Aju Press - Aasia News Hub

Journalist

Joonha Yoo유준하

ReporterCOEX Sejong Center for the Performing Arts & Music, Culture, Entertainment, Automotive

Joonha Yoo is a bilingual journalist at AJU Press (AJP), covering music, culture, entertainment and Korea’s automotive industry.
Raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, he often writes from the scene, bringing firsthand detail to stories ranging
from BTS comeback concerts to unique cultural events that catch the world's eye. "I write from the scene, not from the sidelines."

Latest by Joonha Yoo

DAY6's Young K to drop 2nd solo album later this month SEOUL, July 10 (AJP) - Young K of K-pop band DAY6 will release his second full-length solo album later this month, his management agency JYP Entertainment said on Friday. "YOUNGEST," due out on July 27, will be Young K's first solo release since his debut full-length album "Letters with notes" in September 2023. To promote the album, Young K will stage a three-day concert series in Incheon from Aug. 14 to 16, marking his first solo concerts in nearly three years. JYP Entertainment has already begun promoting his upcoming album with teaser photos and posters, with more details about the album and the concerts to be unveiled later. Young K debuted as a member of the quartet in 2015 and has served as the band's bassist and a key songwriter, writing or co-writing a number of the group's songs. 2026-07-10 14:18:48
Koreans don't fight summer. They accessorize it SEOUL, July 9 (AJP) — When Europe melts, people flock to rivers, lakes and public fountains. When South Korea swelters, shoppers head to Olive Young and Daiso. To withstand increasingly early, longer and more punishing summers, Europeans seek out whatever water they can find. Koreans, long accustomed to humid East Asian heat, have developed another survival strategy: buying a growing arsenal of cooling products that seems to evolve every summer. Cooling patches. Frozen neck wraps. Sun powders. Cooling shampoos. Ice sleeves. Chilled sanitary pads. Portable fans. Ice cups. Heat-blocking clothing. What began as practical gadgets has become summer fashion — and increasingly, an industry of its own. The transformation has been gradual. Seoul National University's annual Trend Korea series described 2024 as the year record-breaking heat became impossible to ignore. By the following edition, "climate sensitivity" had emerged as one of the defining consumer keywords for 2025, reflecting a shift from viewing extreme weather as a distant environmental concern to treating it as part of everyday life. This year's edition goes a step further, arguing that Korea has entered a "survival economy," where climate itself increasingly shapes what consumers buy. Retailers have embraced the language. CJ Olive Young now markets its seasonal campaign under the slogan "Survival Beauty." During Olive Young's late-May sales event, searches for sun powder — a cooling setting powder designed to reduce shine and leave a refreshing finish — jumped 284 percent from a year earlier, according to the retailer. Searches for body odor products rose 98 percent, while searches related to scalp odor climbed more than 80 percent. On social media, posts featuring "summer survival kits" and "heatwave must-haves" have attracted millions of views. The trend is spreading well beyond beauty. Budget retailer Daiso quickly sold out of its 3,000-won reusable ice neck cooling band after launching it for the summer season. Sales of cooling innerwear doubled from a year earlier in May, prompting the chain to expand its cooling lineup from 70 to 90 products. It has also launched a dedicated "Summer Essentials" campaign featuring cooling bedding, cooling sprays and portable fans, underscoring how heat-relief products have become everyday household necessities rather than seasonal novelties. The trend is also exposing a generational divide in how Koreans cope with the heat. Kim Eun-seo, 23, from Ilsan, said she walked into Olive Young simply to escape the rain but ended up browsing cooling products for her boyfriend, who gets hot more easily than she does. She used to carry a handheld fan throughout college. Today she buys most cooling products online, with a reusable cooling neck wrap topping her list. "It works really well in the heat, and it's inexpensive if you buy it online," she said. Kim Seon-chang, 63, from Seoul's Yangjae neighborhood, has taken the opposite approach. Rather than relying on rechargeable gadgets, he still carries a traditional folding fan. "There's a reason our ancestors used fans," he said. "It doesn't need charging, it doesn't make noise, and as long as I keep moving my arm, it keeps me cool." The popularity of such products reflects more than rising temperatures. Korea's summers are among the most humid in the developed world. Relative humidity typically ranges between 78 percent and 84 percent during the season, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration, and often approaches 88 percent in July. Combined with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, the humidity regularly pushes the country's discomfort index above 