Apink to drop new mini-album in April, label confirms

Minhyuk, a member of the boyband MONSTA X, has confirmed that he’s set to enlist in the South Korean military very soon.Yesterday (March 13), the singer shared a handwritten letter, per TV Report, on the group’s fan cafe site to inform fans of his enlistment date. Under South Korean law, all able-bodied male citizens must serve a military term of 18-21 months.Minhyuk revealed that he will be enlisting on April 4, adding that he is already “feeling sad” about the situation.

Miley Cyrus’s Endless Summer Vacation is getting off to a good start, leading the race to become the pop icon’s first UK Number 1 album in almost a decade. 

Huh Yunjin of rookie K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM is set to release her third solo song ‘피어나도록 (love you twice)’.On March 13 at Midnight KST, the 21-year-old idol surprised fans with a new animated teaser, announcing the upcoming release of ‘피어나도록 (love you twice)’, her third solo song. Its Korean title is a spin on LE SSERAFIM’s official fan club name ‘FEARNOT’ or ‘피어나’ in Korean (meaning ‘Bloom’), and translates to ‘Until It Blooms’.The teaser clip features art by South Korean animator and artist Ramdaram, and pictures a young girl admiring an idol through her phone screen.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was awarded with best feature at the Asian Film Awards (March 12), along with prizes for best editing and best original music. The multiple award winning Japanese drama premiered at Cannes film festival in 2021 and also won the Oscar for Best International Feature last year.  

Queens of K-pop. The girl group TWICE has continued to dominate the music industry, both in Asia and around the world.

Suga of K-pop boyband BTS and soloist IU are reportedly set to reunite for yet another collaboration.Today (March 10), South Korean media outlet SpoTV News reported that the two K-pop idols are set to release a new song together. If true, it would be the duo’s second collaboration, following their 2020 song ‘eight’.Big Hit Music has since spoken out about the report in a statement to Sports Today, saying that it is currently “difficult to confirm” whether or not Suga and IU are working together on new music.Suga will be the first member of BTS to go on a solo world tour.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Mk2 films has enlisted leading distributors around the world for “Reality,” Tina Satter’s feature debut starring Sydney Sweeney, on the heels of its buzzy world premiere at the Berlinale. The movie, which bowed in the Panorama section, stars Sweeney (“White Lotus,” “Euphoria”) as Reality Winner, a 25 year-old whistleblower who spent five years in prison during the Trump administration. A former U.S. Air Force member and National Security Agency translator, Winner was convicted for leaking a confidential report on Russian election interference to the media. The film is based on Satter’s 2019 stage play “Is This a Room” and contains verbatim dialogue from the unedited transcript of a FBI audio recording. “Reality” captures the tense and surreal 90 minutes of FBI’s interrogation with Winner at her home in 2017.

Doyoung, Jaehyun and Jungwoo, members of the K-pop boyband NCT, are set to debut as a sub-unit.Earlier today (March 9), South Korean media outlet Sports Today reported that the three K-pop idols are set to form a trio sub-unit as part of their work with the boyband. Notably, the three singers previously worked together on the song ‘Can We Go Back’, which they performed at the 2022 MBC Gayo Daejejeon, as well as a Christmas medley posted on the official NCT YouTube channel.Their label SM Entertainment has since confirmed the report.

While it's nothing new, and we're certainly not complaining, Harry Styles' name is inescapable right now.

EXCLUSIVE: A24 has mapped out three films for summer release: the Nicole Holofcener-Julia Louis Dreyfus reteam You Hurt My Feelings, the Celine Song directed/written title Past Lives and the distributor’s hot Sundance horror pick-up Talk to Me.

K-pop boyband Stray Kids have filmed a new music video for their next comeback.On March 6, South Korean news outlet Hankuk Ilbo reported that the boyband had recently completed filming a new music video for their next project. The outlet also claimed that Stray Kids would be making their comeback this April.JYP Entertainment later confirmed, per Soompi, that Stray Kids “did complete filming their new music video”.

For those who love South Korean cinema, Na Hong-jin‘s “The Wailing” was a special treat when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016: a rural police procedural with a touch of the macabre and supernatural. But that was almost seven years ago, so what has Na been up to lately? Well, the director has a new short called “Faith” he shot on the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, ready for its release after a press screening late last month.

Ashnikko has announced their debut album ‘WEEDKILLER’ and shared details of a huge world tour for 2023 – find all the details below.The album will be released on June 2 via Parlophone, and will be available to pre-order from today (March 2) at 6pm GMT from here.“My bioluminescent heart is glowing. My post-apocalyptic fae world is here for you to journey into,” Ashnikko shared in a statement.

J-Hope, a member of K-pop supergroup BTS, has cancelled his request to delay enlistment in Korea’s mandatory military service, according to the group’s agency Big Hit Music. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” held on to top spot at the South Korean box office. But the overall market continued to soften despite a slew of new release titles. Nationwide theatrical grosses totaled just $7.26 million. That made it the slowest box office weekend in over three months. “Quantumania” collected $2.0 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic), and enjoyed a 27% market share. The second weekend increment lifted its 12-day total to $10.6 million. Long-running Japanese animation title, “The First Slam Dunk” earned $1.36 million in its eighth weekend on release. Since Jan. 4 it has accumulated $28.0 million.

Thania Garcia J-hope of BTS has become the second member of the K-pop group to begin his mandatory military service in South Korea. The 29-year-old singer had previously applied for an enlistment postponement but a new statement from Big Hit Music (the band’s label) explains that he has since pulled that request and will enlist in the military. “We would like to inform our fans that j-hope has initiated the military enlistment process by applying for the termination of his enlistment postponement,” said the note posted to Weverse, Hybe’s global fan community platform.

BTS‘ J-hope is set to release a new solo single, with ‘on the street’ coming later this week.The news was confirmed by Big Hit in a note published to fans on Weverse. The post also revealed that the single is set to drop on Friday (March 3) at 2pm Korean time.“J-hope wrote the track wrote the track to share his candid feelings towards his fans,” the post read.

EXCLUSIVE: Following bidding wars in multiple territories, A24 has sold Past Lives, probably the year’s most critically acclaimed new film, to a raft of key territories.

(G)I-DLE‘s Minnie and Anne-Marie have joined forces on a new single titled ‘Expectations’, due out for release next month.The announcement was made earlier today (February 23) via both (G)I-DLE’s and Anne-Marie’s official Twitter pages, where a title and release date were revealed alongside what appears to be track art for the new song. ‘Expectations’ is set to be released on March 9 at 6pm KST / 9am GMT.It comes after reports from South Korean media last week (February 15) claiming that the two singers had recently wrapped up work on an upcoming collaborative single, which included the filming of its accompanying video treatment.

Tomorrow X Together (TXT) have shared their rendition of ‘Goodbye Now’ as part of the soundtrack for ongoing webtoon series Love Revolution.The song was officially released today (February 22) at 6pm KST in collaboration with Naver Webtoons, a South Korean platform hosting original webcomics. ‘Goodbye Now’ was originally released in the 1990s by South Korean music duo 015B, and has since become a staple in South Korea for graduations.TXT remade the song for Love Revolution as a tie-in to the comic series’ impending finale this April, which will see its main characters graduate from high school. “Goodbye doesn’t mean that we’re parting forever / It’s a promise that we’ll meet again / The times that we spent together are all left as memories now / We have to leave to find the path that we’ll embark on,” the five-piece croon on the chorus.TXT recently released the EP ‘The Name Chapter: Temptation’, led by title track ‘Sugar Rush Ride’.