Famed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is currently in the international spotlight for his recently released novel “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.” But Seoul’s Daehangno, the local hot spot for plays, is instead buzzing about his 2002 fantasy novel, “Kafka on the Shore.”The novel, famous for its literary blend of magical realism and a suspenseful plot, is currently being performed as a play for the first time in Korea.A production by American director Frank Galati, the show

Celebrated author Hwang Sok-yong said he wants his best-selling novel “Yeowoolmoolsori” off the shelves after a TV program accused his publishing house, Jaeum & Moeum, of hoarding copies of the novel. Jaeum & Moeum CEO Kang Byung-cheol has offered to resign from his position. According to news reports, author Hwang said he was shocked and outraged to find out about the alleged hoarding and wants to cancel his deal with Jaeum & Moeum. “I wrote the novel ‘Yeowoolmoolsori’ to celebrate the 50th ann

Working together with his son for a sci-fi movie was a “difficult mental, emotional and spiritual shift” for him, said Hollywood actor and rapper Will Smith in Seoul on Tuesday.“My most important job was parenting,” said Smith, who visited Seoul with his teenage son, Jaden Smith, to promote their sci-fi thriller “After Earth” ― in which they co-starred as father and son. “But sometimes parenting conflicts rather aggressively with producing. The greatest challenge for me was overcoming the warrio

Jeong Jae-young and Han Ji-min have been cast as leads for an upcoming romantic comedy, the film’s distributor Lotte Entertainment said. According to Lotte, the movie, titled “Plan Man,” is a story of opposites of contrasting qualities. Actor Jeong is playing a man named Jeong-seok, a borderline mysophobic who also gets extremely anxious when things don’t go as he planned. His love interest, So-jeong, will be played by Han. Her character is everything the opposite of Jeong-seok; she is spontaneo

Top baseball players will have cameo roles in director Kim Yong-hwa’s upcoming flick “Mr. Go,” about a gorilla that plays baseball, the film’s producer Showbox/Mediaplex said. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin and Cincinnati Reds outfielder Choo Shin-soo make brief appearances in a baseball game scene in the movie about a young Chinese girl named Weiwei who moves to Korea with her gorilla after her grandfather ― the only family she had ― passes away.Weiwei’s late grandfather owned a circ

You might think that putting the NPR News quiz show “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!” on the big screen, in movie theaters all over the country the night of May 2, would just be a way of celebrating its 15 years on the air, of paying tribute almost of the very day in May 1998 that playwright-screenwriter Peter Sagal took over and made the program a hit.And you’d be right. Almost. Sagal says it’s all about lowering the bar.“It’s very hard to fight that image of perfection that radio creates for us,”

Writer Frank X Walker is driving to Alabama with a trunk full of books.The eight-hour trip is not out of the ordinary for Walker, who is promoting his latest collection of poems, “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers” (University of Georgia Press, $16.95).Another job that will take him on the road starts this week: He is being installed as the 2013-14 Kentucky poet laureate, the first black writer and the youngest person to hold the post, in a ceremony as part of Kentucky Writers’ Day o

NEW YORK (AP) ― The defense attorney in John Grisham’s first novel, “A Time to Kill,” is returning to the courtroom.Grisham’s new book, “Sycamore Row,” will be published Oct. 22, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group announced Wednesday. Like “A Time to Kill,” it will feature Jake Brigance as a lawyer in a small Mississippi town. Knopf Doubleday promises a trademark Grisham tale of “intrigue, suspense and plot twists.”“A Time to Kill” was published in 1989 and sold modestly. But after “The Firm”

NEW YORK (AP) ― Mitch Albom, one of the most popular U.S. authors, has a new publisher and a new novel coming this year.The author of “Tuesdays With Morrie” has a three-book deal with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Albom’s previous publisher was the Disney-owned Hyperion.Harper told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Albom’s next book is called “The First Phone Call from Heaven.” The novel will tell of a small town where residents start receiving phone calls from those in th

Have you ever seen a juggler on a moving sidewalk? Ben Greenman, whose latest novel, “The Slippage,” was published Tuesday, ponders this and other wonders of life.A novelist, short-story writer, humorist and magazine editor, Greenman has observed, proverbially speaking, all sorts of jugglers in all sorts of circumstances. The results of his observations earn him the on-spot tagline “a poet of romantic angst in contemporary American life.”“I want to run out onto the balcony of my apartment and ye

