The Cultural Heritage Administration on Wednesday announced that it had applied for the addition of Talchum, Mask Dance Drama in the Republic of Korea to the list of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage on Tuesday. The decision on the listing will be made in December 2022, after UNESCO reviews and evaluates the application’s technical completeness and the value of the heritage. Talchum is a perf...

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki on Wednesday announced that the government would exempt cinemas from paying into the movie development fund to help theaters weather the impact of COVID-19. The exemption will apply retroactively from February. The government expects the total amount that will be exempted to reach 54 billion won ($44.28 million), the average amount collected...

Since the coronavirus outbreak, Culture Minister Park Yang-woo has been busy visiting different facilities to hear rising concerns and difficulties that artists are facing. Following this, the Culture Ministry has announced several plans for financial assistance. On Feb. 20, it decided to inject 3 billion won ($2.5 million) to provide loans for artists who are experiencing financial difficultie...

Sohn Won-pyung Born in 1979, Sohn Won-pyung is a talented screenwriter and movie director, as well as an author. She wrote and directed a number of short films, including “Ooh You Make Me Sick” and “A Two-way Monologue.” Most recently, she wrote and directed the thriller “Intruder,” starring Song Ji-hyo and Kim Moo-yeol. The release of the movie, originally scheduled for March, has been postpon...

The Korean Culture and Information Service, affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, announced that its 11th group of “Friends of Korea” began activities from Friday. Friends of Korea is a group of people whose main task is to report erroneous information about Korea in foreign media to the Korea Culture and Information Service’s online platform, “Fact:Korea.” Over the next f...

The Korean broadcasting industry is bracing for more cases of the novel coronavirus, after a reality TV producer tested positive Saturday. The producer of season two of “Bob Bless You,” a food-oriented program on Olive TV, returned to Korea on March 18 after a vacation in New York and began showing symptoms of COVID-19 on Friday, according to CJ ENM. As soon as the producer went for a test, all...

Churches showed different responses to the Korean government‘s urging of stricter social distancing before schools are due to restart on April 6. The Catholic Archdiocese of Seoul on Wednesday announced that it has decided to suspend holding Mass and other large group activities until April 5. “We take the current situation very seriously so we have decided to delay our original plan and start ...

Asked to introduce his new album Lauv said, “It’s about embracing different parts of your personality and going against this notion of being put in a box and realizing that we are all very complicated and complex individuals.” “The album is all about embracing whatever you are feeling on a given day and so there are a lot of different vibes and sounds,” he added. The cover of his new album also...

The South Korean government announced Wednesday that it has decided to inject 14 billion won ($11.38 million) to develop a trail adjacent to the Demilitarized Zone called the DMZ Peace Trail. The 248-kilometer-long DMZ, established in 1953, divides the Korean Peninsula roughly in half. “We will make the DMZ Peace Trail more prosperous by turning it into a place where people can experience the p...

Korean actress Shim Eun-kyung, 26, on Sunday received the best actress award at the 34th Takasaki Film Festival held in Japan, for her role in the upcoming film “Blue Hour.” This is the second award she has won in Japan this month. On March 6, she became the first Korean to win the best actress award at the 43rd Japan Academy Film Prize Awards for her role in “The Journalist.” Shim played journa...

The Overseas Korean Culture Heritage Foundation has found transcriptions of Uigwe -- the royal protocol of the Joseon era -- at the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet in France. The books were created by French researcher Henri Chevalier and cover two Uigwe -- Heonjong Daewang Gukjang Dogam Uigwe and Hyohyeon Wanghu Gukjang Dogam Uigwe, which consist of 10 and six books, respectively. Heonjon...

The National Library of Korea started providing its enhanced online service Digital Collection on Monday. “Digital Collection provides selected content curated by experts from different fields who also wrote commentaries. We hope that this cultural content can help people who are having a difficult time due to the delay of the new school semester and social distancing,” a National Library of Kor...

North Korea’s media outlets criticized the Cultural Heritage Administration’s plan to seek UNESCO listing of the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas jointly with North Korea, according to local news outlets on Friday. The response from the North Korean news outlets came after the CHA on March 11 announced having the DMZ recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as one of its projects for ...

Mainstream Protestant church groups -- the National Council of Churches in Korea and the United Christian Churches of Korea -- apologized to the public on Thursday for the COVID-19 clusters that formed at churches. The statement also said the organizations hoped to normalize group activities and worship services from April 6. The joint statement followed an increase in the number of novel coron...

As cluster infections of the novel coronavirus among those attending church worship services increase in Korea, public concerns about the issue are also on the rise. This week saw at least 66 coronavirus cases related to River of Grace Community Church in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. In response to rising concerns, the government of Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday issued an administrative order th...