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A Japanese Cartoon About Small Cute Creatures Opened at Number One in Korea. Tom Cruise's New Film Is Seventh on the Booking Board, With Cruise in Seoul to Sell It
K-Movie

A Japanese Cartoon About Small Cute Creatures Opened at Number One in Korea. Tom Cruise's New Film Is Seventh on the Booking Board, With Cruise in Seoul to Sell It

《극장판 치이카와》 took 122,293 admissions on its opening day, the biggest start for any animated film released in Korea this year, and by the next morning held 39 per cent of every advance ticket in the country. 《디거》, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's black comedy with Tom Cruise as an oil baron, opens on 3 October with 2.6 per cent — behind a Venice prize-winner in its second week — while Cruise makes his thirteenth visit to Korea, more than any other Hollywood actor. Iñárritu was meant to come too. He cancelled the night before.

By The Editors11 min read

Top Stories

Opinion

Korea Abolishes Its Prosecution Service on 2 October. One Successor Opens Without a Chief or a Finished Building. The Other Opens With the Same Prosecutors Under a New Sign

K-Movie

The Opposition Leader, the Park Chung-hee Foundation and a Police Complaint Want Chuseok's Number-One Film Off the Screens. The Director Says the Line They Object To Isn't In It

Sports

Korea's Sports Chief Gave Japan's Asian Games an F. Then the Organisers Apologised — to Japanese Spectators — for a Sign Saying the Rising Sun Flag Was Banned

This Week

Featured Stories

Korea's 《야구여왕》 Built a Women's Baseball Team Out of Olympians, Lost 36–0, and Now Has to Win 60 Per Cent or Be Disbanded
K-Drama/Variety

Korea's 《야구여왕》 Built a Women's Baseball Team Out of Olympians, Lost 36–0, and Now Has to Win 60 Per Cent or Be Disbanded

채널A's sports-variety series is managed by Choo Shin-soo on his days off, captained by an Olympic handball medallist, and has a catcher who kept goal for the unified Korean ice hockey team at PyeongChang. On 17 September a 22-year-old golfer — drafted 115th by New York in America's new women's professional league, and never signed — caught for the first time, hit her first home run and closed out the game. The team is 5–2. The sport it plays has thirty elite women registered in the entire country.

14 min read
The Fisherman Hid It Under His Floorboards. The Reward He Eventually Got Set Off a Decade of Looting.
Society

The Fisherman Hid It Under His Floorboards. The Reward He Eventually Got Set Off a Decade of Looting.

Korea marked fifty years of underwater archaeology in Mokpo in September 2026. The official story starts with a net and a report. The documented one starts with six pieces of Chinese porcelain given away as presents, a schoolteacher brother who had to get them all back, and officials who did not want the paperwork. Then the state paid a reward, a diver worked out how much of it went in tax, and for the next ten years people stole the wreck faster than the government could raise it — until the navy's own divers could not find the ship, and the excavation hired the looters.

14 min read
Korea Asked 200 Citizens Whether to Put a Hangeul Sign on Gwanghwamun. They Split 105–101, Then Voted 155–51 That It Is Not Needed.
Language

Korea Asked 200 Citizens Whether to Put a Hangeul Sign on Gwanghwamun. They Split 105–101, Then Voted 155–51 That It Is Not Needed.

The government convened its first-ever citizens' deliberation and spent eight hours on a signboard. The panel divided almost exactly in half on whether adding a Hangeul plaque would honour both the heritage and the alphabet — and then, overwhelmingly, said an exhibition would do the job instead. Both answers are coherent, which is the interesting part. The plaque they were arguing about is three years old, and the one before the one before it was in Park Chung-hee's handwriting.

11 min read
In April, Nongshim Cut Prices to Help With Inflation. In August It Raised Them, Using the Same Sentence.
Business

In April, Nongshim Cut Prices to Help With Inflation. In August It Raised Them, Using the Same Sentence.

Korea's biggest noodle company cut sixteen products in the spring, framed as joining the government's price-stability drive. Four months later it raised forty-three, framed as joining the government's price-stability drive. The products it cut are precisely the ones it left alone in August — and its own filings show the cost pressure it blames has not yet reached its margins. The awkward part is that the cost pressure is real.

13 min read
Korea Now Scans Every Image Uploaded to Its Big Forums. The Man Running One of Them Can't Tell You If It Has Ever Worked.
Tech

Korea Now Scans Every Image Uploaded to Its Big Forums. The Man Running One of Them Can't Tell You If It Has Ever Worked.

Since 1 July, Korean platforms above a size threshold must run every uploaded image through an AI filter that checks it against a government database of illegal recordings and blocks it before it posts. One operator published his own logs. Over a full year of the earlier video version, 1,615 blocks resolved down to about 33 that might have been real — and he cannot tell you whether any of them were, because keeping the files in order to check them would break a different law.

12 min read

More from Korea

Food

Spinach Is Up 152% in a Month. It's Also Cheaper Than It Was Last August.

K-drama

On Thursday, Korean Prime Time Finds Out If You Can Date a Tablet

K-Pop

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

Travel

황사 Is Not 미세먼지: What Korea's Air Quality Alerts Actually Mean

Celebrity

The Korean Celebrity Comeback, Explained: Who Gets Forgiven — and Who Never Does

Opinion

Three Soldiers Were Wounded by a Mine Ten Metres from the Line. It Took the Military Seven Days to Say It Was Probably North Korean, and a Front Page to Make It Admit What Its Own Men Had Reported

Sports

Korea's Pros Lost 0–5 to Japan's Company-League Players, Then Beat Them 3–1 in the Rain for a Fifth Straight Asian Games Gold

K-Drama/Variety

Netflix's 《스캔들》 Is Officially a Remake of the 2003 Film. Its Director Says He Went Back to the 1782 Novel Instead.

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