Looking to fill the month of May with the varied sounds of comfort and artistic intricacy, conductor Kim Bong-mee is gearing up to lead the newly established Herald Philharmonic Orchestra in its upcoming classical summer performance on Wednesday night. The Herald Phil’s new repertoire will feature a variety of crowd-pleasing musical genres including soulful opera arias to traditional Korean, cla...

JEJUDO ISLAND ― North Korea may not place a nuclear warhead on a submarine-launched ballistic missile, as the underwater launch goes against the principle that only its supreme leader has “central control” of its nuclear arsenal, a U.S. scholar claimed Friday. Peter Hayes, executive director of the U.S.-based Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, noted that the North’s underwater p...

South Korea has become the darling of global high-end luxury jewelers, with more people being educated about luxuries on top of its very unique celebration culture, said Francis Srun, managing director of Asia-Pacific at the French luxury jewelry house Boucheron. “The celebration of ‘100-days into the relationship’ culture (where men and women buy and wear identical rings) is very interesting an...

Less than five years since its independence, the fledgling state of South Sudan is looking to use education as the driving force on route to becoming a developed country, the country’s top official in education said. “We want to transform our education into a modern system that meets all the requirements of society. Without education, there can’t be development,” said South Sudan’s Education Min...

U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka does not mince words when she talks about the education of young girls. “It is the right thing to do,” she said emphatically during an interview with The Korea Herald at a hotel in southern Seoul on Monday. Mlbambo-Ngcuka is in Korea to attend the World Education Forum 2015 being held in Incheon May 19-22. For the developing and underdeveloped...

Despite the strained ties between Seoul and Tokyo and other challenges, the South Korea-U.S. alliance is “more resilient, deeper and broader than ever,” former U.S. ambassador to Korea Kathleen Stephens said. Concerns persist over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s drive for a “normal state” and ongoing attempts to undercut the country’s imperial past and previous apologies for wartime atrocit...

Korea-made online shooting game “Crossfire,” the very game behind its Chinese distributor Tencent’s stunning growth in recent years, is seeking to repeat its success story around the world. And the big push is led by the game’s development chief Jang Ina, who played a key role in its Chinese success. “Gaming trends change fast and there is some skepticism about the future of the 8-year-old ‘Cro...

Beneath its ultramodern facade, Korea is a country with all the trappings of shamanism and Confucianism, a new book says. In “Contemporary Korean Culture: the Persistence of Shamanistic and Confucian Values and Practices,” coauthors Kim Eun-gi and Choi Joon-sik seek to explain the social fabric and the mindset of Koreans through the lens of shamanism and Confucianism, examining the origins and m...

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is unlikely to make any apology for his country’s wartime atrocities in a much-anticipated speech to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in August, a Japanese expert said. Yoshihide Soeya, political science professor at Keio University, said that based on Abe’s personal belief that Tokyo’s past apologies were “excessive,” he may refuse to accep...

The U.S. may not need Japan’s consent to deploy its forces from Japan to the Korean Peninsula in case of a contingency, a Japanese scholar said, noting that Washington has never sought Tokyo’s agreement for a troop dispatch overseas. The issue emerged as another source of diplomatic friction after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last July that Washington is required to secure “Tokyo’s un...

Swedish director Carl Javer took home top honors at this year’s Green Film Festival in Seoul, held May 7-14, for his documentary “Freak Out.” “It’s an untold true story about how five young kids in their twenties grew up in the first consumer society,” Javer told The Korea Herald in a sit-down in Seoul on May 13. “Their reaction was to leave it, and to say they wanted something else. They revolt...

On the stage of the Blue Square Theater in Seoul’s Itaewon, Chung Sung-hwa exudes the certain aura of a martyr. Standing tall in the spotlight, the actor sings with a deep and rich voice about the lofty ideals of pan-Asian peace to which he is about to sacrifice his life. At least to those loudly applauding in the audience, Chung seems like the reincarnation of Ahn Jung-geun, a real-life Korean ...

On each desk are two copies of a text, one in Korean and the other in English. A handful of students ― some Korean, some international ― pore over each word, comparing and searching. A heated discussion ensues on the English translation of the Korean word “gap gap ha da,” as some favor “suffocating,” while others, “tedious.” A conclusion is difficult to reach, since the word could mean either of ...

Koreans take the fewest vacations in the world, according to a survey by Expedia, the world’s largest online travel company. They go on a vacation for about eight days a year, well below the world average of 20 days. The French take about 30 days of vacation. The company’s 2014 survey showed that this was mostly because of the negative perception of vacation by Korean bosses, and their tight wo...

With evolving business ties and increasingly similar strategic perspectives on world affairs, South Korea is one of the most important Asian partners for India, according to India’s ambassador to Seoul, Vikram Doraiswami. In an interview with The Korea Herald last week, the envoy noted that elevating India’s partnership with Korea was a crucial “prerequisite” to ensure the success of New Delhi’s...