80 — a level at which most people experience significant discomfort. Because sweat evaporates more slowly in humid air, many of the season's best-selling products are designed less to lower body temperature directly than to reduce stickiness and help the body cool itself more efficiently. The health impact is already becoming visible. As of June 18, about 300 people had visited emergency rooms nationwide for heat-related illnesses over the previous month, up from 192 during the same period last year, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Last summer was also Korea's hottest since nationwide records began in 1973. The national average temperature reached 25.7 degrees Celsius, while the average nighttime low climbed to a record 21.9 degrees, leaving many residents with little relief even after sunset. Europe is now confronting many of the same challenges, but the response has been markedly different. Across much of the continent, households still rely primarily on passive cooling by closing shutters during the day and ventilating homes at night. According to the International Energy Agency, household air-conditioner ownership averages around 20 percent across Europe, although rates vary widely, from 56 percent in Italy and 41 percent in Spain to 25 percent in France, 5 percent in the United Kingdom and just 3 percent in Germany. In Korean households, the rate is 98 percent of Korean households. Even with cooling available in almost every home, consumers continue spending on an expanding range of products designed to make daily life outdoors more bearable. What distinguishes Korea is not simply the demand for cooling products but the breadth of categories they now occupy. Heat-relief products increasingly blur the lines between beauty, fashion, healthcare and personal care, extending from cooling shampoos and sun powders to frozen neck wraps, cooling innerwear and wearable accessories. The result is a consumer market that has adapted to climate change with remarkable speed. For Europeans, surviving another scorching summer may still mean searching for shade or jumping into the nearest river. For Koreans, it increasingly means stopping by the cosmetics aisle first. 2026-07-09 18:02:53
Vietnamese arrivals in Korea surpass Chinese for first time SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - Viet Nam overtook China as the largest source of foreign arrivals in South Korea last year as Vietnamese workers continued to enter the country while more Chinese nationals left, government data showed Thursday. Figures released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics showed 98,000 Vietnamese nationals arrived in South Korea in 2025, edging past 94,000 arrivals from China. A year earlier, China still led by a wide margin, with 112,000 arrivals compared with Viet Nam's 88,000. China, long South Korea's largest source of foreign arrivals, also posted a net outflow of migrants in 2025 after recording a net inflow the previous year. Visa data suggest the shift was largely driven by employment migration. Nearly half of Vietnamese arrivals entered on work visas, and that share continued to rise. Chinese arrivals, by contrast, relied more heavily on overseas Korean and student visas, while the share entering on employment visas declined. The shift also came as overall migration into South Korea slowed. Foreign arrivals fell from a year earlier while departures increased, reducing the net inflow of foreign nationals to about half the previous year's level. The sharpest decline came in short-term visits, with visa-free entries dropping by nearly half. Combined with a smaller net inflow of South Korean nationals, net population growth from migration fell by more than 40 percent from a year earlier. Elsewhere, Nepal and Uzbekistan continued to post solid net inflows, while Thailand's net outflow widened for a second straight year, reversing a trend seen in 2022 when it ranked among the countries with the largest net inflows. South Koreans also showed a clear generational divide in migration patterns. People in their 20s, along with children under 10, remained more likely to leave the country than return. From their 30s onward, however, the pattern reversed, with people in their 50s recording the largest net inflow of any age group. Although the gap narrowed slightly from a year earlier, overall cross-border movement among South Korean nationals declined in 2025. 2026-07-09 17:14:31
