Carrying a pack of Dunhills and pink lip gloss, actress, producer and publisher Yoon Suk-hwa steps into her Seoul office. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asks, her voice and gesture almost theatrical. The iconic stage actress, who just launched the first European edition of her monthly performing arts magazine, Gaeksuk, has been living in London for the last few years. She is the first Korean to break into the West End, co-producing “Top Hat,” “Wonderful Town” and “Journey’s End.” She does not hid

Celebrated Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto is writing a serial romance novel inspired by popular Korean actor and singer Lee Seung-gi, Lee’s local agency announced on Monday.The author, who has a large fan base in Korea for her previous works such as “Kitchen” and “Amrita,” has started writing the serial novel in six installments, featuring Lee as its protagonist. The novel will be published in Anan, a Japanese beauty and fashion magazine. The first installment will be published in its April 10

Famed novelist Lee Oi-soo has been sued by a woman in her 50s for not paying child support for their illegitimate son born in 1987.The woman, whose last name is Oh, allegedly filed a lawsuit against the popular author in February, demanding payment of some 200 million won in unpaid child support. She also demanded the 67-year-old author legally register their child as his son. The child, who is currently a college student, has been using his mother’s family name.  Lee married his wife, Jeon Youn

Korean author Ha Il-ji’s 2009 novel “The Republic of Uzupis” has been selected as one of the 12 best translated books of 2012 by Lithuania’s government-affiliated literary organization. A tale about a middle-aged man who wanders in search of an imaginary country, the novel was translated into Lithuanian by Korean translator Seo Jeon-seok with the support of Literature Translation Institute of Korea and published in Lithuania in 2012. “Filled with humor and mystique, the novel tells the story of

Max Irons and Jake Abel are chasing each other up and down a hallway at the Ritz-Carlton while Stephenie Meyer looks on with a maternal smile.They’re blowing off steam after a solid block of media appearances to promote their new film, “The Host,” an adaptation of Meyer’s 2008 best-seller. The film, Meyer’s follow-up to the blockbuster “Twilight series,” opens Friday.The actors ― either of whom could give Robert Pattinson a run for his money as a movie heartthrob ― form two sides of a very pecul

Aleksandar Hemon landed in the United States two decades ago, January 1992. He was 27, a young Bosnian journalist from Sarajevo arriving on a one-month visa, arranged through a cultural exchange program sponsored by the State Department. Just after he arrived, war broke out in Yugoslavia. Hemon was stranded. In the years since, as he settled into this country and became an acclaimed writer ― one of Chicago’s finest contemporary writers and arguably its most important literary talent since Saul B

As if directing fashion brands KUHO and LEBEIGE wasn’t enough, it seems Jung Kuho can’t get enough of dance. After the Korean National Ballet’s “Poise” last year, in which he participated as the stage art director and costume designer, Jung is ahead of his second dance show ― this time with the National Dance Company of Korea.The state-run traditional dance troupe was founded in 1962 with the aim of creating and performing new dances based solely on Korea’s traditional dance. The upcoming show,

Long before Jung Woo-sung and Gao Yuanyuan’s romance “A Good Rain Knows” (2009), there was Kim Jin-kyu and Lucilla Yu Ming’s “Love with an Alien” (1957).The first Korea-Hong Kong joint production film has been rediscovered and its digitized version will be screened for the first time in Seoul next month. Co-directed by Korean director Jeon Chang-geun and Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-based director Tu Gwang-qi, “Love with an Alien” is also the oldest surviving color feature film archived in Korea. Th

Tucked away off the streets of Anguk-dong sits a beautiful hanok, a traditional Korean house, filled with fresh flowers of many different shades. Among the pretty bouquets are pink tulip Dreaming Maids, purple sweet peas, violet roses, white cherry blossoms and mauve scabiosas. Spring certainly has arrived at florist Lee Joo-hee’s atelier Iena, opened three years ago. Unlike most flower shops in Seoul, Iena does not have a floral fridge. They are displayed rather naturally in one of the rooms of

Kim Fowley came out of a Hollywood that doesn’t exist anymore, the Hollywood of Kenneth Anger and Ed Wood. Best known for cooking up the Runaways, he began working in the music business in the late 1950s and since then has turned up in more places than Woody Allen’s Zelig, producing for Gene Vincent, writing with Warren Zevon and introducing John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band when they played Toronto in 1969.Fowley is now 73 and reportedly has been fighting bladder cancer, so it’s no surprise

