This year’s Uijeongbu International Music Theater Festival will feature world-renowned soprano Jo Sumi and K-pop couple Tiger JK and Yoon Mi-rae as PR ambassadors and participating artists. The annual festival held in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province, on Thursday named soprano Jo as honorary chairwoman and hip-hop musicians Tiger JK and Yoon as PR ambassadors. The artists will also hold concerts in...

Some of the artwork the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation confiscated from suspended savings banks in Korea was auctioned in Hong Kong, but at nearly half the price the banks claimed to have paid for them. Seoul Auction on Tuesday put 10 of the 91 works seized from Busan Savings Bank, Samhwa Mutual Savings Bank and Domin Mutual Savings & Finance, on the block at an auction held at the Grand Hy...

“The reason I use materials close to nature is because they are familiar to people. Of course, there are many other prettier and shinier materials than nails but they were so closely used by human beings forever that they almost became nature,” Lee told the press last week. He said that he tries to maximize the original feeling of the materials, twisting them only a little. Hanging weighty stone...

Kim Yun-cheol, head of Korea National University of Arts’ School of Drama, has been reelected as the president of the International Association of Theatre Critics for the third time. The decision was made Friday at the IATC regular general meeting in Warszawa, Poland. Kim was the first Asian ever to be elected to head IATC in 2008. Each term lasts two years. Kim studied English education at Seo...

Prestigious U.K. publishers and Korea’s Culture Ministry publish English-language books on Korean art English-language books shedding new light on South Korean art and artists are pouring out from in and outside of the country, to the delight of non-Korean speaking art aficionados. U.K. publishing company Prestel released the 192-page hardcover book “Korean Contemporary Art” on March 19. “Conf...

Theater “Mokran Unni”: Doosan Art Center is showcasing a play delving into the lives of North Korean defectors living in Seoul. Titled “Mokran Unni,” the play tells the fictional story of a young woman named Mok-ran, who used to be an elite musician in Pyongyang. Unlike what many South Koreans think, Mok-ran does not flee her home country because of poverty or famine. She misses her mother and N...

Three young Korean musicians will participate in a piano competition in New York. Ahn Jee-hae, Hong Sa-hun and Chang Hye-won will compete at the sixth New York International Piano Competition, which will be held from June 18-22 in Manhattan. Ahn, who started piano studies at age 3, was the youngest pianist to perform in the Fourth Chopin International Competition in Moscow in 2004. She is a rec...

Korea plans to apply for UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” designation for a vast amount of documents related to the “New Community (Saemaul) Movement,” the political initiative launched by the late President Park Chung-hee to modernize Korea’s rural economy, according to the Cultural Heritage Administration. The state institution, which has been working on the application since last year, is submi...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) ― Greek police recovered an ancient statue that was illegally excavated and hidden in a goat pen near Athens, and arrested the goat herder and another man who were allegedly trying to sell the work for 500,000 euro ($667,000). The marble statue of a young woman dates to about B.C. 520 and belongs to the kore type, a police statement said Wednesday. Police photos showed the 1....

DALLAS (AP) ― Among the items U.S. soldiers seized from Adolf Hitler’s Bavarian Alps hideaway in the closing days of World War II were albums meticulously documenting an often forgotten Nazi crime ― the massive pillaging of artwork and other cultural items as German troops marched through Europe. Two of those albums ― one filled with photographs of works of art, the other with snapshots of furni...

Another interesting item is the copy of a record by American jazz musician Oscar Pettiford, titled “Ah Dee Dong Blues.” The jazz double bassist and composer visited Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953) to perform for the American soldiers. He is said to have listened to the melody of “Arirang” while he was in the bathroom, as someone outside was whistling the song. He wrote down the notes of ...