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Lee Hae-rin

Korea Times K-Culture Reporter

Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.

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Sports

Fans' swelling cheer for national football team continue despite heat, defeat

Korea’s first heat wave of the season did little to cool the nation’s football fever Friday, as tens of thousands of fans in red shirts flooded central Seoul to cheer on the national team in its World Cup group match against Mexico — even as the team fell to defeat. By 11 a.m., midway through the lunchtime kickoff, an estimated 18,000 supporters had packed Gwanghwamun Square, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, transforming the stone plaza and surrounding streets into a sea of red. Fans in official jerseys and red T-shirts shielded themselves from the blistering sun with handheld fans, wide-brimmed hats, sun umbrellas and cooling patches, chanting “Dae-han-min-guk” under a relentless 32-degree Celsius sun. “I sneaked out from work just in time for the match,” said Kim Seung-hyun, an office worker from a nearby building, his company ID still hanging around his neck. “People say this World Cup isn’t getting much attention because of controversies surrounding coach Hong Myung-bo and the football association, but when you see this many people out here on a hot w

6h agoBy Lee Hae-rin
Fans' swelling cheer for national football team continue despite heat, defeat
Music

Baritone Matthias Goerne, pianist Sunwoo Ye-kwon bring Schubert's songs to Seoul

German Baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Sunwoo Ye-kwon will guide Seoul audiences through the stark emotional landscape of Schubert’s “Winterreise” on Sunday, bringing the wintry song cycle to life during the sweltering Korean summer. The concert is part of the Hansae Yes24 Foundation’s “Hansae Classic Lied” series, which aims to popularize the German art song repertoire by pairing leading international vocalists with top Korean pianists. This year’s edition reunites Schubert’s 24-song masterpiece with one of its most acclaimed interpreters and a homegrown star pianist who calls the composer “the most personal and human” in his music world. “For me, Schubert is maybe, next to Bach, the most important composer,” Goerne told reporters at a press conference in Seoul Thursday. “Without Shubert, I think I would say I never would have become a singer.” The baritone recalled discovering the composer’s music as a child and now estimates he has performed it at least 250 times for nearly four decades on every continent. Goerne described “Winterreise” as a “re

1d agoBy Lee Hae-rin
Baritone Matthias Goerne, pianist Sunwoo Ye-kwon bring Schubert's songs to Seoul
Arts & Theater

Queer art finds home in Seoul: Inside ‘Spectrosynthesis’ and collector's vision

Sunpride Foundation founder and executive director Patrick Sun likes to joke about his last name. But at Art Sonje Center in Seoul, he is doing more than beaming — he is shining light on queer histories, long scattered and half-hidden in the city, helping them slowly come into public view. Art Sonje Center is currently hosting “Spectrosynthesis Seoul,” the first large-scale institutional exhibition in Korea devoted to queer art, featuring works by 74 artists and collectives from Korea and beyond. The show is the fourth edition in Sunpride’s touring “Spectrosynthesis” series — following Taipei, Bangkok and Hong Kong — and brings together pieces from the foundation’s collection and new commissions to sketch a queer cartography of Seoul. Blending “spectrum” and “synthesis” in its title, the exhibition invites multiple voices and perspectives on queer life to respond directly to the city’s shifting social and political landscape. Curated by Art Sonje artistic director Kim Sun-jung and media culture scholar Lee Yong-woo, the show spills out from the main galleries

1d agoBy Lee Hae-rin
Queer art finds home in Seoul: Inside ‘Spectrosynthesis’ and collector's vision
Sports

What Korean football team’s interview boycott reveals

Korea’s national football team has effectively turned its back on parts of the domestic press just days before a World Cup showdown with Mexico, a rare and public rupture that exposes a deeper trust crisis between players and legacy media in a country where fans now fact‑check reporters in real time. The rupture did not begin with tactics or results. It began with contempt, caught on a hot mic. On June 7, during a light pretraining jog at the national team’s camp, two male Korean journalists mocked some of the players, including captain Son Heung‑min. The footage, laced with sneers about military service exemptions and leadership, later surfaced on the YouTube channel of the TV network JTBC — the local holder of broadcasting rights for this year's World Cup — turning their backstage banter into public record. The Korea Football Association (KFA) reportedly summoned the reporters two days later and issued a reprimand behind closed doors. No clear, immediate apology came from the journalists, and the rift widened even as the team beat the Czech Republic last Friday. On Saturday

2d agoBy Lee Hae-rin
What Korean football team’s interview boycott reveals
Trends

Queer middle-aged women reshape Korea's LGBTQ+ landscape

Rainbow flags ripple through downtown Seoul every June, but this year, some of the loudest, sweatiest and most determined faces of Korea's LGBTQ+ community were not young, cosmopolitan gays. They were 30- and 40-something women. At this year's Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF), a truck blasting remixed early-2000s K-pop rolled on to the parade route, trailed by people dancing along the route and a surprising number of parents. Banners displayed the logo of the 3040+ Jumma Queer group, a loose collective of lesbian, bisexual, queer and gender-nonconforming women in their 30s and 40s, who came together last year with a message for the community. In some parts of the queer community, there is a perception that women who identify as LGBTQ+ “either leave the community for heterosexual marriage or disappear into domestic life by mid-30s,” as one member of the group framed it. The 3040+ Jumma Queer truck was there to break that script and invite lesbians pushing strollers, women who feel too old for bar meetups and self-described "ajumma queers" to be visible, noisy and together in the

