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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.

Spring Awakening reveals naivete of youth

Musical featuring provocative teen themes returns to Korea By Kwon Mee-yoo Charismatic but inexperienced, curious about the secrets of her body and haunted by dreams of a woman’s legs, the daring teens of the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening” returned to the stage at Yonkang Hall of Doosan Art Center in central Seoul. The musical is based on a late-19th-century play of the same title, created in the United States in 2006 and premiered here in 2009. However, the dynamic, daring heartbeat of teenagers speaks the same language in Korea with alternative indie rock music. Kim Min-jung, the local director of the show, said “Spring Awakening” can change by the different textures of the actors and the new actors have brought freshness to this year’s production. There are no top stars, but young, aspiring actors breathe fresh air into the second production in Korea. Yoon Hyun-min, who plays the role of a model student-turned-rebel Melchior, was a baseball player with the Hanwha Eagles and Doosan Bears. He fell in love with the stage after watching the musical “F

Jun 27, 2011By Kwon Mee-yoo

Clubs, art exhibitions & sports games

Clubs Underlounge Seoul Hongdae or Hongik University Area This is the local club of a hip Japanese chain that also has a branch in Shanghai. Located in the famous clubbing area, Hongdae, it’s all flashy with loud music and lights. Spacious, with a supersized crystal ball hanging over your head, DJs from near and far make music while you can hang out at the bar or classy private rooms. Located near the main entrance of Hongik Univ. Call (02) 325-5715 or visit www.underlounge.kr. Club M2 Hongdae M2 features top DJs from home and abroad. The dance floor and the DJ are in the center of the club, which attracts a trendy crowd along with models and celebrities. Packed on the weekends. Visit www.ohoo.net. Club Volume Itaewon Located in the Crown Hotel near Noksapyeong subway station Club Volume offers the finest venue for specially themed weekly events and talented international DJs for unforgetable nights of dancing and debauchery. Reborn after extensive renovations to maintain its reputation of a quality club with a superior sound system, luxurious setting and st

Jun 24, 2011

Concerts, museums & theater

Classical Concerts The Four Cellists Busan Citizen’s Hall, Keimyung Art Center, Seoul Arts Center* June 24-26 Four cellists, Korea’s Young Song (Song Young-hoon), China’s Li-Wei, Switzerland’s Joel Marosi and Sweden’s Claes Gunnarsson, will tour Busan (June 24), Daegu (June 25) and Seoul (June 26). The virtuosos will perform not only standard classics but also tango and contemporary pieces featured on film soundtracks. Tickets cost 33,000 to 100,000 won. For more information call (02) 2658-3546. Bolshoi Theatre Soloists Gala Concert Seoul Arts Center* July 1 An opera gala will be held featuring soloists of Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Theatre; soprano Lolitta Semenina, mezzo-soprano Svetlana Shilova, tenor Oleg Dolgov and bass Mikhail Kazakov. The Russian theater’s conductor-in-residence Pavel Sorokin will conduct the Prime Philharmonic Orchestra in staple operatic arias as well as Korean and Russian folk songs. Tickets cost 50,000 to 130,000 won. For more information call (02)-2650-7481. Opera ‘Madame Butterfly’ Sejong Center for the Performing Arts* June 24-26 A K

Jun 24, 2011

Lee U-fan retrospective opens in NY

Guggenheim exhibition explores sense of infinity via dots, lines By Kwon Mee-yoo Korean artist Lee U-fan’s retrospective “Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York opened Friday. The exhibition introduces the prominent artist-philosopher and his post-Minimalistic artistic world to North America. Lee’s artworks expand the sense of infinity by simply using dots, lines, square steel plates and round stones. Lee is only the third Asian artist to have a retrospective at the prestigious museum, following the late Korean video artist Paik Nam-june (1932-2006) and Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang. “Lee U-fan is an artist of extraordinary creative vision. Admired, even revered, abroad, Lee is surprisingly little known in North America, and this late-career survey, which we offer to the public as part of the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative, is overdue,” Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, said in a press release. Some 90 works by Lee, ranging from paintings and sculpture to a new site-specific installation, a

Jun 24, 2011By Kwon Mee-yoo

Feminine modesty in painted stories

By Kwaak Je-yup With not one but two hugely-successful artists who share her name, one would not fault painter and children’s book illustrator Kim Soo-ja for feeling extra pressure to produce something spectacular. Yet “My Beautiful Garden: Where little, small beings sing night and day” at Only Gallery in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul, is charmingly indifferent to comparisons; it is an intensely intimate, self-referenced affair that deserves attention on its own merit. Her fifth solo exhibition features over 20 paintings, collages, and other works on canvas and in ceramics. It is a peek into her appreciation of modest memories and beauty, said to be inspired by an old pile of lace her mother recently gave her. Words like sophistication or style become meaningless in the warmth of her works. Along the same lines, her previous paintings’ vivid, contrasted colors are tamed — muted, even. They recall instead the pale hues on Korean traditional paintings, whose familiar tints discreetly draw the local audience into her inner circle. Each painting seems to recall

