my timesThe Korea Times
lhr

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.

Go to Email

Read more

Society

Seoul moves to raise subway free-ride age to 70, include bus access

Public transportation passengers aged 65 and older can ride the subway for free, but that age may soon be raised to 70. The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Monday it will move forward with a public hearing on a proposed plan to raise the age threshold, while expanding transportation support for older residents. City officials said they received an official request from the Korean Seoul Senior Citizens Association earlier in the day to jointly host a public forum on senior transportation welfare policies. The city plans to accept the proposal and organize a hearing that allows broader citizen participation. Details on the schedule and venue will be announced on the city’s website. The plan comes as the city pushes to adjust the current free ride system, which grants unlimited free access to all residents aged 65 and older under the Welfare of Older Persons Act. Making the change was a key pledge by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in his recent reelection campaign earlier this month. The move follows a June 19 meeting between Oh and the association’s leadership, where both sides discussed ad

Jun 22, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
Seoul moves to raise subway free-ride age to 70, include bus access
Arts & Theater

French, Korean artists to reimagine sound at Sejong Center

Sejong Center for the Performing Arts will open its contemporary “Sync Next 26” season with an ambitious Franco-Korean sonic theater project that blurs the boundaries between music, language and everyday sound. Titled “Wind Alone, Sand Alone — Make No Sound,” the world premiere brings together three artists from Korea and three from France who treat sound not as a finished product but as a living process shaped by encounters and relationships. The performance is part of celebrations in Korea and France for the 140th anniversary of diplomatic ties. Haegeum performer Kim Ye-ji, geomungo player Sim Eun-yong and jeongga singer Cho Yoon-young, sound artist Remi Klemensiewicz, viola d’amore player Olivier Marin and vocalist Christian Ploix will share the Sejong S Theater stage from July 3 to 5, before touring France and the United Kingdom in October. Jeongga is a genre of Korean vocal music that developed in aristocratic and court circles that is characterized by slow tempos, subtle ornamentation and a close relationship with poetic texts. The haegeum is a traditional two-stringed

Jun 22, 2026By Lee Hae-rin
French, Korean artists to reimagine sound at Sejong Center
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

Jun 19, 2026By 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

Jun 18, 2026By 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

Jun 18, 2026By 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

Jun 17, 2026By 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

Jun 17, 2026By 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
previous page
56789
next page

Top 5 stories

Korea Times
About Us
Introduction
History
Contact Us
Products & Services
Subscribe
E-paper
RSS Service
Content Sales
Site Map
Policy
Code of Ethics
Ombudsman
Privacy Policy
Youth Protection Policy
Terms of Service
Copyright Policy
Family Site
Hankookilbo
Dongwha Group
FacebookXYoutubeInstagram
CEO & Publisher: Oh Young-jinDigital News Email: webmaster@koreatimes.co.krTel: 02-724-2114Online newspaper registration No: 서울,아52844Date of registration: 2020.02.05Masthead: The Korea TimesCopyright © koreatimes.co.kr. All rights reserved.