The Korea Times

Seoul's art scene takes center stage as Frieze, Kiaf open

Seoul’s cultural pulse is beating around art this week as galleries, collectors and visitors converge on Coex for the twin openings of Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul, which opened on Wednesday, while late-night gallery openings and major museum exhibitions spread the energy across the city. A combined 308 galleries are participating in the fairs. Frieze Seoul debuted five years ago, and this year marks the final time the two events will be held in the same COEX building. The arrangement will change next year as Frieze Seoul moves to Dongdaemun Design Plaza while Kiaf remains at Coex during the convention center’s renovation. The separation will not end their partnership, as the two — which initially agreed to collaborate for five years starting in 2022 — extended their agreement through 2031. Frieze Seoul brings together 133 galleries from 30 countries and regions, including Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Gladstone Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, Pace Gallery, Thaddaeus Ropac, White Cube and David Zwirner. Gagosian has devoted its booth to British artist Damien Hirst, presenting works from his

Sep 2, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Seoul's art scene takes center stage as Frieze, Kiaf open

Korean Heritage

COVER STORY 'Dress Like a Museum' contest triggers cosplay sensation

For one day, Korea’s most revered artifacts are no longer kept behind museum glass. Instead, they stride down runways, pose for selfies and perform choreography in front of crowds at museums across the country, as golden Buddhist sculptures, smiling Silla-era roof tiles, Bronze Age bells and even a life-size map of the Korean Peninsula come to life for the National Museum of Korea’s cosplay contest. The relatively new tradition has become like a Korean version of Halloween, when for one day in September, participants become the cultural treasures they love most. This year's “Dress Like a Museum” has drawn 275 teams and 643 participants — more than triple last year’s 83 entries — turning what began as a museum participation program two years ago into a fast-growing heritage fandom event. Contestants are not only asked to imitate heritage but also to bring it to life through their own storytelling. Echoing the contest’s poster slogan — “It is time to awaken the artifact sleeping inside you” — the event invites participants to discover a personal connection with heri

Sep 2, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

[COVER STORY] 'Dress Like a Museum' contest triggers cosplay sensation

Arts & Theater

Friedrich Kunath finds home in music, melancholy, motion at Pace Seoul

German-born artist Friedrich Kunath has made a life out of movement, going from East Germany to Los Angeles and, more recently, bouncing between Berlin, Austria and other temporary homes. In his first solo exhibition with Pace Gallery in Seoul, that restlessness becomes a landscape of its own, with distant horizons, cinematic sunsets and an unresolved longing for home. “The Nearest Faraway Place,” running through Oct. 24 at Pace Gallery in Itaewon, brings together new paintings and drawings that dwell on longing, melancholy and the search for home. The exhibition is Kunath’s second with Pace since joining the gallery’s program in 2025 and his first solo presentation in Seoul. The title comes from an instrumental song by the Beach Boys, whose lush harmonies Kunath cited as a model for balancing beauty with darker emotional undercurrent. But it also names the contradiction at the center of his practice: feeling close while remaining irretrievably distant. “I think it’s an inner condition,” Kunath said during an interview with The Korea Times, Saturday. “Right now, I feel I

Sep 1, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Friedrich Kunath finds home in music, melancholy, motion at Pace Seoul

Books

AI can translate words, but doesn't bear responsibility, experts say

Translators must defend their role not by competing with artificial intelligence (AI) on speed, but by taking responsibility for the cultural and ethical choices embedded in their work, experts said Friday at a conference on literary translation organized by the Literature Translation Institute (LTI) Korea. The International Translators' Summit brought together Lee Sang-bin, a professor of English interpretation and translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies; Korean American literary translator and poet Stine An; and novelist-translator Moon Ji-hyuk. The discussion wasn't about whether AI can produce fluent translation. Instead, the panelists focused on who should bear responsibility for a translation, how translators should use AI and what kind of work must remain human-led. Lee argued that translation is not simply the transfer of meaning from one language to another. “I want to say that translation is not the work of copying meaning, but an act of responding to the words of the other,” the professor said, adding that a translator can never completely know an author or sou

Aug 28, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

AI can translate words, but doesn't bear responsibility, experts say

Arts & Theater

HYPNOSIS THERAPY wants to bring riches to Korea's underground music scene

“You can become rich through subculture.” Rapper Jjangyou delivered the line with the unvarnished confidence that has become central to HYPNOSIS THERAPY’s music: abrasive and determinedly unafraid of excess. For the Seoul-based duo of Jjangyou and producer Jflow, the claim is not a rejection of underground ideals in favor of commercial calculation. It is an argument for the survival of musicians whose work falls outside Korea’s pop mainstream and for building an ecosystem in which they can keep making music without being pushed out by financial insecurity. “We want to prove that you can make a living — even become successful and wealthy — through subculture,” Jjangyou said during an interview with The Korea Times at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. “If we can do that through this kind of music, I think it could give other people hope.” HYPNOSIS THERAPY will close Sejong Center’s contemporary performance season, Sync Next, with “Mushroom House: Techno” on Sept. 4 and “Mushroom House: Live” on Sept. 5 at the Sejong S Theater. The duo sees the two-night p

Aug 28, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

HYPNOSIS THERAPY wants to bring riches to Korea's underground music scene

Arts & Theater

Do Ho Suh returns to Seoul with exhibition beyond fabric walls

Do Ho Suh’s translucent fabric houses have long made him one of the most globally recognizable Korean contemporary artists. But an upcoming exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) Seoul seeks to move beyond the familiar fabric forms to bring together the 64-year-old artist’s childhood drawings and thread paintings with recent works shaped by fatherhood. “Do Ho Suh,” opening Thursday and running through Feb. 9, 2027, explores more than 500 works including installations, sculptures, drawings, videos and archival materials. “The MMCA exhibition shows everything from drawings I made in kindergarten to my very latest works,” Suh said during a press event in Seoul, Wednesday. The exhibition was initially conceived as a retrospective, he said, but the museum and the artist quickly concluded that format would not work for a practice containing large-scale, site-specific and permanently installed works that cannot be transported to the museum. Instead, the exhibit refocused on his early works — many of which have rarely or never been shown in K