Hong Myung-bo to testify at National Assembly hearing SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - Former South Korea head coach Hong Myung-bo issued a new public apology Thursday over the national team's early exit from the 2026 World Cup, saying he would appear before a parliamentary hearing if called and take full responsibility for the result. The statement was released through the Hong Myung-bo Scholarship Foundation, a charity the 57-year-old 2002 World Cup hero himself chairs. It was made public on the day the National Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee voted to hold a hearing on issues surrounding the Korea Football Association and named Hong as a witness. The hearing is scheduled for July 22. It was Hong's second public apology since South Korea was eliminated in the World Cup group stage on June 28. He resigned and apologized at a news conference in Mexico the following day, June 29, but took no questions and largely disappeared from public view afterward. South Korea entered the final day of group play needing help from elsewhere after a 1-0 loss to South Africa on June 25 left the team with one win, two losses and a goal difference of -1. A late win by Uzbekistan over the Democratic Republic of Congo would have been enough to send South Korea through, and Uzbekistan led 1-0 before conceding three second-half goals to lose 3-1. A draw in a separate match between Algeria and Austria pushed South Korea's ranking among third-place finishers down further, and the team finished 10th among the group's third-place teams, one spot outside the eight that advanced to the round of 32 — South Korea's first group-stage exit from a World Cup in eight years. In Thursday's statement, Hong again apologized to Korean football fans and said the responsibility for the result was his alone. "I failed to deliver the result people expected at the World Cup," Hong said. "All responsibility for that result belongs to me as head coach." Hong said he had spent a long time considering what to say after stepping down. His first instinct, he said, was to accept the result and remain silent, since he believed the outcome was his to bear. But he said that it became harder to justify as time passed, with claims not grounded in fact circulating as though they were true and players and staff who had worked alongside him getting caught up in speculation. Hong also addressed criticism over his decision to leave for the United States just two days after returning to South Korea from the World Cup, a move that had fueled accusations that he was trying to dodge accountability. "Staying in the United States was not a choice made to avoid or turn away from the result," he said. "There were threats against me and my family at the time, along with concerns about our safety, and I had to protect my family." He said he had not intended to avoid his responsibilities as head coach or avoid facing the public. Hong closed the statement by turning to the hearing. He said that if the hearing is meant to explain the World Cup result to the public, then he should be the person standing there. "If a hearing is held, the person who should be there is me," he said. "I will answer every question without avoiding anything." Hong ended the statement with another apology, saying he would take every word of the public's criticism seriously. 2026-07-09 16:57:44
NCT's Jaehyun previews new solo single '99 Degrees' with music video teaser SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - NCT's Jaehyun released a music video teaser Thursday for his new solo single "99 Degrees," ahead of the song's release on Friday, SM Entertainment said. The teaser was posted on the SMTOWN YouTube channel at midnight. It shows Jaehyun moving between a brightly lit stage, an empty street where he appears to wander alone, and quieter everyday moments, with his soft vocals giving a brief preview of the ballad. The music video follows Jaehyun as he revisits places tied to his memories, including a theater and a studio, according to SM. The story traces his move away from a past pursuit of perfection toward accepting incompleteness and moving forward. Jaehyun co-wrote and composed "99 Degrees," a piano-led ballad that builds from a delicate opening into a warmer arrangement before returning to his vocals. The title refers to 99 degrees, one degree short of boiling point, as a metaphor for an incomplete state that becomes whole through love. "99 Degrees" follows Jaehyun's debut solo album "J" and tracks including "Unconditional," "Horizon" and "Forever Only." The single and its music video will be released July 10 at 6 p.m. (0900 GMT) across major platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Melon, as well as on the SMTOWN YouTube channel. 2026-07-09 12:53:02
RIIZE's 'II' tops Korea's monthly album chart three weeks after release SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - K-pop boy group RIIZE's second EP, "II," released June 15, is still adding to its chart tally nearly a month later, topping Circle Chart's monthly album ranking for June and reaching No. 1 on Japan's Oricon daily album chart this week, SM Entertainment said Thursday. Most K-pop comebacks peak in their first week and taper off from there. "II" has instead kept climbing: the EP already led Circle Chart's weekly album and download rankings shortly after release, and it is now topping the monthly tally as well, weeks after most albums would have fallen out of contention. The same pattern held in Japan. "II" reached No. 1 on Oricon's daily album chart on July 7, more than three weeks after its release, alongside chart wins on AWA's real-time chart and Recochoku's weekly album ranking. "II" had already become RIIZE's fourth million-selling album and topped Hanteo Chart's weekly album chart, Melon's Global K-pop daily and HOT100 charts, iTunes' Top Albums chart in six regions, and a combined K-pop chart across five platforms under China's Tencent Music, earning a platinum certification on QQ Music along the way. RIIZE has also picked up three music show trophies for the title track "Do Your Dance." The group will release a dance practice video for another EP track, "D-D-Done," on its YouTube channel at 9 p.m. (1200 GMT) Thursday. RIIZE consists of Shotaro, Eunseok, Sungchan, Wonbin, Sohee and Anton. 2026-07-09 12:52:49
