Dartmouth University: K-Pop Fans Helped COVID-19 Public Health Messaging Go Viral. “When health officials and agencies such as Tedros leveraged entertainment groups like ‘#BTS’ into their public health messages on COVID-19, this generated 111 times more virality or retweets, according to a new Dartmouth-led study.”
Korea JoongAng Daily: Experience Korea’s DMZ virtually in latest Google Arts & Culture project. “The project scale is massive: Divided into three sections — history, art and nature, the ‘DMZ’ project includes 60 online exhibitions and 5,000 historical records and stories related to the war and the zone. Highlights make up a big portion of the history and nature sections. The former essentially tells people’s stories, of the young soldiers who participated in the war and the refugees who fled to Busan, which acted as the provisional capital during the war.”
Korea Bizwire: National Palace Museum of Korea Goes Online. “The National Palace Museum of Korea (NPMK) announced on Monday that it opened an online exhibition showroom enabling users to take a full glance at about 800 royal relics held at the museum. The online museum leveraged virtual reality (VR) technology to bring the museum’s seven permanent exhibition rooms into a virtual space.” Everything’s in Korean but Google Translate handles most of it. Tip: There’s an audio narration available. If you click on that and then choose subtitles, Google Translate will translate them for you so you can read while the lady talks.
Mashable: A Eulogy for V Live, K-Pop’s Library of Alexandria. “V Live, the hugely influential live-streaming platform that ushered Korean pop music to global prominence, has gone dark. The mobile app and desktop site hosted a public library of tens of thousands of live streams that documented a period of growth in which the Korean music industry evolved from a regional phenomenon to a global market superpower. The result of a merger with fellow fan-artist engagement app Weverse, the closure of V Live and its video database is tantamount to burning K-Pop’s Library of Alexandria.”
Korea Times: Cultural artifact-inspired merchandise gets makeover . “Traditional souvenirs filling the shelves of Korean museum shops have long been stereotyped as items that lack practicality and that often fail to go well with interior decor, due to their faithful yet outdated designs. Once purchased or gifted, it isn’t unusual for these products to be tucked away in a corner of a room, slowly forgotten as they gather dust. However, a recent string of makeovers of state-run museums’ relic-inspired merchandise have added a feeling of freshness to the shop’s vitrines.”
Korea Herald: Politically censored S. Korean films to be released online . “The Korean Film Archive announced that it will sequentially post a collection of South Korea’s earlier films censored by the state through the Korean Movie Database online history archive center, starting Thursday. The KOFA received donations and preserved some 10,000 materials regarding censorship from the Korea Council for Performing Arts Promotion, the predecessor of the current Korea Media Rating Board, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s. “
KBS World: Digital Archive on Japan’s Wartime Sexual Slavery to be Set up in UCLA. “A digital archive with translated primary sources and documentary evidence on Japan’s wartime sexual slavery is set to be established at the University of California, Los Angeles(UCLA). Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education(CARE), an advocacy group for the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, said Tuesday that the online archive will be set up at UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies as early as July. ”
BBC: Hundreds of K-pop songs disappear from Spotify. “Hundreds of popular K-pop songs have been removed from Spotify, amid a dispute with South Korean music distributor Kakao M. Releases by popular acts including Sistar, IU, Monsta X and Epik High have vanished, leaving fans frustrated.” Do you have favorite K-pop songs? I like bouncy stuff and I have no K-Pop in my standard Spotify list.
Korea Times: K-pop in 2021: Social media-friendly musicians survive pandemic. “K-pop is tech-savvy. K-pop artists were able to build a global fandom thanks to their strategic use of YouTube and social media to interact with their fans abroad. Considering its tech-friendly nature, it’s no surprise K-pop is remaining strong despite the pandemic. K-pop musicians’ bonds with global fans are stronger than one might expect, partly because their decades-old relationships were built online, according to a K-pop expert.”
South China Morning Post: Korean pop music archive digitised and reissued for vinyl lovers – it’s ‘our living history of K-pop’, record company boss says. “Oasis Records Music Company is one such company that has been digitising and preserving its music collection. Established in 1952 during the Korean war, it owns more than 10,000 master tapes of Korean music recorded between the 1950s and 1990s, which it claims is the largest collection of its kind, unknown to the public until recently.”
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: First database on the Imjin War now available. “The database covers a wide range of aspects of the Imjin War, such as information on prisoners, pottery produced during that period, Christianity, international relations, economics, the environment, Europe, identities, literature, military history, migrations, social history and trade. It allows analysing the human aspect of war, given that tens of thousands of Koreans were captured and sold to Japan as slaves, and many Japanese soldiers fell into the hands of the Chinese army and never returned to their country of origin. The project examines the trajectory of these people and how they were integrated into their new societies.”
Yonhap News Agency: S. Korea approves 680 mln won for digital archiving of inter-Korean excavation project . “The government on Monday approved the spending of 688 million won (US$565,000) on creating a digital archive of relics found from a historical site in North Korea through an inter-Korean excavation project, the unification ministry said. The Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Promotion Council approved the expenditure plan necessary to build the archive, including fees for data processing, creating content and consulting, according to the ministry.”
Buddhistdoor: Freer and Sackler Galleries Launch Digital Catalogue of Goryeo Buddhist Art. “South Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration and the US-based Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery have launched a new website titled Goryeo Buddhist Painting: A Closer Look, showcasing Buddhist art from Korea’s Goryeo dynasty. The new online catalogue serves as a digital repository for all Goryeo-era art currently held in the collections of museums in the United States.”
IndieWire: The Korean Film Archive Is Now Streaming Over 200 Movies for Free on YouTube. “After making history at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival by becoming the first South Korean director to win the Palme d’Or, ‘Parasite’ director Bong Joon-ho encouraged cinephiles around the world to seek out more works of South Korean cinema. Thanks to the Korean Film Archive’s official YouTube page, Bong’s wish could not be easier for American moviegoers to fulfill. The KFA is streaming over 200 feature films for free right now on YouTube, many of which have been uploaded to the platform in restored versions.”
Korea JoongAng Daily: Sex slave documents detailed in a full catalogue. “The four-volume publication lists all the documents compiled by the [Northeast History Foundation] since it was launched in 2006 through the end of last year from Japan, the Allied Powers during World War II, China, Taiwan and Thailand. The catalogue can be used as a comprehensive reference of documents on the Imperial Japanese Army’s forceful recruitment of girls and young women into sexual slavery before and during World War II. It also includes records that have yet to be revealed to the Korean public gathered from the Second Historical Archives of China and the National Archives of Thailand.” The material will be put into an online database in April.
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