In 1961, the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the world’s leading museums of art and design, held Europe’s first Korean art exhibition. In 1992, the museum officially opened the first Korean gallery in London dedicated to the country’s arts and crafts. Beth McKillop, a senior research fellow at the V&A and its former deputy director and director of collections, orchestrated the opening of the first Korean gallery in London and the building of the Korean art collection. The V&A’s Korean Gallery

Three major national museums in Korea -- the National Museum of Korea, the National Folk Museum of Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea -- will open every day starting October, the Culture Ministry said Tuesday. Currently, the NMK and the MMCA close Mondays, while the NFMK closes Tuesdays. The MMCA is located near Gyeongbokgung in Seoul, a popular tourist site, while the NFK is located inside the palace. “Opening museums without holidays will offer more days for ci

GWANGJU – The Gwangju Biennale, now in its 11th year, seeks to depart from the typical showcase of large-scale avant-garde art, offering instead philosophical accounts of the society we live in and the future we will soon confront. Instead of wowing visitors with large-scale installations and flashy media works, the biennale this year presents art projects -- more than 250 artworks by 120 artists and teams from 37 countries are on display -- that invite viewers to stand in front of artworks and

What were the must-have fashion items in Korea more than a century ago? In the early 1900s, stylish people keen on fashion trends were dubbed “modern girls” and “modern boys,” with Western culture making inroads into Confucian society at the time. Women began to wear Western-style dresses instead of “hanbok,” or Korean traditional costume, and they would hold a parasol in one hand to cover their faces, effectively replacing the skirt-shaped headgear used to conceal their faces in the deeply Conf

A 27-year-old student won the top award at Herald Design Tech 2016, a design-meets-technology contest organized by Herald Corp., with a customized font design system that reflects the user’s preferences. Pyo Jun-hee, a visual communication design student at Gachon University won the competition with his interactive font system which allows users to easily change fonts by merely tilting an iPad screen. Pyo received a prize of 3 million won ($2,680). “When you tilt an iPad screen equipped with the

A yearlong celebration of Korean culture in France came to an end Tuesday with an awards ceremony in Paris that recognized more than 80 French and Korean cultural figures who took part in the cultural exchanges between the two countries. Korean Culture Minister Kim Jong-deok awarded a total of 88 cultural figures, including Didier Deschamps, head of the Chaillot National Theater.Korea organized more than 200 cultural events at 120 cultural institutions in some 60 cities throughout France from Se

Jeong Geum-hyung conducts CPR on a medical mannequin as if the male dummy were in an urgent life-or-death situation. Her body moves in the fast, yet steady, rhythm required for the life-saving action. The scene, however, invokes a rather erotic image to the audience, who watch the artist perform the action nude.“I don’t intend to cause voyeurism here, but it’s just how things turn out in my performance and that puts the audience in a voyeuristic situation,” said Jeong, winner of the 16th Hermes

YEONGCHEON, North Gyeongsang Province – Popular wines in Korea are mainly sourced from countries such as France, Italy and Spain, but recently, locally produced Korean wines have been carving out their own share of the market.Korean vineyards started to venture into winemaking in the late 1990s and benefited from an unprecedented wine boom driven by the hit Japanese wine-themed comic “The Drops of God” in the early 2000s.Vineyards on the island of Daebudo on the west coast jumped into winemaking

Gyeongbokgung is an open museum without relics. Buildings in the palace are missing the furniture, tableware, books, paintings and clothes that used to make it a living space. Instead, these are kept in underground storages at the palace site as the prized collections of the National Palace Museum of Korea. Some 45,000 royal artifacts are housed at the 18 museum underground collection vaults at two different locations within the palace grounds. The artifacts -- including old documents, books, pa

A video entitled “Shoes/243.0 MHz” shows shoes floating on the sea off Hokkaido, Japan -- shoes that belonged to passengers of Korean Air 007, which was struck down by a Soviet fighter jet in August 1983. It is among some 300 works that the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea has culled from its extensive collection to celebrate the Gwacheon Museum’s 30th anniversary. The somber scene in the video offers a fresh vantage point from which to look at the tragedy of the Cold War. I