Starbucks Korea resumes promotions after 'Tank Day' backlash SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - Starbucks Korea is relaunching customer promotions after a marketing controversy over the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising forced the company to close every store in the country simultaneously for staff training, something it had never done in its 27 years in Korea. The coffee chain said Tuesday it will give free drink coupons and food discount coupons to all Starbucks Rewards members through Aug. 14. Existing members received the coupons the same day, and anyone who joins by July 31 will get theirs the day after signing up. Starbucks Korea's rewards program had about 15 million members as of early this year. The free drink coupon covers one tall-size iced Caffe Americano, iced Caffe Latte or iced Vanilla Latte, or their hot equivalents. At regular prices, that is a drink worth 4,700 won for the Americano and 5,200 won for the two latte options. A separate coupon offers 30 percent off sandwiches, cakes, bread and ice cream. The campaign marks a return to normal marketing for Starbucks Korea. The company spent much of June managing fallout from a tumbler promotion tied to May 18, the anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, a pro-democracy movement crushed by South Korea's military government in 1980. The event was branded "Tank Day," a name critics said evoked the tanks the military sent into Gwangju. Its tagline, "tak on the desk," echoed a notorious 1987 police cover-up in which officials claimed a student activist died after they "hit the desk" during interrogation. Both references touch on some of the most painful chapters in modern Korean history. The backlash was swift. Within days, Starbucks Korea's chief executive was dismissed and the company opened an internal investigation. Its chairman issued a public apology. Starbucks Korea also temporarily eased refund rules for prepaid gift cards and postponed planned promotions and summer menu launches. The response culminated on June 22. All of Starbucks Korea's roughly 2,160 stores nationwide closed early, at 3 p.m., so employees could watch training sessions on Korean history and social sensitivity. The chain had never done that before in the 27 years since its first store opened in Seoul in 1999. Shinsegae Group, which controls Starbucks Korea through its E-Mart division, said executives across its affiliates would undergo the same training. Since then, the company has gradually eased back into business as usual. It relaunched its delayed summer products in late June before restarting rewards promotions this week. A Starbucks Korea official described the summer coupon event as part of a customer benefit program the company has run for years, rather than a response to the controversy. Starbucks Korea has rolled out several other rewards-member promotions this year, including size-up offers on cold brew and other drinks in April, a cherry blossom merchandise event in March, buy-one-get-one coupons in January, and 30 percent drink discount coupons in January, February and April. 2026-07-09 11:04:32
SM Classics to take K-pop orchestral concerts to Singapore, Bangkok and Toronto SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - SM Entertainment's classical and jazz label SM Classics will expand its orchestral concert series overseas, with performances scheduled in Asia this year and in North America next year, the company said Thursday. The label announced the main lineup for the "SM Classics Live 2026 - 2027 Season," a concert series that reinterprets SM Entertainment's K-pop catalog through orchestral arrangements. The season marks the label's first stops in Southeast Asia and North America, after earlier concerts in Korea, Japan and, this past February, Austria. The season will open Friday at Esplanade Theatre in Singapore with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra. Two days later, the series will move to Prince Mahidol Hall in Bangkok, where SM Classics will perform with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. Wendy of Red Velvet will appear as a guest vocalist at both the Singapore and Bangkok concerts. Thanapol Setabrahmana will conduct the two performances. SM said an additional Bangkok performance was added after the first show sold out. The series will continue Nov. 5 at Ho Guom Opera in Hanoi with a special closing performance for the 2026 Korea Season, an international cultural exchange program. The concert will feature conductor Kim Yuwon, the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra and Ryeowook of Super Junior. The tour will then move to North America in 2027, with two concerts at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on June 29 and 30. The Toronto performances will bring together Kim, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Wendy. SM Classics launched in 2020 to reinterpret SM Entertainment's music catalog through orchestral and jazz arrangements. Its concerts have so far included collaborations with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the SM Classics Town Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. SM said it plans to keep expanding the concert brand to more countries and cities beyond the 2026 to 2027 season. 2026-07-09 11:03:54
