Super rookie boy band Treasure is completing the last puzzle of the group’s first chapter with hopeful voices filling up their first studio album, “The First Step: Treasure Effect.” Ahead of dropping a new album on Monday, the 12-member act livestreamed a global press conference conducted online due to concerns of the COVID-19 situation in South Korea. Released in a depressive period of the coronavirus pandemic, the band explained the album is all about sending a hopeful me

After selling 700,000 albums with just three singles and sweeping rookie prizes at year-end awards, TREASURE now aims to send out positive vibes to fans and listeners. The rookie band that debuted in August through a survival audition program by YG Entertainment, "YG Treasure Box," is set to drop its first full album "The First Step: Treasure Effect," a 12-track album fronted by lead track "My Treasure," late Monday. In a press conference livestreamed on YouTube,

Seven-piece boy band GOT7 will officially be leaving JYP Entertainment without renewing its contract, the agency announced Monday. "JYP held in-depth discussions with members of GOT7 ahead of their exclusive contract termination on Jan. 19. As a result, the two sides agreed not to proceed with a contract renewal, hoping for a new future," the entertainment agency said in a statement. JYP, led by K-pop guru and producer Park Jin-young, voiced gratitude to the band as well as its fan c

"I Can't Stop Me" has become K-pop girl group TWICE's fastest music video to rack up 200 million views on YouTube, its management agency said Monday. The music video hit the milestone around 8:40 p.m. Sunday, some 77 days after its release in October, according to JYP Entertainment. The group's 2017 music video "Likey" held the previous record for the feat at 130 days. The video of "I Can't Stop Me," a retro-disco main track of the nine-member group's second full

South Korean director Im Sang-soo, whose latest feature "Heaven: To The Land of Happiness" was selected by Cannes last year, will make his directorial debut in Hollywood, a production company here said Monday. He will take the helm of "Soho Sins," co-produced by US production studio 2W Network Entertainment, according to Yeolmae Entertainment. The film is based on the novel of the same title written by Richard Vine, the managing editor of the magazine Art in America. It fea

“Youn’s Stay” -- a spin-off of the popular Korean reality TV show “Youn’s Restaurant” -- got off to a good start Friday with a rating of 8.2 percent. The show features foreign guests staying at a hanok guesthouse in Korea run by a group of celebrities. It began with the production team expressing concerns about airing a program during the pandemic. It was noted that all celebrities and guests on the show had tested negative for the coronavirus. “Youn

Although a significant number of married couples decide to go their separate ways each year in Korea, divorce is not a topic that Koreans talk about casually, largely because it is still a taboo subject. The divorce rate in Korea has increased for two consecutive years since 2018, according to Statistics Korea. Although the divorce rate decreased by 4.3 percent year-on-year from January to October 2020, the number of couples that got divorced stands at 88,455. “I have a close friend fro

K-pop boy band Seventeen made an appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” as the group prepares for their first concert of the new year. The 13 members of Seventeen became the fourth K-pop group to perform on the popular talk show following BTS, Blackpink and NCT. On Thursday, Seventeen performed their retro-swing title song “Home;Run” from their latest album “Semicolon.” The singers took the stage dressed up as the studio’s stagehands, p

Productions adapt to online environment for survival amid pandemic era

Korea’s top 10 most streamed artists on Spotify chalked up a total of 10.6 billion streams on the platform in 2020, the popular streaming service announced on Thursday in its yearly wrap up. 　 Boy band BTS was the most streamed Korean artist globally, followed by Blackpink, Twice, Stray Kids and Red Velvet, according to Spotify’s 2020 Wrapped data. BTS also took the top spot in the category of the most-streamed global group in 2020. 2020 Wrapped, which compiles data from Jan. 1 t

Actress Song Hye-kyo will return to the small screen in a new drama written by screenwriter Kim Eun-sook, “The Glory.” According to the production company Hwa & Dam Pictures, “The Glory,” an 8-part drama series, tells the story of a person who dreamed of being an architect when she was young but had to quit school due to severe bullying from her classmates. She later becomes a teacher to take revenge on those who bullied her and those who remained silent at the tim

The BTS album "Map of the Soul: 7," featuring hit tracks "On" and "Boy with Luv," has been tallied as the bestselling physical album in the United States last year. Physical album sales of the septet's fourth full album released in February reached 646,000 in the US, according to an annual year-end report compiled by MRC Data in collaboration with Billboard. The report encompasses US music consumption data between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 last year. The report also show

The number of daily moviegoers plunged to a fresh record low this week, as new releases have been affected by the latest coronavirus resurgence in winter, data showed Friday. According to the data from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), 14,000-16,000 people went to theaters daily this week, down from last week's 34,000-60,000. In particular, only 14,518 attendees were recorded Monday, hitting an all-time low since KOFIC began to compile official box office data in 2004. It renewed the previous r

January is usually a bleak month after year-end festivities and the hype for ambitious New Year's resolutions have faded. But in the K-pop industry, January is set to be packed with debuts and comebacks by both rookies and veteran acts this year. On Monday, 12-piece group TREASURE is set to drop its first full album just five months after its debut. The boy band took the industry by storm last year, churning out three singles in just 100 days and selling more than 700,000 albums. The rookie ba

As the immigration film "Minari," directed by Korean American Lee Isaac Chung, has been on a roll in the award season, hopes are high that its supporting South Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung could get an Oscar nod. Youn, who took the role of the eccentric grandmother in Chung's semi-autobiographical film, has won a total of seven best supporting actress trophies in US film critics circles and festivals including the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, the North Carolina Film Critics and the B