“Snowpiercer,” the highly anticipated English-language film debut of director Bong Joon-ho, will hit local cinemas on Aug. 1, its Korean distributor CJ E&M said Wednesday. The opening will be the world premiere of the film starring international stars such as Tilda Swinton, Chris Evans, Ed Harris, Jamie Bell and Korean actor Song Kang-ho.The film will later be distributed by Weinstein Company and other distributors in the U.S., France, Japan, Russia and elsewhere. “Snowpiercer,” based on French

June 13, 2013

June 11, 2013

SAN SALVADOR (AFP) ― Salvadoran construction workers building a housing complex unearthed Mayan pots, ceramic fragments and other artifacts, an official said.The find was made in Colon, 25 kilometers west of San Salvador.Specialists alerted to the site also found pieces of obsidian and part of a human skeleton which may also be from the Mayan period.A technician from the Culture Ministry, Julio Alvarado, said the area where the find was made is one the Central American’s country’s richest from a

June 11, 2013

A 16th-century war diary kept by famous Korean naval hero Yi Sun-sin is highly likely to be added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, officials said Monday.The war diary, called “Nanjung Ilgi,” has recently received a preliminary recommendation for addition to the list by the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the UNESCO Memory of the World, Cultural Heritage Administration said.The move further increased the journal’s chances of getting a final recommendation from the committee dur

June 10, 2013

Theater“La Dame au Violoncelle”: TV actress Lee Jae-eun, who started her career as a child actress, is making a comeback with a play written by French playwright Guy Foissy. Titled “La Dame au Violoncelle (The Lady of the Cello),” the drama tells the story of an unhappy, depressed woman who is accused of murdering her husband. It is said to be a story of “the quest for happiness.” The play runs from June 5-30 at You-Theater in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul. Tickets range from 20,000 won to 30,0

June 7, 2013

MARSEILLE, France (AP) ― A new flagship museum dedicated to Mediterranean civilization in Marseille is hoping to shake off the southern metropolis’ reputation as France’s deadliest city with a drastic cultural makeover.The Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, which was inaugurated by French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday, is the centerpiece of Marseille’s turn as the European Capital of Culture for 2013, which aims to attract 10 million visitors to the city this year. Offi

June 6, 2013

Video artist Nam June Paik’s video installation work “Faust 8 Channel-Arts” (1991) is among the pieces by prominent Korean artists that will be put on the block this month by K-Auction, an auction company specializing in art.With an estimated price range of 480 million won-800 million won, “Faust 8 Channel-Arts” is the eighth in Paik’s 13-piece series “My Faust.” The series addresses 13 different topics of public concern, such as environmental, agricultural and educational issues.Paik was best k

June 5, 2013

Classical music lovers will be able to witness the chemistry between the 95-year-old Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and its 37-year-old music director Yannick Nzt-Sguin at the Seongnam Arts Center in Gyeonggi Province on Sunday. For the orchestra’s third concert in Korea and the first since Nzt-Sguin assumed his post, the Canadian conductor and the orchestra will perform a wide-ranging repertoire, from Dutch contemporary to classical Russian music.  Dubbed the Dutch cultural ambassador alongsi

June 3, 2013

The King Sejong Institute Foundation, a state-funded Korean language teaching institute, has released a series of government-standardized Korean language textbooks for non-Korean speakers. The “Sejong Korean” volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 were first developed to be used at the 90 King Sejong Institutes in 40 countries around the world. The textbook is based on a standard Korean language education model developed by the National Institute of the Korean Language. The foundation is planning to release “Sej

June 3, 2013

Korea has been rather unfamiliar with German composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883) except for a few excerpts from works such as the “Wedding March” from “Tannhauser.” Some of his operas have never been staged here and his works have been cherished by only a rather small group of fans who proudly call themselves Wagnerian. In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, an international movement focusing on and promoting Wagner has landed in Korea. From looking inside the persona

June 2, 2013

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ― A new exhibit created by a University of Pennsylvania professor and host of a popular public television show examines how wartime propaganda has been used to motivate oppressed populations to risk their lives for homelands that considered them second-class citizens.“Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of the War Poster,” opens Sunday and continues until March 2 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Lectures, film screenings and other progra

June 2, 2013

LONDON (AP) ― It’s the collection that “Cats” built.A multimillion-dollar trove of works by artists including J.M.W. Turner, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Winston Churchill that were owned by poet T.S. Eliot’s widow will be sold in London later this year, Christie’s auction house announced Friday.Valerie Eliot, who died in November aged 86, bought the artworks with royalties from the hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats,” which was based on her husband’s volume of light verse “Old Possum’s Bo

June 2, 2013

Theater“La Dame au Violoncelle”: TV actress Lee Jae-eun, who started her career as a child actress, is making a comeback with a play written by French playwright Guy Foissy. Titled “La Dame au Violoncelle (The Lady of the Cello),” the drama tells the story of an unhappy, depressed woman who is accused of murdering her husband. It is said to be a story of “the quest for happiness.” The play runs from June 5-30 at You-Theater in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul. Tickets range from 20,000 won to 30,0

May 31, 2013

ROME (AFP) ― The world’s oldest complete Torah scroll has been found in a university archive in Bologna, according to an Italian professor who said the text could be from the 12th century.The precious lambskin scroll had been classified by the university library as being from the 17th century and was named simply “Scroll Number Two.”But Hebrew Studies professor Mauro Perani told AFP on Wednesday he noticed that the text did not conform to key changes in Torah writing brought about starting from

May 30, 2013

Just when the Wild Wild West of online world seemed to have been somewhat tamed with the regulation of Webhard and peer-to-peer services, yet another type of file-sharing service has emerged as a major headache for the content industry. Armed with anonymity and state-of-the-art technologies, the mushrooming torrent file-sharing service is dealing a huge blow to the local content industry, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Thursday. According to a team of special investigators with

May 30, 2013

Pianist Paik Kun-woo should be credited for breaking the prejudice that classical music is the domain of Western musicians.Long before Kim Sun-wook, Son Yeol-eum, Cho Seong-jin and others swept international competitions and recorded internationally acclaimed albums, Paik proved that Asians, could be just as capable of delivering the universal sentiment of Beethoven, Liszt and others. Moreover, he paved the way for fellow Koreans to perform at top-notch concert halls by selling out concerts. Hav

May 28, 2013