Culture ministry says Korea Season drew nearly 40,000 in Thailand, Vietnam

The culture ministry said Friday that its 2026 Korea Season program in Thailand and Vietnam has drawn 39,917 attendees and participants so far, as it looks to broaden "K-culture" beyond K-pop and drama in Southeast Asia.

The ministry, working with the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange and the Korean cultural centers in Bangkok and Hanoi, has staged creative ballet, band music, classical concerts and media art in the two countries since May.

The K-Live Festival accounted for the bulk of the turnout. A Bangkok show on Oct. 17 featuring Korean acts Hyukoh and Onewe alongside Thailand's Paper Planes drew 6,101 spectators, while Hanoi concerts on Oct. 24 and 25 with Qwer, Silica Gel and Touchd, as well as Vietnamese singers Hoang Dung and the Mau Nuoc Band, drew 28,364. A creative ballet piece titled "GAT," which reinterprets the symbolism of the traditional Korean hat, opened the season, drawing 934 people in Bangkok and 716 in Hanoi, for 1,650 in total.

On Nov. 5, the Hanoi Opera House hosted "SM Classics Live in Hanoi," in which SM Classics and the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra performed orchestral arrangements of K-pop songs, including Red Velvet's "Feel My Rhythm" and Girls' Generation's "Into the New World." About 900 people attended, and the program also included a masterclass and a talk concert.

Exhibitions are running through the end of the year. The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is showing "Lives Around Us" from Oct. 20 to Nov. 29, using works from the National Folk Museum of Korea, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the National Palace Museum of Korea, with 2,907 visitors in its opening week. In Thailand, the cultural center in Bangkok will host "Landscape of Wind" from Nov. 16 to Dec. 25, featuring immersive video based on tiger and landscape paintings from the National Museum of Korea.

"This year's Korea Season became an occasion to broaden cultural exchange by presenting performances and exhibitions that reinterpret Korean traditional culture and by building stages together with local artists," Kim Hyun-joon, the ministry's director-general for international cultural policy, said. "Next year, building on this year's results, we plan to expand the key partner countries while further strengthening two-way exchange in which cultural artists and institutions on the ground plan and create together."

From 2027, the ministry will expand and reorganize three international cultural exchange programs — Korea Season, the Year of Mutual Cultural Exchange and the KORE·A·ROUND CULTURE support initiative — into a single "K-Culture Bridge Project."