Standing in Another Man’s GraveBy Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)Welcome back to the Lothian & Borders Police force, John Rebus.On second thought, hold on a moment. You’re actually not so welcome back after all, you crusty, IPA-quaffing, single malt-drinking, doggedly old-school investigative iconoclast. At least not to your Scottish colleagues in the Edinburgh cop shop, who don’t approve of your rule-breaking, not-familiar-with-the-Internet, consorting-with-known-criminals ways.Those bureaucratic ty

The starting point for Marisa Silver’s new novel, “Mary Coin,” was a moment of genius that unfolded on a California roadside more than 70 years ago.Just outside the coastal valley town of Nipomo in 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange spotted a migrant farmworker family sitting in a tent off U.S. Highway 101. After a few minutes of conversation, Lange snapped six shots of a mother and her children. The sixth became the defining American photograph of the Great Depression.Silver, a writer with a sha

Local choreographer Hong Sung-yup is widely nicknamed “the dancer of literature.”The director of Korea National Contemporary Dance Company has been praised for his ability to translate works of literature into contemporary dances. Some of the state-run troupe’s repertoires include “Ah Q,” based on Lu Xin’s 1921 novella “The True Story of Ah Q,” and “The Blood in Horses’ Eyes,” an adaptation of playwright Peter Shaffer’s “Equus.” Hong’s latest output was “Rashomon,” which is based on Japanese wri

Filmmaker Lee Chang-dong has been appointed as the dean of this year’s Asian Film Academy, organizers of Busan International Film Festival said.An intensive film education program organized by BIFF, the Asian Film Academy offers its students a chance to participate in short film productions and attend workshops as well as mentoring sessions. Lee is the second Korean filmmaker to serve as AFA’s dean, after director Im Kwon-taek. Former AFA deans include Hou Hsiao Hsien, Jia Zhangke, Mohsen Makhma

A local scholar on Sunday claimed he has discovered what he believes to be the oldest painting in Korea.Lee Dong-cheon, a guest researcher at the Museum of Liaoning Province in China, said he recently found a painting which he believes dates back to 14th century Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392). “It seems like this piece of work is an imitation of the famous 12th century painting ‘Dokhwarosado,’” the scholar was quoted as saying in news reports. “It looks like the painting was created circa 1350.” The

One cannot be sure why film director Roh Deok calls this young couple “very ordinary,” but it is the “ordinary” post-break-up behavior that is on her mind ― or at least in her feature debut: The two get into a physical fight while drinking with their coworkers, obsessively check each other’s Facebook accounts, secretly follow their ex on their dates, and swear at each other in public.The film, “Very Ordinary Couple,” seems to be arguing that this is what most of us, the “ordinary,” go through af

Abigail Breslin burst onto the scene in 2006, playing Olive, the youngest member of a dysfunctional clan in the quirky film “Little Miss Sunshine.” Despite sweatbands and nerdy glasses, Olive was obsessed with beauty pageants and led her family on a cross-country road trip to a pageant where she’d perform the choicest dance numbers.Breslin, who earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for that role, turns 17 next month and stars in another road trip movie of sorts ― though

Local film weekly Movieweek is going out of business this month, leaving Cine21 as the last Korean movie weekly standing.The magazine announced the news through their official Twitter account on March 12. “Our upcoming 571st edition, which will be out on March 22, will be our last issue,” the weekly said via Twitter.The film magazine was founded in 2001, and has been considered one of the two most influential movie weeklies for the last 12 years, along with Cine21. From the late 1990s to the ear

Just a few months ago, Eloise Klein Healy was chosen as L.A.’s first poet laureate. Now a new anthology of Healy’s work offers ample proof, if any were needed, what an inspired choice she was.“A Wild Surmise” is a vivid record of one woman’s artistic and emotional quest, a journey that unfolds, for the most part, in the streets, gardens and homes of Los Angeles. The City of Angels appears again and again in the work of Healy, a native of El Paso who grew up in Iowa but who has made Los Angeles h

The staircase is narrow and creaky, with a bookshelf made from a 100-year-old harp case teetering on the precipice of collapse at the top of the landing. Overflowing with open books, pages wildly askew and dangling from uneven shelves, the bookcase looks as if it’s escaped from a vintage cartoon.Rolls of yellowed, turn-of-the-century sheet music waft through the air, unfurling from a manual typewriter suspended from the ceiling.A black-clad young woman, with a prominent pierced dimple and a phil