Most of us have something in our past that we would rather keep buried. In an age when a years-old accusation on social media can pop up out of nowhere and get you canceled overnight, the worst-case scenario isn’t hard to picture: all of those secrets coming out at the worst possible time, say, in the last round of interviews for your dream job. Based on a novel by Akinari Asakura, “Final Interview” builds a closed-room mystery thriller around that nightmare scenario. Six college graduates make

It is not common for an actor to serve as a touchstone for his country through decades of change. Choi Bul-am was one of the few who did. From the days of black-and-white broadcasts to the streaming era, Choi, who died Thursday at 87, played tough men with soft hearts in whom South Korean viewers saw themselves and their own fathers. His unhurried way of talking and head-thrown-back laugh were so well known across the country that they made for a running gag in their own right. Choi started out

“Heart of the Beast” (US) Opened Oct. 28 Thriller/Adventure Directed by David Ayer A retired soldier (Brad Pitt) and his dog try to survive in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash. “Ugly Duckling Ms. Maeng” (South Korea) Opened Oct. 28 Comedy Directed by Lee Yong-jae A teacher at a rural school (Lee Sun-bin) is mistakenly selected to help write Korea’s competitive college entrance exam. “Paradise Lost” (South Korea) Opened Oct. 21 Thriller Directed by Yeon Sang-ho When a boy who went missi

A showcase of Korean traditional art and music took place in Pietrasanta, a town in Italy's Tuscany region known for its marble studios and galleries. Now in its second year, the 2026 K-Art & Culture Festival was organized by Kim Kyung-su and Seok Tae-jin of Gallery Ilbaekheon and Geulssi21. Local partner Marble Studio Stagetti hosted the event, which ran Oct. 5 to 16, with support from the town government. The program centered on Korea's traditional art forms: calligraphy, the folk painting kno

Na Hong-jin's creature feature "Hope" picked up 10 nominations to lead the field in the 47th Blue Dragon Film Awards as Lee Chang-dong's Netflix-backed "Possible Love" followed close behind with eight, according to the list of nominees released Wednesday. The “Wailing” director’s sci-fi epic, which premiered at Cannes in May, is said to be the most expensive Korean film ever made. At this year's Blue Dragons, the film is up for best picture and best director, along with acting noms for Zo In-sun

Jeon Do-yeon’s awards season seems to be off to a strong start. The veteran Korean actor earned a nomination for outstanding lead performance at the Gotham Awards on Wednesday, one of three nods for Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love.” The Netflix-backed film made the cut for best international feature and best original screenplay, which Lee shares with co-writer Oh Jung-mi. Jeon is the only Korean performer nominated in this year’s acting races. The lead performance category, which does not separa

A specter haunts Deborah Turbeville’s photographs — the specter of a glamour in decay. Grainy and washed out in dusky grays, her pictures look like they came straight out of a dead stranger’s photo album, rather than the glossy magazines they were made for. The models are her ghosts: wan, remote figures who gaze past the camera and seem out of place wherever they stand. Ghosts, by nature, belong nowhere in particular, which is to say they could just as easily be anywhere. The rooms they haunt mi

South Korea's art auction market lost more ground in the third quarter as sales fell despite a larger number of works on offer, according to a report released Thursday by the Seoul-based Korea Art Authentication and Appraisal Research Center. Combined sales at the country's seven major auction houses totaled 27.97 billion won ($21.1 million) from July through September. That was down 10.8 percent from 31.36 billion won a year earlier, according to the report. More works went up for sale but fewe

“Paradise Lost” (South Korea) Opened Oct. 21 Thriller Directed by Yeon Sang-ho When a boy who went missing years ago (Bae Hyun-sung) returns home, the mother (Kim Hyun-joo) begins to suspect something is off. “Clayface” (US) Opened Oct. 21 Horror/Thriller Directed by James Watkins A disfigured actor (Tom Rhys Harries) signs up for an experimental treatment that turns his body into living clay. Based on the DC Comics character. “Still Shining” (South Korea) Opened Oct. 21 Drama Directed by Song I

Blockchain could let money move as easily as email, but Korea still has legal groundwork to lay before stablecoins and tokenized securities go mainstream, experts said Wednesday. The experts shared their views at a forum on the future of digital payments, hosted by Herald Media Group at the Ambassador Seoul Pullman hotel in central Seoul as part of its Global Business Forum. Japanese Ambassador to Korea Koichi Mizushima opened the evening by recognizing the warming ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

Twice’s Dahyun will play the female lead in an upcoming high school romance, distributor Takeone Company said Wednesday. “Gureumi Gureumi” (an English title has not been announced) follows two high school students as they fall in love for the first time. Dahyun plays Gu-reum, a girl paralyzed from the waist down who has spent her whole life in a wheelchair. Co-star Cha Woo-min plays a promising swimmer who grows close to her during volunteer work. Choi Sun-min, who co-directed the JTBC series “K

For weeks, Kim Hyun-ah had been refreshing the booking page, waiting for a good seat to open up. The 30-year-old Seoul resident had been hoping since summer to catch Christopher Nolan’s box office sensation “The Odyssey” at CGV Yongsan, the flagship of Korea’s largest multiplex chain and home to Asia’s biggest Imax screen. Korea has no theater that can show the film in 70mm Imax format as the director intended. The Imax screen at Yongsan offers the closest thing to the original presentation, as

“Along With the Gods,” the fantasy series about the dead standing trial in the afterlife, is getting a third film, the production team announced Tuesday. The new installment, tentatively titled "Along With the Gods: Life and Death," is in preproduction, with shooting slated for the second half of 2027. According to the logline, the movie follows Sol, a woman caught between life and death who journeys across nine worlds in search of what she left behind. Casting has not been announced. It remains

Some art is ahead of its time, until it suddenly isn’t. Once the world catches up, what once felt radical and outlandish can seem obvious to the point of banality. It is a strange sort of vindication that ultimately awaits every visionary, a perverse tribute time pays to imagination. The restless oeuvre of Lynn Hershman Leeson might be a case in point. Ever since she came to the Bay Area as a young painter in the early 1960s, the American new media artist has used each new technology to explore

Even as the terminally online keep raging over a political thriller about a first lady's assassination, the normies have moved on to something far less divisive and a lot more wholesome: a movie about a timid, hamster-like creature that is quick to burst into tears. "Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island" led the box office again over the weekend with 321,042 tickets sold, according to the Korean Film Council. Over those two days, it drew nearly three times as many viewers as runn