With summer in full swing a long with the ton of come backs come news of all your favorite K-pop idols in concert. Among those having made concert announcements this past week were DBSK bringing their Catch Me Live World Tour to the US with a concert date in Los Angeles on Friday, July 5th. Tickets went on sale this past Thursday and are still available. Also announcing tours this week were: BTOB, 2AM and K.Will are joining together for a concert Boys 2 Man June 29th at Kyunghee University; Brand New Music will be holding their 3rd Brand New Day concert starring Verbal Jint, Swings, Phantom, Troy and the newest addition to their label San E; Super Junior will be holding Super Show 5 on July 28th and 29th at the Tokyo Dome following the release of their Japanese album Hero on July 24th; and Girls Generation will be kicking off their 2013 Girls’ Generation World Tour Girls & Peace this weekend on June 8th in Seoul.
Caught:
- Actor Lee Byung-hun announced that he will be marrying his girlfriend actress Lee Min-jung on August 10th at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and reports are no, she isn’t pregnant. (StarNews)
- Actor Kim Jae-won will be marrying his girlfriend, who is a childhood friend, on June 28th and yes, she is pregnant. (AsiaOne)
- Actor Kim Sung-oh who is currently appearing in the K-drama When A Man Loves has admitted that he has a girlfriend. His girlfriend apparently had visited the set of the drama often. (Chosun)
- Actress Park Shi-yeon has announced that she is 6 months pregnant after being married for two years. The timing is probably good as she has been on hiatus awaiting the results of her propofol abuse trial. (StarNews)
- The CEO of Yedang Entertainment, home of Ali, Rania and Yim Jae-beum, was found dead in his office on June 4th and initial reports said that he died from exhaustion and overwork. But follow up autopsy reports have found that he committed suicide. (SportsSeoul)
- Bad news for Block B and their fans as a Seoul Court dismissed their application for an injunction against Stardom Entertainment to cancel their exclusive contract with them. The members of Block B released a statement that said they will continue their fight to be released from their contract with Stardom Entertainment and will not work under the label again. (OSEN)
- Undoubtedly, Super Junior M‘s Henry had been trapped in SM Entertainment languishing in semi-oblivion for awhile, but no more. He was recently revealed as SM’s newest solo artist and while his debut as a soloist might not be perfect, “Trap” has to be one of my favorite releases from SM this year.
If You Can:
- PSY just got his fifth Guinness World Record for ‘Largest Gangnam Style Dance’ at his free concert in Seoul last year. He already had three other records for “Gangnam Style”– ‘Most viewed video online,’ ‘Most “liked” video online’ and ‘First video to be viewed more than 1 billion times on YouTube. He also has one Guinness World Record for “Gentleman” ‘Most viewed video online in 24 hours.
- Looks like Kim Soo-hyun has another box office hit on his hands. His newest film Covertly, Grandly (aka Secretly, Greatly) co-starring Park Ki-woong and Lee Hyun-woo debuted on June 5th and just broke the all time single day ticket sales record with a total of 919,036 tickets sold within the first 24 hours of the film’s release. The previous record holder was 2012’s The Thieves in which Kim Soo-hyun was part of the all star ensemble cast. At the end of 4 days since it’s release, the movie has exceeded 2 million in ticket sales. (dongA)
In K-pop:
- Bumkey, who has featured in many artists’ songs finally released a song of his own with “Bad Girl” featuring Supreme Team‘s E-Sens, Hmm, from all the recent releases I’m guessing that summer 2013 is the summer of the ‘Bad Girl.’
- Rainbow brought the “Sunshine” to summer with their latest, Hong Hyuck-su released the MV for “Drama,” 2Bic make a come back with “Return,” new boy band Boys Republic made their debut with “Party Rock,” One Way made a come back with a “Beautiful Day” and MBLAQ made their Sexy Beat come back with “Smoky Girl”
- 4Men sang of “Only You” for the Gu Family Book OST, Lee Jung was “Mute” for the Jang Ok Jung Live for Love OST, and indie group J Rabbit released “Sleep” for the Monstar OST.
- Teasing this week were Big Hit Entertainment‘s new boy band BTS with “No More Dream,” Lee Ji-young of Big Mama teased the “Inconvenient Truth” featuring Han-hae of Phantom, Nell released a preview of their upcoming album Escaping Gravity and a teaser for “Ocean of Light,” SISTAR teased their come back with “Give It To Me,” Chocolat teased “Black Tinkerbell,” and Crayon Pop will make their come back with “Bar Bar Bar.”
- Or rather in J-pop? DBSK released a PV for “Wedding Dress” the B-side to their “Ocean” release and SNSD released a dance version PV for “Love&Girls.“
- Kim Hyun-joong released his latest Japanese album Tonight on June 5th and for his 27th birthday a day later on June 6th he learned that on the first day sales alone he sold over 100,000 copies of the album. He also released three PVs for the album: the a black and white PV for the sexy and slick title track “Tonight,” a drama style PV for the mellow rock ballad “Can’t Erase You From My Mind,” and a fun PV in a cafe for the upbeat rock/reggae fusion “Cappuccino.” On his birthday he released the song “The Reason I Live” as a gift for fans.
- In related news, the other four members of Kim Hyun-joong’s former(?) group SS501, Park Jung-min, Kim Hyung-jun, Heo Young-saeng and Kim Kyu-jong, celebrated the group’s 8th anniversary together on June 8th and uploaded a message for fans thanking them for their support.
- Also celebrating an anniversary this week were the boys of F.T. Island who have been together for 6 years since their debut back on June 7, 2007 when they performed their debut song “Love Sick” on M!Countdown.
- For their latest video in their Music Note series, LedApple did a rocking version of Muse‘s “Uprising” and new boy band LC9 did a cover of Nelly‘s “Just A Dream.”
In K-dramas:
- SBS‘ new K-drama I Hear Your Voice starring Lee Bo-young, Lee Jong-suk, Yoon Sang-hyun and Lee Da-hee debuted this week and with it’s first episode on Wednesday came in third place behind When A Man Loves and Mandate of Heaven with a viewer’s rating of 7.7%. On Thursday with it’s second episode it jumped 5% getting a rating of 12.7% in ratings beating out the finale of When A Man Loves which had a rating of 12.1%. (joseiilbo)
