North Korea Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Stray Kids have teased plans to release new music and embark on a world tour in 2024.On New Year’s Day (January 1), Stray Kids released the 2024 edition of their annual ‘Step Out’ video series, where the K-pop boyband looked back on their achievements in 2023 and their plans for the new year.In the clip, the eight-member boyband teased plans for a world tour in 2024, alongside two music releases – one album and one special album – as well as a fanmeeting event.In additional the group will also be putting out more video content, including eight ‘SKZ-PLAYER’ releases, as well as new episodes of ‘2 Kids Show’ and ‘1 Kid’s Room’. Check out the boyband’s ‘Step Out 2024’ video here:In 2023, Stray Kids scored their first Billboard Hot 100 entry with ‘LALALALA’, a single from their November mini-album, ‘ROCK-STAR’.

Following the eating and drinking marathon of Christmas and New Year, many will be looking forward to a break from the buffets and booze. Some will embrace the start of 2024 by signing up to a new gym or cutting back on alcohol, others may be thinking about going plant-based for Veganuary.

Parasite and A Hard Day.The service took place today (December 29) and was attended by the late actor’s family, close friends and colleagues, with the Korean media shut out of the event. His family had appealed to the media to stop making “painful and abrupt” visits to Lee’s home and agency as well as the service following months of intrusion into his personal life while he was under investigation for drugs use.The media had also been criticised for publishing his alleged last note to his wife.Lee is said to have been found dead in a car located in the Jongno District of Seoul, South Korea on Wednesday with a “charcoal briquette” in the passenger seat in what is believed to have been a suicide.

Thania Garcia Blackpink — the four-piece K-pop act comprised of Jisoo, Lisa, Jennie and Rose – are no longer working with YG Entertainment for their solo endeavors, the company announced in a press release on Friday. The group will remain signed to YG Entertainment as an entity but the four women will pursue their solo careers outside of the agency.

TVXQ is back!

Lee Sun-kyun, who starred in the Best Picture-winning film Parasite, has died according to multiple wire reports after going missing in Seoul, South Korea. He was 48.

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?

during the now-resolved writers and actors strikes, the year offered up a slew of reality TV. Some of it, such as ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor,” was buzzy, but otherwise not too strange. But other shows were so bonkers, they had to be seen to be believed.

Christmas is now over, and you may be wondering what to do about all the leftovers from the festive dinner.

Naman Ramachandran “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” led the worldwide box office with a $108 million debut weekend, according to numbers released by Comscore. Warner Bros. and DC Studio’s “Aquaman 2” also topped the U.S.

French President Emmanuel Macron has come out in support of Gérard Depardieu whose star has fallen in France in recent days following the airing of a documentary investigating multiple allegations of sexual assault against the actor.

G-Dragon is starting a new chapter.

IU has been teased as the next guest of Suga’s Suchwita, a talk show hosted by the BTS rapper.Yesterday (December 19), the preview for the 24th episode of Suchwita was released, teasing IU’s upcoming appearance on the show. The preview teases the new guest as one of Suga’s “same-age friends”, as both musicians were born in 1993.While IU’s face is obscured in the preview, the singer references the pair’s first collaboration single ‘Eight’ as she waves in the camera, saying that she had meant to come on the show sooner.Suga then references a previous conversation between the pair on IU’s Palette, where he complained that IU did not invite him to her headlining ‘Golden Hour’ concert earlier this year.“Not this again… You’ll still be talking about this when we are 40,” she replied.

BTS‘ Jungkook has received a plaque from Spotify after achieving a billion streams of his solo track ‘Seven’, and used it to eat a Korean dish called Kimbap.Back in October 2023, BTS’ Jungkook broke the record for the fastest song to reach 1billion streams on Spotify with his debut solo single, ‘Seven (feat. Latto)’.

This year was full of incredible Korean drama offerings.

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.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Fact-based action drama “12.12: The Day” won a fourth weekend at the South Korea box office and became the second highest grossing film of the year. The political thriller incurred a steep week-on-week drop in takings, managing only $5.89 million in its fourth weekend, compared with $11.4 million in its third. But it still hogged a 72% market share, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). After releasing on Nov.

told media outlets.“I had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with him in his last years, as he had no immediate family,” Garland said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “We spent much time outdoors, where Jack loved to sketch, read news articles, and recite Shakespearean sonnets.” Born on Jan.

EXCLUSIVE: Critical Content, the company behind series such as Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia and Sly, is looking to bolster its formats business and co-productions with the hire of former Zodiak exec Stéfanie Gelinas.

