It was the ’90s vibe that director Lee Jong-pil was after in his upcoming film “Samjin Company English Class,” which captures the mood of the country when it was on the cusp of globalization. The viewers are first introduced to three young women who work for Samjin Company -- Lee Ja-young, played by Ko Ah-sung, Jung Yoo-na, played by E Som, and Sim Bo-ram, played by Park Hye-soo. The year is 1995. The three women have been working at the company for eight years and are bett

The number of subscribers of the local video streaming service giant Wavve has topped 10 million on rising demand for a wide variety of content, the company said Monday. Wavve was launched last year by South Korea's top mobile carrier, SK Telecom Co., and terrestrial broadcasters KBS, MBC and SBS. "Despite a slight slowdown in the first half of this year, our memberships have been on a strong rise since July thanks to new releases of Wavve original series and exclusive foreign titles,&quo

Violinist Kang Dong-suk talks about hosting music festival in pandemic era

K-pop superstars BTS will drop their new album "BE (Deluxe Edition)" next month, the band's agency announced Monday. "BTS's new album 'BE (Deluxe Edition)' will be released on Nov. 20," Big Hit Entertainment, the band's label-agency, announced on the group's online fan community BTS Weverse. It said the upcoming album will be a special album "carefully crafted" by BTS, but did not elaborate on details. "This album is made more special by direct involvement f

Korean entertainment behemoth S.M. Entertainment is changing to adapt to the contactless era while utilizing its intellectual properties. “Like how Disney achieved an IP empire, K-pop will overcome this (pandemic) situation and become a genre that forms an IP empire in the music industry,” said S.M. Entertainment co-CEO Lee Sung-soo on Friday in his speech at MU:CON Online 2020. MU:CON is a four-day international music industry annual gathering organized by the Korea Creative Cont

The first season of Netflix original drama series “The School Nurse Files” was released Friday, bringing Chung Se-rang’s fantasy novel “School Nurse Ahn Eun- young” to life in over 190 countries around the globe. The highly anticipated drama series reached the top of the list of most popular TV shows on Netflix in Korea upon its release, according to data analytics firm FlixPatrol. The six 50-minute episodes of the first season of “The School Nurse Files&rd

The music video of "Dynamite," K-pop superstar BTS' latest single, has surpassed 400 million views on YouTube, its agency said Saturday. The dance video reached the milestone Friday at 10:30 p.m., 35 days after it was posted on the video-sharing site, according to Big Hit Entertainment. It garnered the number in the shortest time among K-pop videos. The video attracted 101 million views in the first 24 hours of release on Aug. 21, setting the record for single-day views. BTS bec

NK defector pianist Kim Cheol-woong hopes to bridge two Koreas through music

People all over the world have been stuck at home for several months now due to COVID-19. More and more concerts and performances have moved online, and some movies have been released on Netflix or other online content platforms exclusively or prior to opening in theaters. With myriad offerings available in these quarantine times, some people are looking to enhance the online experience by setting up sound systems for their homes. The visual experience of an online performance can also be enha

Big Hit Entertainment, the label-management agency of BTS, has won multiple defamation suits against an individual who has repeatedly posted malicious comments about the global K-pop group on the internet. According to Big Hit Entertainment, the person, whose identity was withheld, was recently fined 4 million won ($3,400) in total by the Seoul Eastern District Court for three separate criminal complaints for defamation. Big Hit added that the company was filing additional separate criminal co

　Despite COVID-19 having bogged down the global entertainment industry, the conversation and buzz surrounding K-pop on the social media platform Twitter have increased substantially in the past year. 　The number of K-pop-related tweets on the global social media platform from July 2019 to June 2020 reached 6.1 billion, up 15 percent from the 5.3 billion tally from a year prior, according to data compiled by Twitter Korea together with music startup Space Oddity’s fandom analytics dash

K-pop supergroup BTS' upcoming Seoul concert in October will be held virtually only, according to the band's management agency Friday, canceling the in-person element that was planned together. The Oct. 10-11 Seoul concert, "BTS Map Of The Soul ON:E," was announced in August as an in-person show with government-mandated seat distancing measures for COVID-19 prevention. Big Hit also planned to livestream the two-day event online as paid content. Big Hit Entertainment announced on its

K-pop supergroup SuperM returned with its long-awaited first full-length album “Super One – The 1st Album” with a hopeful message to endure stressful times as one. “We wanted to show the significance of our existence. While we’ve gathered from distinct teams, we’d like to show you the unity, synergy, our message and hope through the album,” said Kai in the group’s online media conference Friday morning, a few hours before the album release. The

K-pop project group SuperM said Friday it hopes to deliver positive energy through its inaugural studio album "Super One" to fans during the difficult times of the pandemic. "We've felt a lot of pressure from the great achievement we had from our debut album. We'd be satisfied if (fans) become encouraged through 'Super One' in these difficult times," SuperM leader Baekyuun said during an online press conference Friday in Seoul for the group's first studio album. "We hop

Adjusting to the turbulent times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, an online-only musical will be launched in November. In the past few months, it has become the norm for musical production companies to stream their shows online, as in-person performances have been barred with tight restrictions to restrain the spread of COVID-19. Though the musical industry has been trying to establish a for-pay model, it has not been easy to bring audiences online, tying them down at home to watch the two- to