2008/05/13 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

By Han Sang-hee
Staff Reporter

With MBC's new drama "Spotlight", viewers will get a glimpse into the lives of broadcast news reporters covering the city beat.

"Spotlight" depicts the journey toward success of a passionate city desk reporter Seo Woo-jin, played by top actress Son Ye-jin. Ji Jin-hee from the hit drama "Jewel in the Palace" ("Dae Jang Geum") will star as her strict, yet caring mentor, Oh Tae-seok. The drama will follow Seo's drudge through the grind to eventually become an anchorwoman.

At the press conference held last week in southern Seoul, reporters and camera crews swarmed the room for a shot of Son.

"Spotlight" is the first drama in two years for Son, 26, who has starred in movies like "The Classic" (2003) and "The Art of Seduction" (2005).

"I read the synopsis and had a strong impression. I especially liked the fact that (Seo) continues to strive to achieve her dreams. I was captivated by her passion and energy", Son said.

A short clip of the dr...

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2008/05/13 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter

John Cameron Mitchell, original scriptwriter and star of a rock musical, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" will hold a concert with Korean Hedwig star Oh Man-seok in Seoul next month.

According to Shownote, a production company for the Korean rendition of the musical, the concert is designed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the musical's debut in 1998.

Mitchell wowed Korean fans last year while joining the concerts with other Korean Hedwig cast members.

It is surprising for Korean fans to see Mitchell perform again here as the versatile American scriptwriter, actor and director has rarely performed anywhere outside the United States.

The musical has toured in 70 cities around the world, re-creating many other different interpretations since the premiere to New York in 1998.

The Korean rendition of "Hedwig" was first put on stage in 2005, enjoying enthusiastic standing ovations from audiences until now.

So far, the Korean rendition ha...

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2008/05/12 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

In 2004, a group of the nation's central theater figures pooled their strength and put on 15 carefully prepared works on the stage, one after another, in the span of one year. The response was amazing for a genre that has never been very popular, drawing some 170,000 people and an average 81 percent seat-occupancy rate.

Those people have been at work again since late last year, this time to offer 11 top contemporary picks and to solicit help from well-known television and movie actors and actresses, in hopes that their appearance will further vitalize the drama genre.

The latest project from "Yeongeukyeoljeon 2", as the special production company is called, is "The Return of Mr. Um", a sequel to "At the Marina", which was presented in 2005 and won the Grand Arts Award from Arts Council Korea the same year.

The play, which will begin staging later this month, has been generating a lot of media hype after word got out that Ko Soo, a major television heartthrob who recently finis...

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2008/05/12 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

MBC's upcoming drama "Spotlight", which airs this Wednesday night, promises to bring back a bit of excitement to the small screen.

Following on the heels of its more-than-lackluster predecessor "Who Are You?", "Spotlight" focuses on the gritty and enterprising lives of city desk broadcast news reporters. The drama tracks one woman's rise to fame, from her struggles at the city desk to her eventual success as an anchorwoman.

With a plot like that, the success of "Spotlight" rides on the strength of its heroine and on its scripting.

And the script promises to be solid. The drama's writer Lee Ki-won possesses a finesse for drawing out the dark political power struggles that go on in the workplace. And his intense and cutthroat writing will play out well in the newsroom. Lee also wrote last year's hit medical drama "White Tower".

"I focused on the inner struggles that reporters face as humans", Lee said at a press conference held last week. "While there is romance, more importa...

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2008/05/11 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

By Amr Emam
Investigative reporter, The Egyptian Gazette

Mohamed Abdel Baki sticks to the radio for two hours every evening like glue to listen to a language his family members and friends fail to identify.

When he tells them that the thing that keeps him entranced for hours is the Korean Program, they snigger at the "bizarre" interest he has developed over the last few years.

"Some of these people are narrow-minded", Mohamed, a 44-year-old civil servant from Cairo, the capital of Egypt, said. "They just don't know that in a few years' time, Korean could be one of the leading languages in the world".

Abdel Baki is part of a trend that has started to seep out of intellectual and educational circles in Egypt and into wider society over the last few years. In this Arab Middle Eastern country of 76 million people where jingoism is sometimes mixed with people's religious feelings and loyalties, a love of the culture of Korea, a country thousands of kilometers away, has started ...