The biennial congress of the International Federation of Photographic Art will be held in Korea from Aug. 22-28. The UNESCO-registered body of professional photographers, known as FIAP, an acronym of its French name, will bring together some 400 photographers from 87 member countries to network and showcase major photographs selected from each member country. “The 33th FIAP Congress unites photographers around the world to one place to celebrate photography. I hope the event highlights the impor

A variety show featuring single middle-aged stars shot up to No. 1 on a TV popularity chart early this month after revelations of that two of its stars were dating.For the week of Aug. 1-7, the SBS TV show “Burning Youth” scored 256.8 points on the Content Power Index (CPI) as two of its cast – comedian Kim Gook-jin and singer Kang Soo-ji – revealed that they had been dating in real life.The 51-year-old Kim and 49-year-old Kang have been called the “chihuahua couple” because of their large eyes

Seoul (AFP) -- When North Korean defector Choi Sung-Guk decided it was time to go public with his experiences, he avoided the well-trodden “harrowing memoir” route in favor of a cartoon strip. Drawing skills and some online space provided Choi with everything he needed to reach a young Korean-speaking audience that might otherwise have little attention to spare for a 36-year-old escapee from over the border.Choi, who spent eight years making cartoons at Pyongyang’s SEK animation studio, now post

Over 10,000 employees of a major Japanese funeral service company will visit South Korea between this fall and next spring, the state-run Korea Tourism Organization said Wednesday.The unprecedented group of Japanese visitors will arrive in Seoul and Busan in a period spanning six months starting from October, KTO said. The KTO and Busan Tourism Organization said they jointly attracted the largest number of travelers on the incentive tour program from Japan, with the first group scheduled to begi

Gyeongbokgung, the Joseon era’s main royal palace, will invite visitors to dine at its royal kitchen to experience Joseon kings’ daily meal and walk around the palace at night in September. The new Starlight Tour will run twice a day at 6:30 p.m. and 7:50 p.m. from Sept. 1-17, inviting up to 60 people per tour.The tour will start at the royal kitchen of Sojubang where participants will be served a royal box meal, which is based on the Joseon kings’ typical meal with 12 dishes, but presented in a

A young college student stranded in a rocky mountain on the outskirts of Seoul grabs a rope to go down a rugged cliff. His friend tries to stop him as the rope is not long enough, but he is too late and ends up looking at a length of rope swinging helplessly in a fierce wind. This introductory scene of the Korean comic series “Peak” might be made into a film as its provider Rolling Story signed a film production deal with a US entertainment agency in October last year. “Peak” revolves around fiv

Australian artist Emma Hack paints on a model’s body until it perfectly aligns with the intricate, colorful patterns of the wallpaper behind the model. In other work, she perfectly adjusts the contours of her models to match the detailed patterns of flowers and animals. The artist’s work -- captured in photographs -- have been exhibited in major cities around the world, including New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. She is holding her first solo exhibition in Korea at Savina Museum of Contemporary

Buying art isn’t as easy as buying books or movie tickets. Even if you fall in love with a piece of art at an exhibition, taking it home could turn out to be the priciest decision you ever make. Fearing shrinking art sales and the domination of the art market by super-rich collectors, the art world is coming up with ways to make art more accessible to a wider audience and to attract art lovers to experience buying artworks. The Affordable Art Fair Seoul, the Korean edition of the London-based gl

What started out as a hobby for Kim Seung-min in 2015 has grown into a YouTube channel with 1.6 million subscribers and total views of 1 billion for more than 600 videos. Kim’s channel Toy Monster focuses on children aged between 3 and 10. It introduces colorful toys and materials as well as how to play with them in videos that range from five to eight minutes. It ranks 21st on a list of top 30 most-viewed YouTube channels for kids’ education globally, according to Socialblade, a YouTube statist

A huge wooden table fills an entire exhibition hall at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, overwhelming visitors with its scale. A museum employee hands visitors a lump of clay and asks them to make a ball with it on the elliptical wooden table that has a diameter of 19 meters. “I don’t think I have made anything out of a lump of clay for many years. It used to be a familiar material when we were young,” said artist Kim Soo-ja at the press preview for her solo exhibition a