The Humanity ProjectBy Jean Thompson (Blue Rider Press)My friend Beth says that we are all “dented cereal boxes.” Even the best among us occasionally think dark thoughts, make bad decisions, hurt the people we love and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. With godlike power, Jean Thompson, author of “The Humanity Project,” throws her dented (and entirely recognizable) characters into the crucible of the American recession to reveal what it means to be human: flawed, and yet somehow worth

The 2013 International Modern Dance Festival, one of the oldest modern-dance festivals in Korea, unveiled its lineup for the upcoming edition scheduled for later this month.Under the theme “Dance and Life,” a total of 18 works, both from home and abroad, are to be featured during this year’s festival. Among them, five are from overseas, including the festival’s highly anticipated opener “Babel.”A work by renowned Belgian choreographers Damien Jelet and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, “Babel” is based on t

Ballerina Fang Meng-ying arrived in Seoul from China at the age of 17, all by herself, not knowing many people in the foreign city. Leaving the Beijing Capital International Airport, she avoided looking into her parents’ eyes, knowing she’d burst into tears if she did.“I think that’s one of the reasons why I can really relate to Shim Chung, especially when she agonizes as she decides to leave her blind father,” said Fang in an interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday. The 23-year-old is ahead

Actress Gong Hyo-jin is making her TV comeback in SBS’ upcoming horror drama, according to her agency Management Soop. In the show, titled “Master’s Sun,” Gong is to star as a secretary who begins to see ghosts after getting into a mysterious accident. So Ji-sub is has been cast to play her counterpart, a self-absorbed, money-driven businessman.  It has been two years since Gong last acted on TV, in MBC’s 2011 rom-com “The Greatest Love.” She enjoyed much popularity for her role as an aspiring c

Three Korean music professors performed for International Jazz Day, an annual event organized by UNESCO to celebrate “the virtues of jazz as a force for peace, unity and an educational tool.” UNESCO proclaimed April 30 as International Jazz Day at its general conference in 2011. Kwangshin University professors Chae Hee-ho (drum), Jeon Ji-yeon (piano) and Choi Se-yul (contrabass), who specialize in applied music, performed for the event at Gwangju Culture and Art Center in Gwangju on April 22. Th

“Boomerang Family” is, as its title suggests, a story of a modern Korean family and its struggling members “returning” to their caring mother. “Failan” (2001) and “Maundy Thursday” (2006) director Song Hae-sung has adapted author Cheon Myeong-gwan’s novel to create a work that’s an entertaining mixture of comedy and engaging, heart-felt family drama.The film opens with a rather grim, violent scene, in which In-mo (played by Park Hae-il), a penniless filmmaker, is beating up a man who seems to ha

Toronto Korean Film Festival is accepting submissions for its competition section.All submissions should be less than 15 minutes long, include a Korea-related theme, and be created by Korean-Canadians or Koreans living in Canada. The submission deadline is May 10. The selected films will be screened at the festival scheduled to be held in June in Toronto. Celebrating its second edition this year, the upcoming event’s theme is “Ups and Downs of Korean Peninsula.” Korea’s contemporary feature film

Meet Celine and Jesse again, this time in Greece.After its very successful world premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January, the follow-up to the famous “Before Sunrise” (1995) and “Before Sunset” (2004) is finally arriving in theaters in Korea next month. Its well-loved protagonists ― Celine and Jesse, again played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke ― are now on a vacation in Greece, talking about all kinds of things including aging, kids and careers.Like its predecessors, the film, titled “Befo

The cinema’s leading purveyor of Southern Gothic, Jeff Nichols, hands Matthew McConaughey his latest tour de force turn in “Mud,” a down and dirty if entirely-too-long mythic melodrama in the “Tobacco Road” tradition.Nichols (“Shotgun Stories,” “Take Shelter”) has cooked up an exotic stew that includes obsessive love, a woman unworthy of it, a criminal on the run and a Huck Finn coming of age tale set against a dying way of life in backwaters Arkansas.Ellis (Tye Sheridan, terrific) is a poor kid

Asking Kevin Starr a question is like turning on a fire hose. First there’s a blast of erudition. Then, as his intellect gathers, information rushes out in a deluge. He’s talking, but it’s as if an invisible scholar inside his head is yanking books off shelves, throwing them open, checking the index, then racing off to find the next volume. On the outside, Starr is an avuncular 72-year-old, but his brain is sprinting like an Olympian.Amazingly, it’s possible to keep up.This may be Starr’s greate