I.M of Monsta X saw all of the tracks from his first solo digital EP rank on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales Chart, according to the music media outlet’s tally for next week. 　 Title track “God Damn” ranked No. 9, and “Howlin,” “Happy to Die,” “Flower-ed” and “Burn” settled at No. 17, 18, 20 and 21, respectively. The EP, called “Duality,” rose to the top of iTunes worldwide albums chart upon its release i

Director Jero Yun, who directed the film “Beautiful Days” about a mysterious North Korean woman refugee in 2017, has returned with “Fighter,” about a female North Korean defector living in South Korea. “I came up with the story for ‘Fighter,’ along with ‘Beautiful Days,’ back in 2012 when I was part of Cannes Film Festival’s residence program,” Yun said during a press conference held Thursday at Lotte Cinema in Gwangjin-gu, Seou

Last weekend, global K-pop fans on Spotify faced a blackout of hundreds of songs by popular artists, including Zico, Mamamoo and IU, after the Swedish audio giant's licensing agreement with South Korea's top music distributor Kakao M Corp. came to an end. While some music has since been restored under artists' separate labels, Spotify Technology SA and Kakao M, now known as Kakao Entertainment Corp., said discussions for a new deal are ongoing. The South Korean company's music has been availab

After spending a phenomenal year with megahits "Dynamite" and "Life Goes On" in 2020, BTS has been crowned Global Recording Artist of the Year by an organization representing the worldwide recording industry. The win on Wednesday (US local time) marks a first for an act that performs primarily in a non-English language. It also is the first time for an artist who mostly sings in a language other than English to be included on the Global Artist Chart for a third consecutive

Raya and the Last Dragon (US) Opened March 4 Animation Directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, Donald Hall In the world of Kumandra, humans and dragons lived together in harmony. As villainous monsters known as the Druun started attacking the land, magical dragons united their forces and sacrificed themselves to save humanity. Five hundred years later, the monsters have returned and it‘s now up to a warrior Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) to save Kumandra. Minari (US) Opened March 3 Drama Directed

Baekhyun of EXO is preparing a new solo album that is slated to be released at the end of March, according to a local news report Thursday. SM Entertainment confirmed that it will be unveiled on March 30 following the report.  It has been 10 months since he put out second solo EP “Delight” but he has kept himself busy rolling out digital single “Amusement Park” in December 2020 and first Japanese solo EP “Baekhyun” in January. His solo debut EP &ldqu

The recent school bullying scandal that continues to roil the South Korean entertainment scene is now snowballing to affect several TV series projects starring some of the actors embroiled in the scandal. The scheduled airing of the college romance series "Dear. M" was postponed indefinitely after the emergence of accusations that its lead actress Park Hye-soo was allegedly involved in violence during her school days. The show was originally set to premiere on Feb. 26 on KBS, a public

IU, one of the K-pop scene's most prominent female solo acts, is set to drop her fifth full album later this month, her agency confirmed Thursday. Titled "Lilac," the singer-songwriter's studio album will be released March 25, according to EDAM Entertainment. It did not elaborate on the details of the upcoming album. A teaser image uploaded on IU's official social media channel shows the singer gazing into the camera in a simple shirt with lilac flowers falling in the background. Th

IKON was ready to come out with new music for the first time in 13 months Wednesday.   　 The band is releasing a digital single titled “Why Why Why” that sings about love that blooms beautifully before withering away. The song blends poetic guitar riffs and heavy bass sounds with the lyrics, including the rap by Bobby, and portrays being unable to accept a breakup, asking both himself and her before slowly coming to acknowledge it.   　 In addition to promoting the new si

Man of La Mancha’ to return to Seoul after brief Daejeon run

A film about the first human clone “Seobok,” starring actors Gong Yoo and Park Bo-gum, will be released simultaneously on Korean streaming platform Tving and in theaters on April 15. The upcoming film was initially set to be released in theaters last December but the film’s distributor CJ Entertainment had to delay the release due to COVID-19. “Seobok” depicts the story of Ki-hun (Gong Yoo), an ex-intelligence agent, who receives a mission from the director of t

For fans who are looking forward to seeing more of BTS, March is expected to be an exciting month, with the global superstars scheduled to appear on two local TV programs. A 100-minute episode of the popular tvN show "You Quiz on the Block" featuring the seven-piece act is first set to air at 8:40 p.m. on March 24. The show, hosted by the comedian duo Yoo Jae-suk and Jo Se-ho, usually invites a number of guests, but the BTS episode will be solely dedicated to the band. BTS and Yoo ha

Global superstar BTS has set another record, this time by claiming No. 1 on the Billboard's Artist 100 chart for a 16th week, the most for a group act. The seven-piece act ranked No. 1, up four notches from the previous week, on the metric that measures artists' popularity across album and track sales, radio airplay and streaming as well as social media performance. It marks a record for a duo or group act. Overall, BTS has now topped the chart the most after Taylor Swift, Drake and The Weeknd

J-hope of BTS surprised fans with a new solo song called “Blue Side” on Tuesday.  The artist worked on what was originally an outro track from his 2018 solo mixtape “Hope World” into a full song adding lyrics and elongating the melody with the help of songwriters Hiss Noise and Adora.  “It’s been three years since ‘Hope World’ came out today,” he said in a posting on the blog.  “There are times when I miss those inno

More and more top Korean movie stars are opting for TV dramas mainly due to the prolonged difficult situation the local film industry has been going through since COVID-19 broke out early last year. Not only movie stars that occasionally have been making the switch to TV shows, but also those who had been appearing only on the big screen for years are making the switch. In December last year, veteran actor Hwang Jung-min, star of multiple megahit films like “Ode to My Father” and