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2008/05/09 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Korea's heartthrob Kwon Sang-woo dropped his $1.9-million lawsuit against his former agency. Kwon and his ex-agency Best Flow (formerly Yuri International) have been locked in an eight-month legal battle over the allegation of Best Flow pocketing Kwon's share of profit worth 1.9 million dollars. Best Flow had also sued Kwon for defamation and embezzlement, but this suit has been withdrawn as well. The two sides also agreed not to launch any civil or criminal suits over these matters in the future.

Kwon's current representative Golden Thumb Entertainment said that there was no reason to continue the legal suit, since the management at Best Flow has been replaced with new people. The amount of profit due to Kwon has also been settled amicably. Now that Kwon is freed from the legal headache, he is getting ready to shoot a new TV series to be aired in August. ...

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2008/05/09 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Welcome back.
It's time for our weekly culture corner and our resident reporter Lee Jeewon joins me in the studio.
Good morning Jeewon.
Hi Sunhee.

Our first item is the latest rendition of a Korean poem written in 17-45 which later branched out to become novels songs and performing arts pieces.
With more than 280 different editions the story of Chunhyang is titled either Chunhyang-ga or Chunhyang-jeon depending on the genre.
It's a love story between a daughter of a former Gisaeng or Korean geisha and an aristocratic member of the literati during the Joseon Dynasty.
The National Theater of Korea showcases its Korean classical opera version until tomorrow.
It premiered in 19-02 and has improved over the years.
This year's production team has replaced Chinese proverbs with modern language to make it easier to understand and casts multiple storytellers for the same reason.

Interesting and I think Korea's performing arts scene could use more traditional Korean cultural works....

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2008/05/09 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

A calendar of cinema on the peninsula and abroad

Jung-yul Ogborne (junni)

There are enough film festivals in Korea to satisfy even the most hardcore film fanatic, in fact too many some in the industry would say. Whilst the major festivals such as Busan and Jeonju attract the biggest crowds, for those interested in the latest trends in Korean Independent Cinema the smaller festivals are also worth checking out.

Quality will be varied, but you might just be lucky enough to find a real cinematic gem or gain insight into a social issue that foreigners rarely get to hear about in Korea.

Buoyed by the boom in Korean cinema in the late 1990s, Korea has one of the largest populations of cinephiles anywhere in the world and when you combine this with the national passion for meeting together in big groups and getting drunk, it's easy to understand why the major festivals attract such large audiences.

The queues of people camping out overnight to get weekend tickets every year d...

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2008/05/09 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

The largest convenience store in Japan, "7-Eleven", will sell special lunchbox sets of Korean food produced by Hallyu star Bae Yong-joon. On the 7th, a "7-Eleven" representative announced that they will be putting the lunchboxes on shelves for three days from June 13th to the 15th.

The lunchbox sets are called "Gosire Bento", and they will be sold through orders collected from May 12th to June 8th. The sets are 2500 yen (25000 won) each, the highest price that any lunch set has been sold at in Japan.

The convenience stores believe their largest group of consumers will be middle-aged female "Yon-sama" fans.

The lunch sets will include 16 different dishes from the Goguryeo dynasty, such as bulgogi and ssam-bab....

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wow the largest group are middle-aged female "Yon-sama" fans. fighting 2008-05-13 00:06:55

2008/05/09 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Singer Lee Moon-sae and 17 other Korean entertainers are planning a week-long trip to a remote Nepalese village to help build a school.

Lee organized the volunteer group for the trip, which has been dubbed the Seollebal Himalaya Expedition. "Seollebal" is a portmanteau of the Korean words "seolleda", meaning "feeling expectant", and "balgeoreum", meaning "footsteps".

From left, singer Lee Moon-sae, actress Lee Tae-ran, and actor Park Sang-won at the launch of a volunteer group dubbed Seollebal Himalaya Expedition to help children in Nepal

The group, which includes actor Park Sang-won, actress Lee Tae-ran, supermodel Park Se-ryen, and film director Han Ji-seung, held an organization ceremony at a café in Seoul on Thursday.

"We want to do something for the poor people of Nepal to return the warmth and genuineness we have experienced in the Himalayas", the group announced. "We will spend a week from May 15 at a village in Dhading working as volunteers".

The group will build...

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