BTS-themed exhibition showcases Korean heritage at British Museum SEOUL, July 8 (AJP) - An exhibition featuring K-pop supergroup BTS and their fifth studio album "ARIRANG" opened in London this week in collaboration with The British Museum, their management agency HYBE said on Wednesday. The exhibition, which runs from Monday through July 23 at the museum's Korea Foundation Gallery, also offers a self-guided trail that takes roughly 20 minutes to complete. It is part of "BTS THE CITY ARIRANG-LONDON," a citywide program related to the group's two "ARIRANG" tour concerts at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on July 6 and 7. The album's link to the museum's holdings starts with something many listeners might miss: track No. 29, which consists of the sound of the Bell of King Seongdeok being struck, followed by more than a minute of silence. The bell, a National Treasure and the largest surviving bell of its kind in Korea, is not part of the museum's collection, but the gallery holds other objects from the Silla Kingdom, the era in which it was cast. Two of those objects, a gold earring and roof tiles, anchor the Silla side of the trail. The earring, dated to the fifth century, was made using filigree and granulation techniques that show the sophistication of Korean goldsmithing at the time. The roof tiles once topped palaces, government offices and Buddhist temples in the Silla capital. None of those buildings survive intact, but the tiles, decorated with lotus flowers and grapevine patterns, remain as traces of the kingdom's architecture and visual culture. The route also includes a full-scale reconstruction of a sarangbang or scholar's study, from the Joseon dynasty. Built by Korean craftsmen in 2000, it represents the reception room of a 19th-century noble household. A white porcelain moon jar from the same period is another stop on the trail. The jar was assembled from two separately thrown halves, a form the museum describes as one of Korea's best-known ceramic traditions and a continuing source of inspiration for artists. Sang-ah Kim, a curator of the museum's Korea exhibition, selected the five objects for the trail, which was developed alongside the exhibition's survey of 2,000 years of creativity on the Korean Peninsula. Visitors can scan a QR code at the gallery entrance to follow the route. They are also invited to choose one object that resonates with their own life under the prompt "What is Your Arirang?" and share it on social media. 2026-07-08 16:00:18
Netflix says viewer engagement matters more than ad exposure SEOUL, July 8 (AJP) - Global streaming giant Netflix told roughly 600 advertisers and marketing officials in Seoul that viewer engagement matters more than simple ad exposure, as it seeks to attract more advertising spending to its platform. The company laid out the case Tuesday at "Behind The Streams," an event held at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas. Citing its own 2025 survey, Netflix said 74 percent of viewers who saw ads on the platform later took a related action, such as searching for or buying a product. Netflix also pointed to research from Kantar, the global market research firm, which found that traditional metrics such as reach and gross rating points showed a weaker link to brand impact, while viewer attention showed a correlation of more than 0.6 with brand effects. "The advertising market is shifting from competing over how much exposure an ad gets to competing over how deeply it captures attention," said Lee Chun, director of advertising at Netflix Korea. Lee described Netflix's content lineup as a way for brands to reach viewers who are already absorbed in what they are watching, part of a strategy the company calls "Attention to Connection." The pitch comes as Netflix's ad-supported tier continues to grow. Lee said 60 percent of new sign-ups globally are now choosing the ad-supported plan, giving advertisers a larger pool of viewers to reach. At the event, Netflix showcased Korean advertising partnerships that tied brand messages to its shows and films. The company is also expanding ad products, including single-title sponsorships and interactive video ads, alongside Netflix Ads Suite, its in-house ad platform launched in Korea last September to help marketers plan, buy and measure ad performance. Netflix said it plans to launch advertising in 15 more countries in 2027, bringing its ad business to 27 markets. 2026-07-08 15:42:05