City Seoul Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Jordan Moreau Lee Sun-kyun, a South Korean actor who starred in the Oscars’ 2020 best picture winner “Parasite,” died Wednesday morning, according to the Associated Press and the South Korean news agency Yonhap. He was 48. He was found dead in a car in a park in central Seoul, according to the AP.

The standout movie at Sundance this year, Celine Song’s indie hit Past Lives has touched the parts of the human heart not reached since Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. Starring Greta Lee, it tells the story of Nora, a Korean-born playwright on the brink of breakout success in New York, who is taken by surprise when, out of the blue, her childhood sweetheart from Seoul, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), makes contact on social media. Will it lead to some light nostalgic fun? Or is there something deeper — Koreans call it inyeon, the idea that some things are meant to be — that makes them soulmates?

Australian chef and restaurateur Bill Granger has died surrounded by his family in London.The 54-year-old died “peacefully” in hospital on Christmas Day, according to a post shared on his Instagram account.The Granger & Co gounder was surrounded by his wife, Natalie Elliott, and three daughters - Edie, Inès and Bunny. An emotional post shared on social media said: “It is with great sadness that the family of Bill Granger announce he has passed away on 25th December at the age of 54.

Gyeongseong Creature.At a press event for Gyeongseong Creature, Park Seo-jun and his co-star Han So-hee shared several stories about their time filming for the new K-drama. The actor revealed that the first scene he shot was one of his character getting tortured, which made the shoot particularly challenging.“The day was cold, as I recall.

BLACKPINK have released a brand-new trailer for their upcoming virtual concert, ‘BLACKPINK: A VR Encore’.Released today (December 20), the trailer for ‘BLACKPINK: A VR Encore’ is set to the girl group’s hit 2018 song ‘Ddu-Du Ddu-Du’ and features footage from the special finale show of their ‘Born Pink’ world tour at Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome.“Filming our upcoming VR concert in the heart of Seoul has added an extra layer of magic to this project,” BLACKPINK said in a press release, per Billboard. “It’s where it all began for us, and being able to share this unique experience with our fans around the world feels incredibly special.”“It’s great to break down geographical barriers with The Diamond Bros and Meta, bringing back the memory of ‘BLACKPINK World Tour [Born Pink]’ finale straight into your home,” the quartet added.The 70-minute ‘BLACKPINK: A VR Encore’ concert special premieres in VR on December 26 at 5pm PT in Meta Horizon Worlds.

Caroline Brew editor Teo Yoo (“Past Lives,” “Love to Hate You”) has been cast as a series regular in Season 2 of Netflix‘s “The Recruit.” He will play a highly skilled South Korean NIS agent “with a subversive sense of humor and willing to go to any lengths to protect those he cares about,” according to the release. Per the official logline, Season 2 of “The Recruit” finds Noah Centineo‘s CIA lawyer, Owen Hendricks, “pulled into a life-threatening espionage situation in South Korea, only to realize that the bigger threat just might be coming from inside the Agency.” Yoo was recently nominated for the best lead performance Independent Spirit Award via his role in Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” starring opposite Greta Lee.

Teo Yoo (Past Lives, Love to Hate You) will join Noah Centineo in Season 2 of Netflix‘s The Recruit as a series regular.

WOODZ has compares his upcoming military enlistment to a “temporary memory loss” in a new interview.WOODZ recently dropped the single ‘Amnesia’, which will be his last new music release until the end of his upcoming military enlistment in January 2024. “Ending with [the release of ‘Amnesia’], I will be leaving for a moment and live a different life,” he said, per Korea JoongAng Daily.“But I will return [from the military] swiftly, just as if we all had a temporary memory loss,” the singer added.

EXCLUSIVE: CJ 4DPLEX and Europe’s Kinepolis Group are expanding their longstanding partnership to include 21 further ScreenX auditoriums across Europe and North America. The Kinepolis openings bring the cinema chain’s total of ScreenX screens to 26. This pact will give Kinepolis the largest ScreenX footprint in mainland Europe.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Static Waves, a Netherlands-based channels and content distribution company, has teamed with Korea’s Arirang TV to launch K-Wave, which they claim will be the world’s first free ad-supported television (FAST) channel dedicated to Korean popular music (K-pop). K-Wave will launch in January in the U.S. Europe and Asia via Zeasn, a platform which distributes to TCL, HiSense TV+ and Vestel brands of connected TVs pre-installed with Zeasn’s Whale OS. Its content will include: original series, live concerts, documentaries on K-pop stars, music and fashion trends, dance instruction videos and behind-the-scenes clips. To propel its Korean expansion, Static Waves has established a local business entity, Static Waves Korea, based in Seoul.

K-pop girl group ITZY have released a music video for their new song, ‘Born to Be’.‘Born to Be’ is a pre-release single for their second studio album of the same name, due out on January 8 alongside its lead single ‘Untouchable’. The new dance-focused music video for ‘Born to Be’ features Yeji, Ryujin, Chaeryeong and Yuna as they perform intense choreography on fiery set with eye-popping 3D animation.“Born to be, born to be, wild and free oh, oh / No matter what they say, Imma say it louder / I do it my way, always hit it harder / Born to be, born to be, wild and free oh, oh,” the quartet sing on the chorus.In the lead-up to their ‘Born to Be’ album, the four ITZY members will be releasing music videos for their solo songs over the upcoming weeks along with another pre-release song, ‘Mr.

