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33 stories

Entertainment

K-drama, variety, Korean cinema, and the world of K-pop

Three Korean Films Open the Day Before Chuseok. One of Them Isn't Competing — It's Meeting a Deadline.
K-Movie

Three Korean Films Open the Day Before Chuseok. One of Them Isn't Competing — It's Meeting a Deadline.

On 23 September, a card-gambling franchise finale, a true-crime thriller about a 1974 assassination attempt, and Lee Chang-dong's Oscar entry all open in Korean cinemas. Two of them are fighting over the biggest holiday audience of the year. The third is there because the Academy requires a seven-day theatrical run by the 30th — the film no Korean investor would fund is using Chuseok as a compliance window.

12 min read
Korea's No. 2 Streaming Service Is One Almost Nobody Watches. It Just Made the Biggest Show on Korean Television.
K-Drama/Variety

Korea's No. 2 Streaming Service Is One Almost Nobody Watches. It Just Made the Biggest Show on Korean Television.

Coupang Play has a quarter of Korea's streaming users and six and a half per cent of its viewing time — the signature of a service people are subscribed to rather than watching. Then Kim Hye-soo and Cho Yeo-jeong turned up in a black comedy produced by the Squid Game director's studio, and it became the most-watched thing the platform has ever made. It is free to watch in Korea, licensed to Viu everywhere else, and the Western press that decides which Korean shows go global still hasn't looked at it.

11 min read
Forty Thousand People Queued for 624 Seats. On 28 August a New Law Bans Ticket Scalping — But Not This Kind.
K-Movie

Forty Thousand People Queued for 624 Seats. On 28 August a New Law Bans Ticket Scalping — But Not This Kind.

Nolan shot The Odyssey entirely on IMAX cameras, for a 70mm format that exists in 41 cinemas worldwide and none of them in Korea. What Korea has is one digital screen in Yongsan that shows the full frame uncropped. Seats resell at five times face value, the resale ban taking effect this week specifically does not cover cinema tickets, and the thing that will actually end the run is a law written to protect Korean film.

12 min read
Korea's Most-Streamed Artist Sings a Genre the Country Banned for Two Decades
K-Pop

Korea's Most-Streamed Artist Sings a Genre the Country Banned for Two Decades

In 1935 a Korean record company slipped an anti-Japanese line past the colonial censors by submitting it as nonsense that sounded identical when sung. Thirty years later the Korean state banned the same genre for sounding Japanese — using a broadcasters' agreement, a ministry policy measure and three committees, but never once a law. The genre is called trot, and English writing about Korean music has essentially never mentioned it.

12 min read
BTS Plays the World Cup Final: The Band That 'Died' for the Draft Takes the Biggest Stage on Earth
K-Pop

BTS Plays the World Cup Final: The Band That 'Died' for the Draft Takes the Biggest Stage on Earth

On July 19, at MetLife Stadium, seven Korean men will walk out to perform at the first-ever halftime show of a FIFA World Cup Final — the most-watched sporting event on the planet. It is the improbable capstone of a six-year story: a boy band the Korean state once treated as a draft-dodging headache, conscripted one by one, reunited, and re-exported as the country's single most valuable piece of soft power. Here's how BTS got from the barracks to the biggest stage on Earth.

10 min read
NewJeans vs HYBE: How K-Pop's Biggest Rebellion Ended in a Courtroom
K-Pop

NewJeans vs HYBE: How K-Pop's Biggest Rebellion Ended in a Courtroom

Five young women, backed by their star producer, tried to walk out on the most powerful company in K-pop — declaring their contracts void and rebranding overnight. A Seoul court said no. The most-watched test of idol autonomy in the streaming era ended not with a breakaway but a court-ordered return, and it answered a blunt question: inside the world's most successful pop-export machine, who actually holds the power — the idol, or the agency?

10 min read
Teach You a Lesson, Explained — The Netflix Hit That a Real Politician Wants to Build (June 2026)
K-Drama/Variety

Teach You a Lesson, Explained — The Netflix Hit That a Real Politician Wants to Build (June 2026)

It's a pulpy revenge fantasy about a government bureau that disciplines out-of-line students by force — and within a week of premiering it was the most-watched non-English show on Netflix in the world. Then a newly elected superintendent proposed building its fictional agency for real. Here's what 참교육 actually is, why it hit such a nerve in Korea, and where the fantasy stops.

10 min read
Jae-seok's B&B Rules, Explained — Yoo Jae-suk's Netflix Camp Show and the Byeon Woo-seok Effect (June 2026)
K-Drama/Variety

Jae-seok's B&B Rules, Explained — Yoo Jae-suk's Netflix Camp Show and the Byeon Woo-seok Effect (June 2026)

It's Yoo Jae-suk's first Netflix variety show with his name on the marquee: a chaotic two-night camp where Korea's biggest MC plays rookie innkeeper to Lee Kwang-soo, Ji Ye-eun, and — for the first time as a variety regular — Lovely Runner's Byeon Woo-seok. Within two days of release it was #1 on Netflix in Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Here's what 유재석 캠프 actually is, and why the 'Byeon Woo-seok effect' is real.

10 min read

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