South Korea: Last News

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The Game Awards hit record viewership with its 2024 show on Dec. 12, which drew an estimated 154 million global livestreams. That’s up 31% over the 2023 show at 118 million livestreams.

GFRIEND have announced their upcoming 2025 ‘Season of Memories’ Asia tour, in conjunction with their 10th anniversary, with concerts in Japan, Taiwan and more.On December 17, GFRIEND announced that they would be bringing their 2025 ‘Season of Memories’ tour and concerts to cities across Asia. They are slated to kick off the tour with a three-night concert in at the Olympic Hall in Seoul, South Korea from January 18 to 20.According an announcement by their label Source Music, GFRIEND will then embark on their Asia tour in March, with shows in Osaka, Yokohama, Hong Kong and Taipei announced so far.

Olivia Rodrigo is due to donate a substantial amount of money to several women’s charities across the globe.Per a Billboard report, the ‘Good 4 U’ singer-songwriter has announced that she will be donating a hefty sum of money, taken from ticket sales for her ‘Guts’ world tour, to key organisations focusing on women’s issues.The singer has been a vocal reproductive rights activist, having announced the launch of The Fund 4 Good initiative earlier this year as part of the ‘Guts’ world tour.The sum will amount to over US$2million, and will be spread across 10 organisations that champion girls’ education, women’s reproductive rights and the prevention of gender-based violence.The 10 charities are the US’ National Network of Abortion Funds, Canada’s Women’s Shelters’ Europe’s Women Against Violence Europe, Thailand’s the Pratthanadee Foundation, South Korea’s Korea Foundation For Women, Hong Kong’s Harmony House Limited, Singapore’s Aidha, Japan’s NPO Women’s Saya-Saya, Australia’s Wesnet and finally the Philippines’ Jhpiego.The upcoming donations come after Rodrigo – who is half-Filipina– in October performed in the Philippines for the first time, and donated all of her concert’s profits to Jhpiego.She wrote: “I got to visit the organization while I was in Manila and was so impressed by the work they are doing providing healthcare to women and girls in the Philippines. It was the most special show and the most meaningful trip.

Season 2 of the hit show. Hwang Dong-hyuk spoke about the criticism in a new interview with TV Guide, published on Tuesday. The character at the center of the controversy — a transgender woman named Hyun-ju — is a new addition to “Squid Game,” who reportedly partakes in the deadly competition because she is “short on money for her gender-affirming surgery.”Dong-hyuk, who also directs the Korean language series, told TV Guide that he could not find a transgender female actor to play Hyun-ju.

Though Katherine “Kitty” Song Covey (Anna Cathcart) will be less of an outsider in her second semester at the Korean International School of Seoul, she says it best in the show’s newly released trailer: “There’s nothing like a familiar face from home” to boost one’s confidence every now and then.

EXCLUSIVE: Korean coming-of-age film Love in the Big City is set for a streaming release in North America on Rakuten Viki on December 24.

K-pop girl group Kep1er have announced their first-ever fan-con tour, titled ‘Beyond the Star’, which will take place in 2025.On December 16, Kep1er announced that they will be holding their first fan-concert tour ‘Beyond the Star’ starting in February 2025. The group will kick-off the tour with a two-night concert at the Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul.In March, Kep1er will bring their ‘Beyond the Star’ tour to Yokohama, Japan for two night, as well as one night in Macau.

Richard Kuipers One of the darkest chapters in South Korean history is chronicled in “12.12: The Day,” a riveting account of the coup d’état of the 1979 coup d’état that followed the Oct. 26 assassination of authoritarian president Park Chung-hee.

Naman Ramachandran Local hit “The Firefighters” led the South Korean box office, which returned to its sluggish ways after a brief spell that showed signs of recovery. In its second weekend, “The Firefighters” climbed from second place to first with a $4.3 million gross, 657,124 admissions and a 41.9% market share, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council. The film now has a cumulative gross of $11.5 million in the territory.

Gracie Abrams performed ‘That’s So True’ and ‘I Love You, I’m Sorry’ on Saturday Night Live – watch footage of the performance below.Last night (December 14), the singer-songwriter made her debut as a musical guest on the show with a song from ‘The Secret of Us’ as well as an additional track featured on the deluxe version of the record.Performing in front of a fireplace and a candlelit set, Abrams sang ‘That’s So True’, a live favourite from the ‘Secret of Us’ tour that she included in the album’s deluxe version in October.She recently teased there is also a “very vulgar” version of the hit song, although it “will never see the light of day”. She also performed ‘I Love You, I’m Sorry’, taken from the June version of the record.Earlier this month, Taylor Swift performed with Abrams during her final leg of her blockbuster ‘Eras Tour’, with the two delivering a mash-up of ‘I Love You, I’m Sorry’ and Swift’s ‘Last Kiss’, taken from her 2010 album ‘Speak Now’.They had previously teamed up on ‘Us’, taken from Abrams’ latest album.