2d agoBy Lee Hae-rin
Queer middle-aged women reshape Korea's LGBTQ+ landscape
Arts & Theater

When lies summon ancient tribe: Musical ‘The Tribe’ explores joy of being oneself

The Seoul Metropolitan Musical Theater is bringing back its original musical “The Tribe” with a significantly scaled-up second edition that sharpens its focus on “being true to yourself” and the power of solidarity. The show, which premiered in 2024 at the Sejong Center of the Performing Arts’ S Theater to strong word-of-mouth and solid ticket sales, now returns through June 27 with expanded choreography, music and character arcs that push the central questions of identity and honesty to the fore. The work began as a graduation project by Jeon Dong-min at the Korea National University of Arts before being developed into a full staging last year when it charmed audiences with its playful premise: Whenever someone lies, an ancient tribe appears and dances, exposing hidden truths. In the musical, that setup drives the story of Joseph and Chloe, characters who have long tried to match themselves to the roles that society expects. When they accidentally break an ancient mask on display in a museum, they trigger a strange phenomenon in which the tribe appears each time they lie, dan

Jun 15, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
When lies summon ancient tribe: Musical ‘The Tribe’ explores joy of being oneself
Arts & Theater

Installation artist Shim Young-churl wins Moonshin Art Award

Installation artist Shim Young-churl has won the 25th Moonshin Art Award for expanding the terrain of sculpture by embracing light, sound, scent, movement and artificial intelligence (AI) in her immersive work, the city of Changwon said Thursday. Established to honor the artistic spirit of world-renowned sculptor Moon Shin, the annual award, administered by the city and Changwon City Masan Moonshin Art Museum in South Gyeongsang Province, recognizes artists who push contemporary sculpture into new territory. Shim, an honorary professor at the University of Suwon, has built a distinctive visual language grounded in installation art and interactive media art since the 1980s. Her signature “Garden” series brings together light, sound, fragrance, architectural space and audience participation to create multisensory environments, widening the scope of what sculpture can be. In recent years, Shim has woven AI, research and visitor experience into her practice, seeking what she calls “a new sculptural language where technology and the senses meet.” In her 2026 solo exhibition “Dancing

Jun 12, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
Installation artist Shim Young-churl wins Moonshin Art Award
Arts & Theater

When hallucinations become art

Korean painter Lee Keun-min cracks open the border between illness and imagination in “Before It Becomes a Scene,” his first solo exhibition at PKM Gallery. The show turns decades-old hallucinations into searing, flesh-toned canvases that ask who gets to define a “normal” mind. On view through July 25 in the gallery in Seoul’s Jongno District, the show brings together 23 previously unseen works, including large-scale paintings towering nearly 3 meters high and a new series of drawings titled “Refining Hallucinations.” The works, all created since 2023, are being presented in Korea for the first time. Lee traces the origin of this feverish visual world back 25 years, when he was hospitalized after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. There, he confronted what he calls the “authority” of psychiatric language and the overwhelming force of his own hallucinations, populated by fragmented bodies, raw matter and nameless organic forms. He explained that he keeps painting his hallucinations to seize them “before it becomes a scene” — before a doctor names

Jun 11, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
When hallucinations become art
Arts & Theater

9 still life photographers claim new spotlight in AI era at Kukje Gallery

In an age when artificial intelligence (AI) can generate slick images in seconds, Kukje Gallery is highlighting the power of a patient gaze and an optical lens. The gallery’s new photography exhibition, “Objects in Oscillation,” brings together nine leading Korean photographers whose still life works reclaim a genre long sidelined in the country’s contemporary art scene. Curated by Koo Bohn-chang, a pioneering photographer and educator who has helped integrate photography into Korean contemporary art, the show is a rare case for a Korean gallery to devote its exhibition spaces solely to still life photography. Koo said he wanted to make visible a group of artists who have been quietly expanding the possibilities of still life while receiving far less attention than their peers in documentary or conceptual photography. “I wanted to show that there are photographers in Korea working in very diverse ways, and that they should receive the attention and evaluation they deserve,” he said during a press walkthrough. Instead of relying on heavy digital manipulation or generative AI,

Jun 10, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
9 still life photographers claim new spotlight in AI era at Kukje Gallery
Books

Seoul Real Book Fair launches as alternative to Seoul Int'l Book Fair

As Seoul’s popular “text hip” culture fuels record demand for book fairs, a group of independent publishers is launching an alternative event to challenge Korea’s largest literary festival scheduled for later this month. Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF) is slated for June 24 through 28 at Coex in southern Seoul, while Seoul Real Book Fair will take place at Nodeul Lounge on Nodeul Island in Seoul from June 25 to 28. The alternative fair was born from mounting frustration among small and midsized publishers who have been unable to secure booths at SIBF despite the event’s surging popularity. “In recent years, SIBF has effectively become the name of a company with a handful of major shareholders, instead of a public festival cultivated by Korean readers and publishers for the past 50 years,” the organizing committee wrote on Instagram, criticizing SIBF for what they described as “privatization." The committee argues that the marginalization of independent publishers began in 2024 with the establishment of Seoul International Book Fair Inc. The event also dropped conside

Jun 9, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
Seoul Real Book Fair launches as alternative to Seoul Int'l Book Fair
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