The Korea Times

Parents’ Day travel trend sees growing demand for tailored tours

One common sight at Korean airports in May used to be elderly couples boarding flights to overseas destinations. For many, the trips are a form of “filial travel,” paid for by adult children to celebrate Parents’ Day on May 8. Equally familiar were the large group tours they joined, packed with fellow Korean travelers. Recently, however, Korea’s filial travel market has been shifting away from large group tours toward smaller, more customized packages tailored for comfort and individual preferences. “Filial travel is not a category where consumers try to cut costs,” an official from Kyowon Tour said, Friday. “Compared to independent travel or trips with young children, demand is less sensitive to price increases.” Large group tours, once a staple of overseas travel, are rapidly giving way to smaller, more personalized packages that prioritize comfort, flexibility and convenience. Travel agencies said packages featuring “no tipping, no optional tours and no shopping stops” are increasingly preferred, particularly among older travelers. These offerings are designed to re

May 9, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Parents’ Day travel trend sees growing demand for tailored tours

Music

Dora Morelenbaum brings new Brazilian sound wave to Seoul

A soft bossa nova breeze swept through western Seoul Thursday night as Brazilian singer-songwriter Dora Morelenbaum brought her genre-blurring sound to Korea for the first time, opening her Asia tour at a small venue in Hongdae. The concert at West Bridge Live Hall offered Korean listeners a rare chance to experience contemporary Brazilian music up close on a spring weeknight. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1996, Morelenbaum is one of the most closely watched artists among Brazil’s new wave of musicians redefining Música Popular Brasileira (MPB). The daughter of cellist-arranger Jaques Morelenbaum and vocalist Paula Morelenbaum, who both performed with bossa nova legend Antônio Carlos Jobim and collaborated with the late Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, she grew up in a household where music was an everyday language rather than a separate profession. “My parents are musicians and that took a big part of my musical formation,” she said in an interview with The Korea Times before the show. “When I was little, I traveled a lot with my family for their shows. I was always surrounded

May 9, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Dora Morelenbaum brings new Brazilian sound wave to Seoul

Arts & Theater

Brushstrokes in a broken nation: 3 Korean modernists who painted new identities

Korea’s first generation of modernist painters came of age in a country shattered by colonization and the Korean War (1950-53), long before K‑culture became a global brand and art auction records made headlines. For Park Re-hyun, Rhee Seund-ja and Kim Whanki, making art meant reinventing both themselves and their nation’s visual language while navigating poverty, patriarchy and exile in post-war Korea. Their works, now showcased at Global Sae-A Art Space in Seoul, trace how a modern Korean identity was rebuilt on canvases long before it was projected on global streaming platforms and pop stages. The works also reflect their personal struggles, especially for the two women artists. Modernism's arrival in a broken country Modernism was an art movement that emerged in the West in the late 19th and early 20th century, rejecting traditional authority and pursuing rationality and autonomy on the basis of reason and individualism. After liberation from Japan, Korea’s art scene came into direct contact with the spirit of Western modernism, and "the realistic, academic painting style of th

May 8, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Brushstrokes in a broken nation: 3 Korean modernists who painted new identities

Arts & Theater

Lee Sang-jun’s New York comedy debut shows Korean humor can travel

Celebrating his 20th year as a comedian, Lee Sang-jun took his show in April to a stage in New York City. There, he came to realize that laughter can travel farther than language. “I didn’t plan it as a 20th anniversary show” Lee said in a recent written interview with The Korea Times, days after wrapping up his sold-out “Lee Sang Jun Show Live in New York” at The Marquee Astoria where he performed for some 1,400 people. “I was just working hard and suddenly realized that it had been 20 years. At some point I felt that, unless I completely changed my style, there would be nothing new left for me to show in Korea.” That realization pushed him to look outward just as Korea’s comedy ecosystem was being upended, with major network sketch shows disappearing and many comedians rebuilding their careers on streaming platforms, podcasts and live shows. Instead of switching fully into Western-style stand-up comedy, Lee leaned into what he already knew: tightly written, audience-driven bits honed under the pressure of having to create fresh material every week. “I don’t think o

May 7, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Lee Sang-jun’s New York comedy debut shows Korean humor can travel

Music

Soprano Sumi Jo marks 40 years on world stage, signs to SM with new album ‘Continuum’

Soprano Sumi Jo is marking the 40th anniversary of her international career with a new album, a fresh partnership with K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment and a yearlong slate of concerts and mentorship projects that she hopes will carry her legacy into the next generation. At a press conference in Seoul on Wednesday, the 61-year-old singer looked back on four decades of breakthroughs, beginning with her 1986 debut as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Italy. Since winning major competitions and joining leading opera houses abroad, Jo has built a globe-spanning career that has taken her to the world’s top stages, from La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera to concert halls across Asia, Europe and the Americas. She became the first Asian to sweep seven major vocal competitions and star as prima donna at five of the world’s leading opera houses. Also, she became the first Asian and first Korean to win a Grammy for Best Opera Recording and Commandeur of France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Her exclusive recording contract with SM Entertainment is central to t

May 6, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Soprano Sumi Jo marks 40 years on world stage, signs to SM with new album ‘Continuum’

Books

‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang voted top favorite among Int’l Booker Prize winners

Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” has been chosen as readers’ favorite among International Booker Prize winning titles, underscoring the enduring global resonance of the unsettling novel a decade after its win. To mark the 10th anniversary of the prize in its current format, organizers invited readers to vote online between February and April on the 10 winning titles from 2016 to 2025. Nearly 10,000 people took part, with almost one-third selecting “The Vegetarian” as their favorite, the prize committee announced Monday, U.K. time. First published in Korean in 2007 and translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015, “The Vegetarian” became Han’s first book to reach English-speaking readers and went on to clinch the International Booker (then the Man Booker International Prize) the following year. The novel follows Yeong-hye, a seemingly ordinary woman who refuses to eat meat and steadily “naturalizes” herself in a disturbing rebellion against patriarchal and human-centered violence. At the time, judges praised it as “concise yet elaborate, and at the same time shocki

May 5, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang voted top favorite among Int’l Booker Prize winners

Travel & Food

Sports tourism becomes Korea’s next big ticket as fans turn games into getaways

Sports tourism is emerging as the travel industry’s next big hit in Korea, powered by fandom-driven travel trends, healthier lifestyles and a shift toward trips with a clear purpose. Once a niche for die-hard fans, “direct viewing” trips — in which travelers build their itinerary around a specific game or athlete — are now moving into the mainstream. From Gen Z office workers to middle‑aged sports lovers, more Koreans are choosing when and where to travel based on game schedules instead of cherry blossoms or shopping districts. Travel agencies are racing to catch up. NOL Universe, the country's largest tour operator, is currently developing five categories of sports‑focused products, ranging from European football league packages and U.S. professional sports such as MLB, NBA and NFL, to World Cup, Olympics and Asian Games cheering tours, fan meeting-linked products and motorsports trips. The company has already tested the waters with a fan meeting and live game tour built around national basketball team member Lee Hyun‑jung in Japan’s B.League early this year, followed

May 4, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Sports tourism becomes Korea’s next big ticket as fans turn games into getaways

Others

Debate over moving Nat'l University of Arts reignites before local elections

A debate over the possible relocation of the Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts) has reignited ahead of the June 3 local elections, pitting lawmakers’ regional development plans against students, faculty and art professionals who warn the move would undermine Korea’s cultural competitiveness. On April 22, 11 lawmakers from the Democratic Part of Korea (DPK), led by Rep. Jeong Jun-ho, submitted a bill to relocate K-Arts from Seoul to Gwangju, around 300 kilometers south of Seoul, and establish a graduate school that would grant master’s and doctoral degrees — a long-standing demand from the institution. The bill’s sponsors argued that the move would address the concentration of cultural infrastructure in Seoul and help stem the exodus of young regional artists to the capital, citing Gwangju’s cultural assets, which include the Gwangju Biennale and National Asian Culture Center. Spearheaded by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the university opened in 1992 in Seoul and currently has 4,804 students enrolled as well as 425 faculty members. The proposal received

May 3, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Debate over moving Nat'l University of Arts reignites before local elections

Arts & Theater

‘Inside Other Spaces’ to reexamine trailblazing women artists across decades

Between 1956 and 1976, being a woman artist was difficult almost everywhere. The postwar art world left women little room to educate themselves and build careers, pressures that ended up helping fuel the rise of the feminist movement. An upcoming exhibition at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul will shine a light on these sidelined artists by reconstructing the immersive “environments” in which they once worked and experimented. Titled “Inside Other Spaces: Environments by Women Artists, 1956-1976,” the exhibition traces two decades in which women around the world built room-scale works that viewers could enter and experience with their bodies. The project was first presented in 2023 at MUDEC in Milan and later traveled to Haus der Kunst in Munich, MAXXI in Rome and M+ in Hong Kong in their own versions before coming to Seoul. Curators Andrea Lissoni and Marina Pugliese researched 11 artists, largely from regions and countries that curators said have been underrepresented in canonical Western art histories. Their environments, often made from light, sound, plastic and foam, anticip

Apr 30, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

‘Inside Other Spaces’ to reexamine trailblazing women artists across decades

Travel & Food

Seoul's most surreal subway station: unknown story of Noksapyeong Station

The notes of Chopin’s Nocturne drifted up through the deep underground air inside Noksapyeong Station in Seoul on Monday afternoon this week, echoing off curved walls and bouncing against translucent glass banisters. A commuter sat at an upright piano in the concourse — one of the station’s cultural fixtures — and for a few unannounced minutes, the cavernous hall felt less like a subway station and more like a dream that missed its exit. That is precisely the effect Noksapyeong Station tends to have on people. Even after 25 years of operation, Seoul Metro Line 6’s most architecturally audacious station can still make passengers pause mid-escalator, compelled to look up, down or sideways, at a structure that seems more like a science-fiction film set than a city subway system. In a sense, it was built for a world that never quite materialized. Station with grand ambitions When Seoul began constructing its sixth metro line in the mid-1990s, planners had a reason to dream big around the Noksapyeong area. Officials were considering relocating City Hall to the site of the current Yo

Apr 29, 2026By Lee Hae-rin

Lee Hae-rin

Read more

Parents’ Day travel trend sees growing demand for tailored tours

Dora Morelenbaum brings new Brazilian sound wave to Seoul

Brushstrokes in a broken nation: 3 Korean modernists who painted new identities

Lee Sang-jun’s New York comedy debut shows Korean humor can travel

Soprano Sumi Jo marks 40 years on world stage, signs to SM with new album ‘Continuum’

‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang voted top favorite among Int’l Booker Prize winners

Sports tourism becomes Korea’s next big ticket as fans turn games into getaways

Debate over moving Nat'l University of Arts reignites before local elections

‘Inside Other Spaces’ to reexamine trailblazing women artists across decades

Seoul's most surreal subway station: unknown story of Noksapyeong Station

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