Demon Slayer won’t have to wait long for the release of its upcoming fourth season.Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba season four will follow the Hashira Training Arc, the anime’s X (formerly Twitter) account confirmed last night (December 10), and is set to premiere in Japan in Spring next year with an hour-long episode. A concrete release date for the series has yet to be announced.Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Hashira Training Arc TV series will be premiering in Spring 2024 with an Hour-Long Episode!#DemonSlayer pic.twitter.com/euEX9lv5ZI— Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (English) (@DemonSlayerUSA) December 10, 2023However, a number of Demon Slayer fans won’t have to wait until Spring to catch the first episode of the Hashira Training Arc as the upcoming Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Hashira Training world tour kicks off in February across select countries.The world tour will screen the final episode of season three (the Swordsmith Village arc) and the first episode of the Hashira Training arc in cinemas this February in 4K and IMAX.

WOODZ will be enlisting into the military in January 2024.On December 10, the K-pop singer wrote to fans informing them of his impending military enlistment. Under South Korean law, all able-bodied men are required to serve for at least 18 months.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Fact-based political thriller “12.12: The Day” dominated the Korean box office for the third successive weekend and advanced its takings haul beyond $50 million. It was far ahead of “Napoleon,” which opened a disappointing third. The Kim Sung-soo-directed picture earned $11.4 million between Friday and Sunday, accounting for 75.8% of nationwide weekend cinema revenues, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). It has held up particularly strongly and dropped by only 12% in its third weekend.

Gyeongseong Creature, starring Han So-hee and Park Seo-jun.Set in the spring of 1945, Gyeongseong Creature will follow several individuals in the city of Gyeongseong – which was the colonial name for Seoul city during the Japanese rule over Korea – as they go up against monstrous creatures born out of human greed.Park Seo-jun will play Jang Tae-sang, the wealthiest and most attractive man in the Bukchon district, who has a penchant for insider information. Meanwhile, Han So-hee will portray Yoon Chae-ok, a skilled todugun (bounty hunter and sleuth who tracks down the missing).The brand-new trailer for Gyeongseong Creature previews the first, tense meeting between Tae-song and Chae-ok, as well as their initial visit to the mysterious Ongseong Hospital.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Something Special, the Seoul-based international format agency founded by format specialists Jin Woo Hwang (president and executive producer) and Kim In Soon (EVP & head of content) announce that ITV Studios has optioned the hit Korean celebrity format “Battle in the Box” for France, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. The deal was unveiled on Wednewday, the first full day of the Asia Television Forum and Market (ATF) in Singapore. “Battle in the Box,” created by Korea’s NMedia and represented globally by Something Special, has previously seen deals announced with Fremantle for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Political drama thriller “12.12: The Day” dominated the South Korean box office for a second weekend with a $13 million haul. Its second weekend outing topped its first session, when it earned $11.2 million, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). And the film (aka “Seoul Spring”) increased its share of the weekend’s total cinema market to a crushing 81%. Separately, ComScore calculated that the film’s single country receipts made it the seventh highest grossing film in the world over the weekend. After two weekends on release, “12.12: The Day” has garnered $34.2 million, making it already the sixth ranking film in Korea this year and the third biggest Korean-produced picture.

Lupita Nyong’o couldn’t let this day pass without a callback to one of her favorite colleagues.

SM Entertainment CEO Nikki Semin Han has established a brand-new music label, with plans to debut six new K-pop acts by 2028.According to an exclusive report by Variety, Han has teamed up with a group of former colleagues from SM Entertainment to launch Titan Content, a newly established music label based in the US. The agency described itself to Variety as “the world’s first premier multinational K-pop powerhouse music company”, with facilities in both Los Angeles and Seoul with the goal of breaking their upcoming roster of artists into the US music market.According to Variety, Titan Content is currently working on launching two K-pop girl groups, two boy groups, a male soloist and a female soloist by 2028.

Nam Woo-hyun of K-pop boyband INFINITE has opened up about his “rare” cancer diagnosis.Nam Woo-hyun revealed his gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) diagnosis during a new interview with The Korea Times, where he opened up about it being an “extremely rare form of cancer” and how it faced it.“In my case, the urgency of surgery was non-negotiable, so I quickly held my fan events and performances in January and February before undergoing surgery [in April],” the singer said, before revealing that “the scale [of the cancer] was more extensive than I had thought”.“After the surgery, I had to refrain from drinking water for almost three weeks and got a 20-centimeter scar on my stomach,” the INFINITE singer added. “I even had to attach a blood bag.”However, Nam Woo-hyun also touched on how his time in the hospital, in particular his interactions with the “caring” nurses, had inspired him “to recover, release new music and pursue my passion as a singer”.“I feel as if I were reborn after the surgery,” he said.

