Yoo Ah-in is making a comeback

Yoo Ah-in, the South Korean actor whose career was derailed by a drug conviction, is returning to the big screen with the upcoming supernatural thriller "Vampir" (working title), distributor NEW said Tuesday. The announcement, which came with photos from a table read that includes the actor, confirms Yoo's first new project since his legal troubles began in 2023. The 39-year-old actor stepped away from public life after allegations that he had habitually used propofol, a controlled anesthetic, a

2026-08-18 13:30:31:00

Park Soo-keun's 'Tree and Woman' heads to auction with up to W800m estimate

A painting from Park Soo-keun's "Tree and Woman" series, one of the most recognizable motifs in modern Korean art, will headline K Auction's August sale in Seoul, the auction house said Friday. The 1950s canvas carries an estimate of 400 million to 800 million won ($283,000-$566,000) and leads a 102-lot sale valued at roughly 6.5 billion won, set for Aug. 26 at the company's headquarters in Gangnam, southern Seoul. The work on offer comes from the collection of Margaret Miller, an American who c

2026-08-17 17:06:56:00

Hong Sang-soo just won big at Locarno. He's been winning for 30 years now

Hong Sang-soo has spent the past three decades making films entirely on his own terms. The prizes just keep rolling in. On Saturday, the arthouse mainstay won the prize for best direction at the Locarno Film Festival for "Nowhere to Lay My Eyes," his 35th feature. Kim Min-hee, his longtime partner and frequent lead, shared the best performance prize with Italian actor Monica Bellucci. It was Hong's fifth invitation to the Swiss festival, where he won best director for "Our Sunhi" (2013) and the

2026-08-17 14:40:37:00

Georg Baselitz's unplanned farewell

Visitors expecting Georg Baselitz's famous upside-down figures at his first Korean museum retrospective are greeted instead by a picture of cattle, hung front and center right upon entering the galleries. In it, two cows stand in a green pasture. A clean horizontal cut runs through the canvas, and the halves sit out of register, so that muzzles and shoulders no longer align. The picture hangs right side up, yet it manages to unsettle all the same. "Two Cows Divided I" (1966), the oldest work in

2026-08-15 16:00:00:00

Movies in theaters this week

"Okay! Madam 2" (South Korea) Opened Aug. 12 Action/Comedy Directed by Lee Cheol-ha A former agent turned donut shop owner (Uhm Jung-hwa) springs back into action when her family's luxury cruise is hijacked. "The Odyssey" (US) Opened Aug. 5 Drama/Fantasy Directed by Christopher Nolan After the Trojan War, the Greek king Odysseus (Matt Damon) makes a long and perilous journey home to reunite with his wife and son. "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" (US) Opened July 29 Action Directed by Destin Daniel Cr

2026-08-14 09:00:00:00

Webtoon buys majority stake in Korean game studio

Webtoon Entertainment is acquiring a 60 percent stake in Korean game developer RI Games Holdings for about $100 million, the company said Tuesday, deepening its push into games and animation as core growth shows signs of slowing. RI Games, founded in 2022 by Kevin Tail Han, operates GrayGames and Offbeat, the two studios that will handle the development of new titles. Under the deal, the companies plan to roll out a slate of games over the next four years, drawing on popular series such as "Over

2026-08-11 13:53:07:00

Ann Hui to be honored at Busan film festival for advancing women in film

Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui will receive the 2026 Camellia Award at the 31st Busan International Film Festival, organizers announced Tuesday. Presented by the festival in partnership with Chanel, the award recognizes filmmakers who have made significant contributions to advancing women in the film industry. Since its launch in 2024, the award has gone to production designer Ryu Seong-hie and Taiwanese actor and filmmaker Sylvia Chang (2025). Hui, 79, emerged as a central figure of the Hong Kong

2026-08-11 11:12:35:00

Korea's first lady was shot dead on live TV. Movie probes the case

South Korea's modern history has seen no shortage of coups, conspiracies, assassinations and acts of terrorism playing out within the global tensions of the Cold War. Even so, having the first lady shot dead on live television is quite something. It happened on Aug. 15, 1974, at a Liberation Day ceremony in Seoul when Moon Se-gwang, a 22-year-old Korean resident of Japan, charged the stage firing at strongman President Park Chung-hee mid-speech. The president managed to take cover, but his wife,

2026-08-10 15:12:03:00

In Shanghai, Wallace Chan builds a cathedral of titanium

Korea Herald correspondent SHANGHAI — The man at the center of the Long Museum's vast concrete halls seems, at first glance, an unlikely author for them. Slight and soft-spoken, with a long white beard that gives him the air of a Taoist sage rather than a maker of monuments, Wallace Chan stood before some 50 reporters at the opening of "Vessels of Other Worlds" and stopped mid-speech to collect himself, overcome in a way his staff said no one had seen before. At 70, with the largest exhibition o

2026-08-08 16:00:00:00

Hollywood is owning the summer box office. Will Korean films take it back in the fall?

Korea's box office is in the middle of its hottest stretch in years, and Hollywood blockbusters are running the show at the moment. Two major imports are filling seats through the dog days of summer, setting the stage for a bigger question: whether the momentum holds once the spotlight shifts back to homegrown films this fall. Christopher Nolan's Homeric epic "The Odyssey," one of the most anticipated releases of 2026, opened Wednesday and shot straight to No. 1, passing 540,000 admissions in it

2026-08-07 16:01:49:00