The Tongyeong International Music Foundation appointed Chin Un-suk, Berlin-based composer of contemporary classical music, as the next artistic director of the Tongyeong International Music Festival. The contemporary music festival which honors the late-composer Yun I-sang is held annually in the coastal city of Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, every March. This year’s festival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chin will lead the event from 2022 to 2026. “I am ho

“When I first read the script, I was puzzled,” Lee Mi-do, one of the main actors in the upcoming science fiction comedy “Night of the Undead,” said during a press conference held at the CGV Yongsan movie theater in Seoul on Tuesday. The conference was held through livestreaming, with reporters and actors in separate parts of the theater due to the ongoing spread of COVID-19. Lee’s reaction was understandable as the film’s director, Shin Jung-won, was not a

"Ice Cream," K-pop girl group BLACKPINK's new single, remained on Billboard's main singles Hot 100 chart for three consecutive weeks since its release. Billboard said Tuesday (US time) that "Ice Cream," featuring Selena Gomez, ranked 61st on the latest Hot 100 chart. The single debuted at No. 13 in its first week, achieving a record high by a South Korean girl group, and finished at No. 49 last week. "Ice Cream" also stood at No. 13 and No. 6 on the Global 200 c

K-pop girl group TWICE will release a new single album in Japan in November, according to its label-management company Wednesday. The two-track Japanese single, titled "Better," will be released on Nov. 18, according to JYP Entertainment. "Better" will comprise the lead track of the same title and "Scorpion." JYP said the new single was produced with the yearning of TWICE members to be able to meet with fans around the world in person. The nine-member group, whi

K-pop super group BTS will deliver performances on NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in the United States for a full week, the group's management agency said Wednesday. Under the show's weeklong special titled "BTS Week," the seven-member boy band will showcase different music performances each night for five days starting next Monday, Big Hit Entertainment said. The members will be featured in comedy bits and virtual interviews as well throughout the week. BTS

Twitter Korea on Tuesday released a new report, “#KpopTwitter 2020 World Map,” which looks back on K-pop’s rapid growth on the platform over the past decade. According to the report, K-pop-related content and conversations on Twitter increased monumentally from 2010 to 2020, spanning first-generation acts like Super Junior, Big Bang and Girls’ Generation as well as the latest acts like BTS, EXO, Blackpink, GOT7 and NCT 127.  The upward curve showed the most rapid

K-pop girl group TWICE finished first on a Japanese weekly album chart with its latest repackaged album "#TWICE3," its management agency said Tuesday. Released last Wednesday, the compilation of the group's past Korean and Japanese hits scored 109,000 points to top the Oricon Daily Albums chart in its first week of release, according to JYP Entertainment. It is the band's seventh album to reach the top of the most coveted music chart in Japan, making the group the second foreign fema

As more and more K-pop groups create backstories and universes of their own, FNC Entertainment’s newest K-pop group, P1Harmony, is debuting in a sci-fi movie starring the six band members. The 99-minute movie, “P1H: The Beginning of a New World,” by director Yoon Hong-seung, who also goes by “Director Chang,” shows the P1Harmony universe and how each member of P1Harmony finds his own superpower that can help save the world from a deadly virus. The movie will come

Original Korean musical “Sonata of a Flame” has been viewed in 45 countries online, according to its production company Shins Wave on Tuesday. The musical, which kicked off its run on Sept. 11 in Daehangno, Seoul, livestreams 13 of 18 live in-person performances. The 13 performances are streamed globally, with the exception of China and Indonesia, via a local tech startup‘s online platform, Presented Live. According to a press release shared by Shins Wave on Tuesday, viewer

In recent years, youth dramas or youth romance series have not been the pick of many South Korean TV viewers, who think such series are boring and prefer R-rated melodramas or romantic thrillers, like "The World of the Married" (2020). Now, however, the latest youth shows "Record of Youth" and "Do You Like Brahms?" are spearheading the move that veers away from the prevailing tastes on the small screen. "Record of Youth," a 16-episode series on tvN, has

  NCT 2020, a new project K-pop band from SM Entertainment, will drop the first of the group's two-part debut studio album next month, according to the company Tuesday. The boy band with a massive lineup of 23 members will release "NCT 2020: Resonance Pt. 1" on Oct. 12, according to SM. NCT 2020 is an umbrella team that brings together members from pre-existing teams under SM's "NCT" brand -- NCT 127, NCT Dream, WayV and an upcoming NCT-branded act that has yet to of

WASHINGTON -- South Korean boy band BTS' new single, "Dynamite," again finished second on Billboard's main singles chart, spending its fourth week in the top two spots of the chart, Billboard reported Monday. "BTS' "Dynamite" ranks No. 2 on the Hot 100 for a second week after spending its first two weeks on the chart at No. 1," the report said. The Hot 100 chart is refreshed every Tuesday. The BTS' song continued to dominate the music industry in terms of digital