KISS OF LIFE member Belle recently covered Ariana Grande‘s 2013 ballad with Nathan Sykes, ‘Almost Is Never Enough’.KISS OF LIFE’s Belle made an appearance on the South Korean radio station KBS Cool FM on Friday (November 24), where she performed a faithful live rendition of the Ariana Grande ballad.“Almost, almost is never enough / So close to being in love / If I would have known that you wanted me / The way I wanted you,” she sings on the cover.Belle, who is best known as a co-writer of LE SSERAFIM’s hit single ‘Unforgiven’, made her debut as a K-pop idol with KISS OF LIFE earlier this year. The girl group released their first mini-album, which was self-titled, in July 2023.Earlier this month, KISS OF LIFE made their return with their second mini-album, ‘Born to be XX’, featuring the title track ‘Bad News’.

K-pop girl group aespa have released their own version of Bobby Helms’ classic holiday song, ‘Jingle Bell Rock’.Today (November 24), the quartet unveiled a lyric video for their remake of the iconic 1957 Christmas song. aespa’s version of ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ features a hip-hop-inspired beat, as well as a brand-new rap verse.“Ring ring ring, jingle bell rock / Play like a spell I won’t tell, jingle bell talk / So giddy up, giddy up / Turn it up fast till we burn up / We ain’t ever gonna stop, jingle bell rock,” Giselle and Winter rap on the second verse.SM Entertainment first announced the song via a press release earlier this week, describing it as a “catchy and hip” reinterpretation of the classic track, with the girl group’s “unique vocals and rap” setting it aside from the original ‘Jingle Bell Rock’.aespa’s ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ comes just two weeks after they released their fourth mini-album ‘Drama’.

Jungkook of K-pop boyband BTS has enlisted Justin Timberlake for a new remix of his hit single, ‘3D’.‘3D’, originally featuring Jack Harlow, was first released in September as the second single off BTS’ Jungkook’s debut studio album, ‘Golden’. The singer also previously linked up with A.

Single in Seoul made his reflect on his own love life.Single in Seoul is a romantic-comedy that stars Lee Dong-wook as Young-ho, a writer and influencer who has learned to be comfortable with doing everything alone after a series of bad relationship and heartbreaks.Starring opposite Lee Dong-wook is Cobweb actress Im Soo-jung, who plays Hyeon-jin, the editor-in-chief of a publishing company. Unlike Young-ho, Hyeon-jin is a hopeless romantic who is working on a series of essays about singles in the city.Lee Dong-wook revealed in an interview with The Korea Times that he relates strongly to his Single in Seoul character of Young-ho.

Gyeongseong Creature, starring Han So-hee and Park Seo-jun.Set in the spring of 1945, Gyeongseong Creature will follow several individuals in the city of Gyeongseong – which was the colonial name for Seoul city during the Japanese rule over Korea – as they go up against monstrous creatures born out of human greed.Park Seo-jun will play Jang Tae-sang, the wealthiest and most attractive man in the Bukchon district, who has a penchant for insider information. Meanwhile, Han So-hee will portray Yoon Chae-ok, a skilled todugun (bounty hunter and sleuth who tracks down the missing).The new trailer for Gyeongseong Creature opens with the tense first meeting between Jang Tae-sang and Yoon Chae-ok, as we are introduced to the two character’s contrasting worlds.

The ladies of Blackpink were among the special guests at a state dinner at Buckingham Palace!

EXO’s Baekhyun, and NewJeans recently performed at this year’s League of Legends World Championship.Heartsteel – formed by EXO’s Baekhyun, Taiwanese-American rapper ØZI, Nigerian singer Tobi Lou and American musician Cal Scruby – and K-pop girl group NewJeans opened the annual League of Legends World Championship at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul yesterday (November 19)Heartsteel, in their first-ever live performance, took the stage first to perform their debut single ‘Paranoia’. “Every time you pop off / They hopin’ that you fall hard / They prayin’ for the death of a rockstar / Everybody hatin’ ever since you got more / They prayin’ for the death of a rockstar,” they sang, joined by their virtual counterparts on stage.NewJeans followed with a fiery performance of their song ‘Gods’, which is the official anthem for this year’s championships.

Kyuhyun, a member of K-pop boyband Super Junior, was injured during a knife attack in Seoul.Kyuhyun, who is currently starring in the stage musical Ben Hur at the LG Arts Center in Seoul’s Gangseo District, was reportedly injured during a knife attack backstage at the show’s theatre.A woman in her 30s has been arrested for breaking into the dressing room at the LG Arts Center and brandishing a knife at actors, according to SBS Star. The incident occurred at round 6pm on Sunday (November 19).Kyuhyun was reportedly mildly injured while trying to “restrain the intruder”, per Korea JoongAng Daily.

EXCLUSIVE: Korean American comedian, writer and producer Cathy Shim is the latest to join the cast of the film K-Pops! from first-time director and eight-time Grammy winner Anderson .Paak (who also stars). She will play Diamond, the energetic iconic host of a K-pop competition show in Seoul, and .Paak’s hard-to-please boss.