One of this year’s acclaimed Oscar-contending documentaries goes below the waves with a remarkable community of women free divers off the coast of South Korea. They’re formally known as “haenyeo,” but sometimes referred to as “Korea’s mermaids.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Now burning up on Netflix: a new spin on the classic TV yule-log. With less than two weeks to go before Christmas, Netflix has launched three themed virtual yule logs, each 60 minutes in length, based on Shonda Rhimes’ “Bridgerton” series, South Korean hit “Squid Game” (with Season 2 set to premiere Dec. 26) and animated film “Spellbound” from director Vicky Jenson with music by Alan Menken.

Rosé made her solo in-studio debut last night with a mash-up of ‘APT.’ and ‘Toxic Till The End’ on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – watch her performance below.The BLACKPINK star, who released her debut solo album ‘Rosie’ on December 6, performed the mash-up of singles from the LP last night (December 11) with accompaniment from a six-piece band.She began the medley by taking over Fallon’s desk, singing ‘APT.’ with her feet propped up, before going into a rendition of ‘Toxic Till The End’ complete with falling confetti.Also on Fallon, Rosé looked back on her first audition for BLACKPINK, explaining: “I walked in, I honestly thought it was a joke. I was like, ‘This is funny.

DPR IAN has opened up about his past experience training to be part of a K-pop group.On the Australian leg of DPR’s ‘The Dream Reborn’ world tour, DPR IAN sat down with SBS to discuss his experience in the K-pop industry. The singer shared that he moved to South Korea alone to pursue his music career, and became a K-pop trainee several months later after being scouted on the street.“[The training schedule] back in the days? Very strict,” he said, detailing how they would wake up every morning at 5am to practice, only to return home hours past midnight.

Blackpink's Jisoo is set to swap the stage for the screen in a new zombie K-drama penned by Oscar-winning screenwriter Han Jin-won. The series, Newtopia, is based on Han Sang-woon's novel, Influenza, and follows a young couple, Lee Jae-yoon and Kang Young-joo, who part ways due to the strain of Jae-yoon's compulsory military service.

Lee Jung-jae and Lee Byung-hun step out for the season two premiere of their show Squid Game held at Dongdaemun Design Plaza on Monday (December 9) in Seoul, South Korea.

Oasis and ‘How to get tickets’ among the most popular.The new figures were shared by the search engine, and revealed the famous faces, events and news-worthy moments that got people across the UK searching across the past 12 months.Among sports events like the Euros and the Paris Olympics, and political events like the US Presidential election and UK general election, there were a handful of music-related events that made the list. These, unsurprisingly, included the massive announcement that Oasis would be making their highly-awaited return to the stage – confirming a string of huge stadium gigs in the UK and Ireland to take place next summer.The news was soon followed by the announcement of dates in North America, South America, Australia, South Korea and Japan.According to the Google figures, Oasis were the most searched-for artist of the year, and “How to get Oasis tickets” was the second most popular ‘How to’ search of the past 12 months – coming in just behind “How to vote in the UK” (via Sky News).The latter comes as little surprise as the scramble for tickets to their UK and Ireland shows made countless headlines earlier this year.

Naman Ramachandran After a sluggish few weeks where the South Korean box office struggled to cross a total of $10 million, “Moana 2” and local hit “The Firefighters” improved matters somewhat. The total box office for the weekend was just above $16 million. “Moana 2” led the box office for the second weekend in a row with $4 million, a 36.4% market share and 610,389 admissions, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council.

GFRIEND, aespa and NewJeans are among the artists set to perform at the 39th Golden Disc Awards in January.South Korea’s Golden Disc Awards has announced the complete line-up for its upcoming 39th ceremony, which will take place over January 4 and 5 at the Mizuho PayPay Dome in Fukuoka, Japan. The awards ceremony shared its line-up in two waves on December 3 and 9, comprising a total of 21 acts over the two days.Day one of the 39th Golden Disc Awards will include performances by popular K-pop girl groups like aespa, NewJeans and (G)I-DLE, along with singer-songwriters like BIBI and Crush.

Naman Ramachandran Mythri Movie Makers’ “Pushpa 2: The Rule,” headlined by Allu Arjun, has delivered $1.4 million in global Imax box office across 16 markets. In India, the film generated $650,000 from 31 Imax screens, marking the biggest local language Imax opening of 2024 and the fourth-highest Imax opening ever in the market.

It's a full strength Celtic squad that's available for today's Premiership clash with Hibs.