Hirari Yamauchi, a 48-year-old Japanese housewife, and her teenage daughter flew to South Korea for a two-day trip this week, solely for a highly anticipated visit to a pop-up store themed around K-pop boy band BTS currently open in Seoul. The mother and daughter discovered BTS a year ago and have since been avid fans, and they were unable to miss a chance to see the first major BTS pop-up store in the band's home country.The pop-up store, House of BTS, kicked off its three-month run on Oct. 18

Girl group Red Velvet's latest "repackage album," "The ReVe Festival: Finale," has topped the iTunes album charts in 42 countries, its agency said Tuesday.The third of the five-member band's "The ReVe Festival" trilogy, the 16-track album was released on Monday (Korean time) and includes four new songs -- "Psycho," "In & Out," "Remember Forever" and "La Rouge." It took the top position on the iTunes album charts in the Uni

K-pop boy band BTS created an economic effect worth 1 trillion won ($860.7 million) with its latest three concerts in Seoul, an academic report showed Monday.The septet finished off its latest world tour, "Love Yourself:Speak Yourself," with the final leg in Seoul where three evening concerts at Olympic Stadium on Oct. 26, 27 and 29 drew a total of some 130,000 fans.According to a report by a research team led by Pyun Ju-hyun, a business professor at Seoul's Korea University, the conce

YouTube turns forgotten singer Yang Joon-il into a countrywide phenomenon

K-pop boy band Monsta X on Friday released a Latin music-inspired single in collaboration with Colombian singer-songwriter Sebastian Yatra.The digital single, "Magnetic," combines Yatra's Spanish-language singing with the K-pop band's Korean lines in a new love song.  The collaboration was arranged during Monsta X's meeting with the Colombian musician in the United States, according to the band's agency, Starship Entertainment. The Korean band performed at the 2019 iHeartRadio Jin

Mino, a member of roaring boy band WINNER, officially debuted as a painter this week, the latest in a growing number of TV celebrities expanding their talent into the fine arts.An art exhibition including paintings by Mino, whose legal name is Song Min-ho began its run on Tuesday at the Seongnam Arts Center south of Seoul.The 26-year-old K-pop star submitted one oil and two acrylic paintings to the fine art show, "Special Exhibition for Emerging Artists 2019," which will run till next

Though the gayageum, a 12-string zither-like instrument, can be traced back to ancient times, it has evolved in different ways in North and South Korea, according to a gayageum player who has traversed the two Koreas to practice her art.Park Soon-a, 51, will be performing various gayageum solo pieces composed and played in North Korea at her solo recital “North Korea Gayageum,” to be held Friday and Saturday at Seoul Namsan Gukakdang.Park is an ethnic Korean from Japan, known as a &l

Global sensation BTS has been tapped as the most beloved K-pop star of the year by K-pop fans around the world for the fourth consecutive year, a written survey showed Thursday. According to the poll by KBS World Radio of 7,855 listeners of its programs in 11 languages, 35.4 percent of the polled picked BTS as the K-pop Singer of the Year. Launched in 2016, the survey was conducted from Nov. 20-Dec. 4 via the state-run broadcaster's homepage and mobile app.    The boy group's &quo

South Korean cable channel Mnet said Wednesday that it will launch no new K-pop audition shows in the future amid a widening police probe into a vote-rigging scandal involving its popular competition series "Produce X101." "We will refrain from producing audition programs," Kang Ji-hoon from Mnet said in a session of the Korea Communications Standards Commission. "We are making efforts to create content focusing more on music." The music channel has been embroi

K-pop boy band BTS will ring in the new year performing at the United States' most-watched New Year's Eve concert, the special program's organizer has said."Making 2020 right by ringing in the new year with BTS! Join us live from Times Square on New Year's Eve," the organizer of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2020" said on its Facebook page on Tuesday.  The special New Year's Eve program this year will air concerts from Times Square in New York a

Continuing its winning streak from a year earlier, boy band BTS topped the South Korean album sales chart for this year, chart results showed Tuesday.BTS' latest album, "Map of the Soul: Persona," sold more than 3.69 million copies since its release in April, topping the album sales category of the Gaon Music Chart compiled by the Korea Music Content Association. The album chart covers the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 7.It marks overriding chart dominance by BTS following the band's No.

"Map of the Soul: Persona," the latest album by K-pop boy band BTS, has been certified "Gold" by the French recording industry. Breaking the news, the National Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing said in its official website and social media account on Monday that the BTS album has sold 50,000 equivalent copies. For the achievement, the album was certified "Or," the French word for Gold, the association said, adding a message, "Bravo!"The association hono

The sensational global ascent of K-pop band BTS has brought to the fore the emergence of a new breed of globally connected, dedicated fans as represented by ARMY, the group's fandom.Powered by the connectivity of the internet and social network services, ARMY engages in organized transnational operations to download BTS songs and vote for the septet en masse, spearheading the band's victories on Billboard and major American music awards.BTS fans also helped spawn a new YouTube "reaction vid

Big Hit Entertainment has denied a recent report that the agency and BTS have been in dispute over profit distribution and the renewal of a contract. On Monday, broadcast station JTBC’s “News Room” aired a report that said the band and its members’ parents have been looking into taking legal action against the agency. A few hours after the news was broadcast, the agency released a statement saying, “The report is groundless.” “BTS and the members&rs

As incredible as it sounds, U2 -- one of biggest names in rock history -- has never had a huge following in Korea. The disparity between the band’s international fame and popularity in Korea, among other things, has prevented U2 fans in the country from enjoying the group’s music live. That was until the Seoul leg of the Joshua Tree Tour 2019 in Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on Sunday, held in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of one of their best-received albums, “The Joshua T