Jun 22, 2011

Richard Gere spotlights Tibetan plight in photos

By Lee Hyo-won Richard Gere shared personal photographs which he says attest to the cruelty inflicted by the Chinese on Tibetans in Seoul Wednesday. An avid Buddhist and supporter of the Dalai Lama, the Hollywood actor took the initiative to make strong political statements regarding human rights in Tibet. “No one wanted to ask a political question so I will answer one anyhow,” Gere told the local press ahead of the opening of an exhibition at Seoul Arts Center displaying some 60 images he took in various Asian countries, when the event organizers refrained from interpreting political questions posed by reporters. “I think it’s impossible to look at these photographs and not realize the extraordinary suffering of the Tibetan people. There’s one really strong image there that is undeniable,” he said, referring to a collection of shots he took in the late-1980s in Dharmasala, India. The collage is comprised of shots of a mural featuring Tibetan nuns being tortured by the Chinese as well as an image of three nuns he had met in China in 1993, the only time Gere was allowed

Jun 22, 2011

K-pop concert hall to open today

By Chung Ah-young The Olympic Hall in Olympic Park in Seoul will reopen as a K-pop concert hall today after a one-year renovation project. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation said the concert hall will be a cultural complex that offers not only musical facilities but also content from the past, present and future of K-pop at one place. Located in Bangi-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, the concert hall will be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities including main and secondary halls, and K-pop “hallyu” (Korean wave) and K-pop music history exhibition rooms along with a music academy for singing and music lectures. The two-story main hall has 2,452 seats for major shows and the small hall has 240 seats for underground and indie bands’ performances. The Olympic Hall had hosted numerous concerts and performances in the past because of the lack of the concert venues particularly for the K-pop musicians. However, as it was originally designed as an indoor tennis court in the first place, it had a lot of flaws as a concert hall.

Jun 21, 2011

B-boy world championship due in Seoul next week

Tiger JK, Jay Park to give special performances By Lee Hyo-won Get ready for some of the most mind-bending, gravity-defying and joint-popping contortions, with the opening of an international b-boy tournament in Seoul next week. More than 200 dancers from 16 countries will take part in R-16 Korea World B-Boy Masters Championship, to be held on July 2 and 3 at Seoul Olympic Hall, Olympic Park. In addition to rowdy battles and solo dance-offs, the fifth edition of the event, sponsored by the Korea Tourism Organism, invites top K-pop stars to give special performances. The festivities will also feature art and graffiti exhibitions along with an open-air street market. The tournament is considered one of the top five most esteemed b-boy competitions in the world. “Featuring b-boys from different parts of the globe carefully selected through regional preliminaries, and international rankings, it’s a world cup for b-boys designed to determine the best of the best,” said organizers in a press release. For the first time since its inception, international preliminaries w

Jun 21, 2011

Artists seek cooperation with local merchants

By Kwon Mee-yoo The “underground” craftsmen and artists of Seoul Art Space Sindang are initiating an exhibition titled "Gong, Gongui Bang _ Rooms for Art and Craft in Public Space,” at their other location, Seoul Art Space Seogyo near Hongik University, Seoul. Seoul Art Space Sindang (SASS) is located in the underground arcade below Jungang Market in Jung-gu, central Seoul, and provides studios for local artists, especially craftsmen. The poster for the exhibition is a planar figure for a box, which can be used as a pedestal at the exhibition as well as a “to-go” box. The characteristics of the SASS boost collaboration of artists and local market merchants. At this exhibition Oh Hwa-jin presents four of her works ― “The Consolation,” “Molybdenum,” “Walking for the Enlightenment” and “The Device.” Her creations take inspiration from everyday objects merchants use such as stools, tripods, knives and dishes. She covers them with red wool, cotton and other materials to make her sculptures. “Oh applied for the Sindang studio because she wanted to work with objects fro

Jun 20, 2011

Award-winning hyo cartoons by children on display

By Lee Hyo-won Thematic prizewinning cartoons by children from around the world are being shown this week at the Gyeongbok Palace Metro Museum, central Seoul. Works on display include 25 pieces by young artists from Korea, Indonesia and China, the top contenders that stood out from among 8,700-odd pieces in the 3rd International HYO Cartoon Competition. The event, organized by Kyungmin College and sponsored by Seoul Metro and The Korea Times, challenges children, from kindergarteners to high school students, to reflect on “hyo” or filial piety and other themes of family love, and, moreover, to give them creative expression. Visitors will be able to view the grand prizewinning (1.5 million won scholarship) “The Tear of Father,” a hand-drawn animation sequence by Jeong Yeon-wu, a student at Korea Animation High School. It portrays the growing process of a young man from childhood to adulthood as a long sojourn across the folds and ridges of a father’s wrinkled face. “Ms. Jeong’s piece received high scores from implications and the reversal of the excitement in the w

Jun 20, 2011
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