Aug 26, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Do Ho Suh returns to Seoul with exhibition beyond fabric walls

Arts & Theater

Lee Jaram brings pansori 'Snow, Snow, Snow' home after acclaimed run in Avignon

Pansori performer Lee Jaram will return to Seoul in October with “Snow, Snow, Snow,” her contemporary reimagining of Leo Tolstoy’s “Master and Man,” following a sold-out run and standing ovations at this July's Festival d’Avignon in France. The two-night production will be staged Oct. 23 and 24 at LG Arts Center Seoul’s LG Signature Hall in southwestern Seoul's Magok area. It will be the first large-scale performance in Seoul, following its 2025 premiere at the center’s smaller stage. Written, composed and performed by Lee, “Snow, Snow, Snow” follows Vasili, a merchant who becomes lost in a blizzard while pursuing a profitable forest deal with his servant Nikita. Lee transforms Tolstoy’s 1895 short story into a one-person pansori epic, moving among the merchant, servant, horse, dog, narrator and the snowstorm itself with a fan, voice and the percussion accompaniment of gosu, or drummer, Lee Jun-hyoung. In France, its four performances from July 17 to 22 sold out, with people reportedly lining up outside in hope of securing returned tickets and joining the performan

Aug 25, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Lee Jaram brings pansori 'Snow, Snow, Snow' home after acclaimed run in Avignon

Books

Author Jo Jung-rae returns with love story, calls literature defense of humanity

Novelist Jo Jung-rae, best known for sweeping epics chronicling Korea’s modern history, has returned to romantic love in his new two-volume novel, “Seorikkot,” (frost flower in Korean). He said that literature must preserve human imagination and feeling in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and smartphones. At a press conference in Seoul, the 83-year-old author said his new work, which may be his final full-length novel, was the first work in his 56-year literary career with love at its center. “I wanted to write a sad love story,” Jo said. “But this is not a simple love story.” The novel marks a notable departure for Jo, whose landmark historical trilogy — “Taebaek Mountain Range” (1989), “Arirang” (1994) and “Hangang” (2001) — has long been regarded as one of Korean literature’s most ambitious attempts to narrate the country’s 20th century upheavals. The three sprawling novels, which trace colonial rule, national division, war, industrialization and ordinary lives caught in history, have sold more than 15 million copies, accord

Aug 24, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Author Jo Jung-rae returns with love story, calls literature defense of humanity

Books

Book lovers flock to buy cover art, collectibles, literary buns

At noon on Sunday, the third floor of Yongsan’s I’Park Mall in Seoul offered a compact map of what is famous among young Koreans: Instagram-famous desserts, fashion labels, electronic keyboards, anime and Harry Potter merchandise. In the middle of it all, visitors were quietly leafing through Virginia Woolf, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen. They had waited hours to get there. The books were part of “Beyond the Sentence,” a temporary pop-up store by Minumsa, one of Korea’s best-known publishers, and character intellectual property brand Today’s Cuteness. Running from Aug. 11 through Tuesday, the pop-up turns the publisher’s familiar World Literature series and poetry books into collectible objects, pairing classic covers with deliberately loose, childlike illustrations and wide-eyed animal characters. The project will move to Busan on Aug. 28 until Sept. 30. The scene captures a growing publishing trend in Korea: books are no longer purchased only to be read. They are photographed, displayed, customized, carried and collected — a development ti

Aug 24, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Book lovers flock to buy cover art, collectibles, literary buns

People & Events

Daughter of former basketball star Woo Ji-won crowned Miss Korea 2026

Woo Seo-yun, the 22-year-old daughter of former professional basketball player Woo Ji-won, was crowned Miss Korea 2026 on Saturday at the 70th Miss Korea pageant in Seoul. The final competition, hosted by Global E&B, an affiliate of the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, took place at the Coex Auditorium in Seoul. Woo, who has advanced to the national contest after winning second place in the Miss Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon regional pageant, emerged as the winner among 26 finalists selected through eight regional competitions nationwide. Oh Su-min, 25, a student of international liberal studies at Waseda University, was named first runner-up, while Lee Min-sol, who studies economics at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College, was named second runner-up. Visibly emotional after receiving the crown, Woo thanked her fellow contestants, family and supporters. “I truly did not expect this at all,” she said. “My 70th-class peers worked so hard, and I am so happy. I am grateful to my family and friends for supporting and cheering me on.” She added that the stage

Aug 23, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Lee Hae-rin

Read more

Seoul's art scene takes center stage as Frieze, Kiaf open

COVER STORY 'Dress Like a Museum' contest triggers cosplay sensation

Friedrich Kunath finds home in music, melancholy, motion at Pace Seoul

AI can translate words, but doesn't bear responsibility, experts say

HYPNOSIS THERAPY wants to bring riches to Korea's underground music scene

Do Ho Suh returns to Seoul with exhibition beyond fabric walls

Lee Jaram brings pansori 'Snow, Snow, Snow' home after acclaimed run in Avignon

Author Jo Jung-rae returns with love story, calls literature defense of humanity

Book lovers flock to buy cover art, collectibles, literary buns

Daughter of former basketball star Woo Ji-won crowned Miss Korea 2026

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