope

　 The music video for Ateez‘s “Wonderland” surpassed 100 million views on YouTube, according to agency KQ Entertainment on Thursday. 　 This is the band’s first video to reach the milestone. 　 The song is the main track from its first studio album “Treasure Epi.Fin: All to Action,” from October 2019. The LP topped iTunes K-pop chart in six regions and its top albums chart in eight regions at the time. 　 The tune that reminded fans of the group’s spirited

Max Changmin of boy band TVXQ became the first artist from S.M. Entertainment to hop onto the January music chart craze with his second mini-album, “Devil.” The album, which dropped Monday evening, touches on the different colors of music. In a press conference on Thursday, the singer said he embarked on a journey of tunes and melodies while preparing for his new solo while he had been away from music for nearly two years. The musician added that he wanted to musically show that a

Global streaming service Netflix has confirmed the casting for its original series “Goodbye Earth,” Thursday. Actors Yoo Ah-in, Ahn Eun-jin, Kim Yoon-hye and Jeon Seong-woo will star in Netflix’s new apocalypse movie, according to the company. “Goodbye Earth” revolves around the stories of individuals who are left with only 200 days to live before an asteroid hits Earth. The series is a highly anticipated project. It is director Kim Jin-min’s third Netflix

The KBS Symphony Orchestra appointed renowned South Korean conductor Chung Myung-whun as its first-ever conductor laureate, according to the orchestra on Thursdsay. Chung’s tenure began this month. Conductor laureate is an honorary position given to a conductor who has international repuation or contributed to the development of the orchestra. This is the first the KBS Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1956, has awarded the title. The news came days after Chung saved the orchestra&rsquo

The K-pop music industry saw a surge in accumulated album sales last year despite the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to top-tier artists such as BTS, EXO and aespa. According to a year-end report from the South Korean music chart tracker Gaon Chart on Wednesday, the nation’s top 400 albums sold 57.09 million copies in and out of the country in 2021, up by 36.9 percent from the previous year’s 41.71 million. After exceeding the 20 million mark for the first time in 2018, the

New album talks about struggles people face when they feel lost in life

"Squid Game" creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has said he still believes in a humanity that moves people to put confidence in a better and more just society even under the life-and-death pressure of social survival games. "We are living in a society where people dare to tread on other people to survive," he said Wednesday in a pretaped interview by the Seoul-based Corea Image Communication Institute. "But I still believe that this society doesn't have to be one where we need to

South Korea's global phenomenon "Squid Game" has earned four nominations, including the top prize of best ensemble, from the US Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. SAG on Wednesday (US time) unveiled its final list of nominations for its 28th edition of the awards ceremony slated for Feb. 27. "Squid Game," a Korean-language Netflix original, is up for outstanding performances by an ensemble cast in a drama series, by a male actor in a leading role, by a female actor in a supp

 Boy band Mirae held an online showcase to roll out the group’s third EP “Marvelous” on Wednesday.   　  If the band has been hot, highlighting strong performances before, this time it is more about being dreamy and refreshing, as if the bandmates are relishing the party, explained Junhyuk.   　 Title track “Marvelous” is a dance-pop tune with powerful beats that expresses the band’s ambition to open a new era. It also is catchy, especially

Having released its first webtoon NFTs of “Solo Leveling” Wednesday, Kakao Entertainment said it is seeking to expand its NFT business with “The Soulless Duchess.” According to the company, the upcoming NFT is a joint project between Kakao Entertainment’s IP “The Soulless Duchess” and the generative art project company Treasures Club, making the country’s first ever generative webtoon NFT. Generative art is a form of digital art in which the art

No. of global viewers posts average annual growth rate of 20-30 percent since 2019

Hybe, the agency behind the global K-pop sensation BTS, will premiere its original webtoon and web-novel series starring the seven-member band and other artists of the firm’s labels this week. The agency on Wednesday said “7Fates: Chakho,” a web-comic and web-novel series based an on original story featuring BTS, will be unveiled on Saturday via Naver’s web comic platform, Naver Webtoon. Two other episodes, “Dark Moon” and “The Star Seekers,” ea