The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Wednesday said that it has appointed pianist and professor Chang Hyoung-joon as the new president of the Seoul Arts Center. Starting Friday, Chang will lead the country’s top art complex for the next three years. Born in 1962, Chang received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. He has been teaching piano at Seoul National University since 1995. He has collaborated with world-reno

The nonverbal show “Nanta” is returning after two and a half painful years of hiatus, according to Song Seung-hwan, the creator of the long-running hit on Tuesday. “After 22 years of a great run, we surrendered to the impact of COVID-19. But we‘re coming back this summer,” Song, CEO & artistic director of PMC Production. “Nanta” will be back on stage in July in South Korea at the exclusive Nanta Theaters in Myeongdong in Seoul and Jeju. Song s

It's summer of 2022 and South Korea is finally emerging from two years of social distancing restrictions and the performing arts are coming back to life.  At a musical theater at Blue Square, the seventh revival of “Aida” is now running. Meanwhile, nine household names whose combined acting careers amount to more than 422 years are gearing up for a monthlong performance of “Hamlet,” a large theater play set to kick off July 13 at the National Theater of Korea.

  Mata Hari, a notorious spy during World War I, has long been portrayed as an irresistible femme fatale, double-crossing both Germany and the Allies at the height of World War I. 　 The idea of an exotic dancer with powerful men wrapped around her finger and audiences at her feet involved in espionage has inspired novels, movies and even a game. 　 In 2016, just one year short of the 100th anniversary of her death, EMK, a South Korean musical production company, unveiled a musical adap

A Korean Australian writer’s novel for young adults takes inspiration from an educator and independence activist who spent much of his life in exile in the early 1900s. The book, titled “The Young Resistance and Korean Language School,” gives us a look at Li Mirok -- a writer and educator who is perhaps known better in Germany, where he spent rest of his life since 1922. Li published several books in Germany, including the autobiographical novel “The Yalu Flows,”

  Associate director and choreographer of the musical “Aida” Tracey Corea and actor Jeon Na-young may be separated by a few decades in age, but their love for the Disney production bridges that gap. One takes the stage as Aida, the leading protagonist, while the other shines behind the scenes as the musical’s producer. Corea was part of the original team responsible for the birth of the musical when it first appeared on Broadway in 2000. Starting out as a choreographer in

Up-and-coming cellist Choi Ha-young has won the Queen Elisabeth Competition for the cello, becoming the first South Korean cellist to receive the top honor at one of the most demanding contests in the world. The 24-year-old cellist was announced as the winner of the competition at the awards ceremony in Brussels, Belgium, on Saturday after the final round of 12 contestants including three other South Korean cellists -- Mun Tae-guk, Yoon Sul and Jeong Woo-chan. The first prize came with a

The Seoul International Book Fair, the country‘s largest book event, kicks off Wednesday at Coex in southeastern Seoul. The annual book fair will run from Wednesday to Sunday, with a total of 196 companies including 18 foreign companies and 214 speakers expected to join the event. This year’s event takes place after two years of scaled-down editions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the theme of “One Small Step,” talks, exhibitions and events will take place to gauge

When the grand opening of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games unfolded, it wowed viewers with various spectacular scenes, including 1,217 drones in the air and hundreds of South Korean snowboarders in light-emitting jumpsuits who slid down the slopes with the drones flashing above them. There was also a controversial feature: Inmyeonjo, a mythological bird with a human face that often appears in ancient tomb murals of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Some viewers were disappointed when watching

Park Chang-woo, founder and CEO of multichannel networking firm Soon Ent, said businesses should not misunderstand TikTok and must grab opportunities the platform presents. Speaking at The Korea Herald’s Global Business Forum on Wednesday, Park emphasized that TikTok, a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is more than an alternative to video-streaming juggernaut YouTube. YouTube focuses on creating intellectual property, while TikTok is more like a soci