Jack Hogan, who most famously played PFC William G. Kirby on ABC’s WWII-set series Combat!, died in his sleep Wednesday, December 6th, according to the curator of an online community dedicated to Combat! He was 94.

Michaela Zee Jack Hogan, a retired actor who starred in the WWII drama series “Combat!” from 1962 until 1967, died of natural causes on Dec. 6 at his home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, his son West told Variety. He was 94.

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.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Fifth Season, the production and distribution company previously known as Endeavor Content, has secured a $225 million strategic investment from Toho International, the Japanese film and TV studio behind current box office hit “Godzilla Minus One.” The investment gives Toho a 25% equity stake in the company and leaves Korean entertainment conglomerate CJ ENM as Fifth Season’s majority owner. Former parent company, Endeavor Group Holdings continues as a strategic shareholder. CJ ENM and Fifth Season will work with Toho to both produce global content and participate in content produced in Japan.

Naman Ramachandran The burgeoning ‘acquimissions’ model of co-productions was one of the points of discussion at Singapore’s Asia TV Forum and Market. Conceptually, acquimissions blend the worlds of acquisitions and commissioning where independent producers and production studios engineer co-productions between themselves and platforms and commissioners across territories and windows.

Like the Japanese with their Godzilla movies, the Koreans are partial to a bit of post-apocalyptic social satire, and Um Tae-Hwa’s box office hit Concrete Utopia follows a path trailblazed in 2013 by Bong Joon-ho’s cult sci-fi Snowpiercer. Adapted from the popular webtoon Pleasant Outcast by Kim Soong Nyung and partly inspired by British writer J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise, it centers on a Korean apartment block whose residents become lawless after a terrifying earthquake rips through the country.

Squid Game The Challenge winner Mai Whelan claims she has yet to receive the $4.56 million first prize - 10 months after filming the Netflix show. The 55 year old won over viewers of the game show with her dramatic story of how she escaped the communist regime in her homeland of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon - as well as her cunning streak that saw her beat 455 other players to scoop the jackpot. In the final of the programme, which was inspired by Netflix’s smash-hit dystopian Korean series Squid Game, she beat 27 year old scuba instructor Phill Cain after multiple rounds of rock, paper, scissors.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Thailand’s broadcast and streaming group Mono Next and Korea’s Studio Genie have struck a deal to collaborate on content creation and distribution. Production of a Thai remake of a Korean series is on the cards, but has not been finalized. The memorandum was announced on stage at the Asia Television Forum in Singapore on Wednesday, with streaming unit Mono Streaming signing on behalf of the Thai group.

A second woman has filed an official complaint against French actor Gérard Depardieu accusing him of sexual assault.

Netflix has announced Squid Game The Challenge will return for a second series - with the winner of the season one just hours away from being revealed. The finale of the first series will land on the streaming giant in the UK at 2am on Thursday (7 December) - when the victor will get the $4.56 million reward.

One of Sam Lantz, Mai Whelan and Phill Cain will be crowned champion of Squid Game: The Challenge later today and walk away with $4.56M, the largest prize in reality TV history.

Korea’s premium VOD industry continued to grow in the third quarter of 2023, with the number of subscriptions increasing by more than 700,000 to reach 19 million, according to the latest report from Media Partners Asia (MPA).

Post-pandemic audiences are much more open to different cultures, thanks to streaming and exposure to new types of content, but some of the world’s biggest film industries are still figuring out how to adapt in a rapidly changing landscape, said speakers on the ‘Cinematic Crossovers’ panel in Red Sea Souk. 

NewJeans member Hanni has unveiled her cover of Sarah Kang’s song ‘once in a moon’.The Vietnamese-Australian K-pop singer is the fifth and final member of NewJeans to contribute to the girl group’s ‘By Jeans’ cover series on YouTube. While her bandmates had recorded vocals for the series, Hanni also played guitar in her clip to accompany her performance of New York-based singer Sarah Kang’s 2022 song ‘once in a moon’.“I thought long and hard about [what song to sing] because winter is already here, and I like to listen to songs according to the seasons.

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 Leading Japanese publishing house Kodansha has struck a deal with new production company Majestic Limited for a feature film adaptation of its “Origin” comic. Created by Boichi (“Dr. Stone,” “Sun-Ken Rock”), a renown Korean manga artist (real name Park Mu-jik) who is based in Japan, “Origin” is set in a near-future where humanity has achieved incredible advancements in technology and robotics. It tells a story of self-discovery, morality, and what it means to be human. Winning the grand prize for manga at the 22nd Japan Media Arts Festival and currently only printed abroad, the English translation of “Origin” hit U.S.