South Korea: Last News

The Recruit just returned to Netflix with a long-awaited second season. However, fans are already wondering if they’ll get to see Noah Centineo‘s Owen Hendricks again in the future.

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about Season 2 of the Netflix series The Recruit.

Selome Hailu “Squid Game” reached 4.6 billion minutes watched on Netflix in Season 2’s first full week of availability, per Nielsen. Even though that’s a small drop from the 4.9 billion minutes the series achieved the week before, which included Season 2’s debut weekend, this is a massive achievement for the South Korean drama.

Ice skater Spencer Lane‘s father is opening up about his living “nightmare” after losing both his son and wife in that American Airlines plane crash.

John Mulaney took a playful jab at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle while promoting his upcoming talk show, "Everybody's Live with John Mulaney." During the "Next on Netflix" event this month, the comedian spoke to reporters about the new show while poking fun at not only himself, but also the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. "We will be live globally with no delay," Mulaney said, according to Variety. "We will never be relevant.

Jennie — one of the four members of Blackpink — is going on a much shorter trek in the U.S. and her native South Korea in support of her forthcoming debut album “Ruby,” which hits shelves March 7.As of now, the only non-festival North American gigs the singer/rapper/actress/model has on her 2025 ‘Ruby Experience Tour’ itinerary are back-to-back performances at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater on March 6-7 and New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Monday, March 10.“Intense and intimate as I like it,” the 29-year-old shared in what appears to be a David Lynch-inspired Instagram post.She’s also slated to perform both Sundays at Coachella — April 13 and 20 — this year.

The Recruit is out now, but can fans expect to see a third season? Read on for all that we know so far.The six-episode run premiered on Netflix on Thursday (January 30), with all episodes available to stream now.Cleated by Alexi Hawley, executive producer of series such as Castle and The Rookie, the show follows Owen Hendricks, played by Noah Centineo (To All The Boys, Black Adam), a fledgling CIA lawyer who becomes involved in international conflicts after an asset threatens extortion if she is not freed from prison.Season one of the show landed on Netflix in December 2022, with the opening episode directed by The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Doug Liman, while the second season was commissioned just weeks later.According to Netflix, the second season sees Owen “pulled into a life-threatening espionage situation in South Korea, only to realise that the bigger threat might be coming from inside the Agency”.With the six episodes of season two only just having been released, Netflix have yet to formally confirm or deny whether the show will be returning for a third season.Typically, the streaming platform allows a show to play out for four to six weeks before it makes its final decision about whether to re-commission, so it is possible that fans of The Recruit will find out the show’s future status around March 2025.Ahead of the release of the second season, Alexi Hawley has told Tudum that the new episodes will “immediately throw Owen in the deep end, which is where he’s the most fun”.“This show lives in propulsion,” he continued.

Noah Centineo‘s Owen Hendricks is heading out on a new mission in the second season of The Recruit at Netflix, which premieres on January 30. We’ve got the drop on who will be joining him on the cast list.

It seems Korean star Park Sung-hoon took’s tagline “Let nothing hold you back” to heart when he opted to sign up for the current Season 2. In the hit series, Park plays a prominent character named Cho Hyun-ju, a transgender woman with a military background who enters the games hoping to secure winnings to complete her gender-affirming surgery. 

Noah Centineo‘s Netflix drama series The Recruit spent a month last year filming in Korea where a portion of the spy thriller’s second season is set. Korea also happens to be the setting and production location for XO, Kitty, Netflix’s comedy series spinoff from the streamer’s popular To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before movies, in which Centineo played the male lead Peter. He starred opposite Lana Condor whose character Lara Jean’s younger sister — and the duo’s matchmaker — Kitty (Anna Cathcart) headlines the offshoot series.

Matt Minton mminton@variety.com Park Sung-hoon knew there would be pressure placed on him after taking on the role of Cho Hyun-ju, a trans woman in “Squid Game” Season 2 who participates as a player in the games in order to help fund her gender-affirming surgery. “I was quite amazed at the opportunity — I felt like as an actor it was going to be quite the challenge,” Park tells Variety.

fromis_9 have signed with a new label after deciding to “continue with their group activities”.South Korean entertainment company ASND published a statement on January 26 via Ilgan Sports announcing that five out of eight fromis_9 members have signed exclusive contracts with the intention of pursuing further activities as a group.fromis_9 were previously under HYBE sub-label Pledis Entertainment until their contracts expired in December 2024, with all eight members opting not to renew.Although plans for the group’s continuation post-contract expiry were unclear at the time, members Song Ha-young, Park Ji-won, Lee Na-kyung, Lee Chae-young and Baek Ji-heon will now proceed under new management. It remains unclear if the band’s remaining members will join them.“It must have taken a lot of thought and courage for the artists to decide to continue their group activities,” wrote the company, as translated by Soompi. “We at ASND are sincerely grateful to the artists for their great courage and for choosing to walk this journey with us, and we promise to provide unwavering support and encouragement so that they can pursue their dreams going forward.”ASND shared in the same statement that it is currently undergoing negotiations with Pledis Entertainment for the trademark to the fromis_9 name.