Violinist Yang In-mo became the first South Korean to win the top prize at the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition on Sunday, yet another crowning achievement for the Paganini competition winner. The top honor came with a cash prize of 30,000 euros ($32,000) and a loan of a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin made in 1772. In addition, the Sibelius family awarded Yang a prize of 2,000 euros for the best performance of Magnus Lindberg’s “Caprice.” “I’m

Hunminjeongeum is the original name for Hangeul, the Korean writing system invented by King Sejong the Great in 1443, as well as the name of the official document that explains the reason for the creation of Hangeul and its usage. Now, the National Chorus of Korea attempts to present one of the most important inventions on the Korean Peninsula as a stage show. On May 31, the choral group, Klim Chamber Orchestra and Andong City Chorus will stage the oratorio at Seoul Arts Center on Tuesday.

The 12th edition of Ballet Festival Korea will be held with 26 performances in June, the organizing committee said Tuesday, with Seoul Arts Center as the co-organizer. Under the theme of “Open Up the New Ordinary Days,” the festival will showcase old and new ballet productions by both established and emerging dancers from June 9-29. Some of the highlights include the opening performance, “Ahn Jung-geun, a Dance in the Heaven,” a 2015 production by M Ballet Company,

Gurzenich Orchester Koln will be performing in South Korea for the first time in five years, this time with violinist Clara-Jumi Kang as the soloist, according to production company Vincero. Led by conductor Francois-Xavier Roth who has helmed the orchestra since 2015, the 195-year-old orchestra will perform at Seoul Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. on July 8. Outside of Seoul, the team will bring the same program to Andong Culture and Arts Center in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province on July 7. Th

On Thursday and Friday, beloved violist Richard Yongjae O’Neill performed with his usual gusto for Korean audiences. Under the baton of music director and conductor Osmo Vanska, O’Neill and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra performed Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63. What made these concerts particularly significant was his rendition of Paul Chihara’s “Concerto for Viola and Orchestra: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hero.” The piece was uniq

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts & Culture Education Service announced that they will hold the 11th International Arts Education Week next week. Under the theme of “Culture and Arts Education in the Post-Coronavirus Era, Resilience to Transformation,” the one-week event will showcase various programs including a symposium and seminar on culture and arts education, a one-day class program, a UNESCO Expert Meeting on Culture and Arts Education and a pe

  Dan Disney, a professor at Sogang University, has received the N.S.W. Premier’s Award for Poetry for his latest poem collection “accelerations & inertias.” Disney, who has lived in South Korea for 12 years, was given the Kenneth Slessor Award, which comes with a cash prize of 30,000 Australian dollars ($21,000). Published in 2021 by Vagabond Press, the collection “dissects the psychogeography of information, knowledge and lived experience of place and tim

Ever since “Death Note,” a Japanese manga series was first introduced to the world in 2003, it has been adapted for various mediums, including animation, film and TV drama. The story of a teenage genius, Light, with superpowers that allow him to kill with a notebook, was released as a musical in Japan in 2015 and soon thereafter a Korean version featuring K-pop superstar Kim Junsu, a former member of boy band TVXQ, became a huge hit in Korea. For the show’s third local re

Bunhwangsa, a Korean Buddhist temple, will open in Bodh Gaya, India on Saturday with a delegation of 150 Korean Buddhists from the Jogye Order – South Korea’s largest Buddhist sect -- attending the opening ceremony. Bodh Gaya in northeastern India’s Bihar state is one of Buddhism’s four holiest sites. It is where Sakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree according to Buddhist texts. The project to build a Korean-style temple in Bodh Gaya was launched

The 19th edition of Music in PyeongChang is set to take place earlier and will be bigger than before, the festival’s artistic director Son Yeol-eum said Monday. The iconic music festival will be held for 22 days from July 2 to 23 at various places in Gangwon Province under the theme of “Mask.” “Because of the masks during the pandemic, we were able to stay connected during a time of disconnection,” Son said. In ancient Greece, masks were synonymous with perso