Naman Ramachandran The South Korean box office for the weekend of Jan. 24-26 was led by horror film “Dark Nuns,” which debuted with a commanding performance, while action sequel “Hitman 2” also had an impressive start. “Dark Nuns,” a horror film where two nuns are driven to perform an exorcism, opened at the top of the chart, earning KRW5.71 billion ($3.9 million) over the weekend.

Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz reunite at a special reception party for his movie Mickey 17 held on Sunday (January 26) in Paris.

“We should have gone to Bora Bora like the Pattersons,” says Delores (Sarah Goldberg) in Bubble & Squeak, writer-director Evan Twohy’s feature debut. A quirky, prescriptively surreal comedy in the vein of the late Jeff Baena, with a hefty debt to the two Sacha Baron Cohen Borat movies, it’s a very Sundance kind of funny that goes all in on a very bizarre premise. If you go with it, it will take you all the way, but for those with a low tolerance for cheerfully madcap bonkersness, its lean 97 minutes may well seem like an eternity.

BLACKPINK singer Jennie has announced a string of intimate shows to celebrate the upcoming release of her debut solo album.On Wednesday (January 22) the K-pop idol and her label Odd Atelier announced the LP titled ‘Ruby’ will be released on March 7, featuring collaborations with Doechii, Dua Lipa and more.Now, she’s revealed she’ll be playing three small shows once the LP has come out, which she described as “intense and intimate as I like it” on Instagram.The first show will take place on March 6 – the night before ‘Ruby’s release – at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theatre. From there, she’ll head to New York to play Radio City Music Hall on March 10, followed by a gig in Seoul, South Korea on March 15.Tickets will go on sale next Friday (January 31) at 10am local time, and a portion of proceeds will go towards recovery efforts following the Los Angeles wildfires that took place earlier this month.

Samsung has dropped its latest range of smartphones - the the S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra - and there's already ways shoppers save money. The South Korean tech giant is offering a massive freebie for those looking to snap up the new devices, handing out double storage space for free.

Newtopia, starring BLACKPINK’s Jisoo and Park Jung-min. Here’s everything you need to know about the new series.When a zombie outbreak overtakes the streets of South Korea, Lee Jae-yoon and Kang Young-joo, having recently graduated from college and freshly broken up, are caught in the middle of chaos.As the couple are driven further apart by the zombies overtaking the city, Jae-yoon is forced to face his insecurities both as a new, clueless recruit protecting the country and as Young-joo’s love interest, as the couple go through hoardes of the undead to find each other again in more ways than one.Acclaimed Korean actor Park Jung-min, with recent appearances in Harbin and Smugglers, is set to star as Jae-yoon.

In my Oscar predictions piece yesterday I warned about the possibility that this year’s list could be even more international than in recent years, partly because of the L.A. Fires which moved the Academy to extend the voting period twice and by nearly a week overall.It was indicative that voters in Los Angeles, where a lot of them live, might have been preoccupied. This said to me that the ever-growing international base of Oscar voters, not affected by the fires, might have more influence than ever. There is no question that happened.

While the second season of “Squid Game” has new plot twists, one element of the Netflix mega-hit series where contestants down on their luck risk their lives to play children’s games for the chance of winning cash prizes, has remained constant.That is Young-hee, an innocent-looking robotic doll who, in fact, has a deadly role in the South Korean-made television series to find contestants to gun downplaying the game “Red Light, Green Light” if she spots them moving.Young-hee, who is clad in a simple orange dress and a hair clip, has become a viral meme on social media and the centerpiece of the streaming giant’s promotional campaign.Chae Kyoung-sun, the production designer for “Squid Game,” said the doll’s appearance had been partly inspired by her own daughter.“My daughter had a bowl cut for a long time which was very cute so I decided to draw a very short bang,” Chae told Reuters.“Her eyes are a little crazy. She’s a killing machine and the movement of her eyes had to be easy to see, so we made her eyes quite big.”The initial inspiration for Young-hee came from a girl of the same name on the cover of old primary school textbooks in South Korea, though the killer doll was initially conceived as genderless, Chae said.The first season of “Squid Game” became the most-watched show on the streaming platform and expectations were high for the second season to replicate the success.The new season of the dystopian thriller, released on Dec.

Netflix has announced the long-awaited premiere date for upcoming romance K-drama When Life Gives You Tangerines, led by IU and Park Bogum. Here’s everything you need to know about the new series.Billed as a romantic slice-of-life series, When Life Gives You Tangerines is set in 1960s Jeju and follows the adventurous lives of Ae-soon “the remarkable rebel” and Gwan-sik “the unyielding iron” as they weather the trials and tribulations throughout all four seasons on the South Korean island.