- Arts Council Korea"s releasing Contemporary Korean Arts Series as an introduction to contemporary Korean arts

Additional three volumes of the series introducing the contemporary Korean arts overseas, of which four titles were published last year, are now available.

 Arts Council Korea (ARKO, Kwon Young-bin the chairperson) has been unveiling Contemporary Korean Arts Series since 2011, by publishing three to four titles each year, to promote current status and specialty of Korean contemporary arts overseas and to improve interchanges of arts around the world.

The three volumes of the series published this year cover Dancing Korea: New Waves of Choreographers and Dance Companies, K-POP: Roots and Blossoming of Korean Popular Music, and Coexisting Differences: Women Artists in Contemporary Korean Art.

The book Dancing Korea: New Waves of Choreographers and Dance Companies provides an explanation of the history of contemporary Korean dance and introduction of major choreographers and dance companies of Korea. The next volume K-POP: Roots and Blossoming of Korean Popular Music describes how it developed as a global craze through the history of Korean popular music from the Japanese colonial period up until now. Coexisting Differences: Women Artists in Contemporary Korean Art deals with Korean nine female artists who presented their works to the international art world and introduce their works.

The first four volumes of the series published last year cover Daehangno: Theater District in Seoul, Diaspora: Korean Nomadism, Harmonia Koreana: A Short History of 20th-century Korean Music and City as Art: 100 Notable Works of Architecture in Seoul.

When the first four volumes were published last year, ARKO distributed the books to approximately 500 art institutions and universities offering the Korean studies program around the world and the books were favorably reviewed for its scientific value and appropriate contents. ARKO will again hand out the free copies this year.

Reference materials regarding contemporary Korean arts for foreigners had been quite insufficient for its importance. Now, stepping on the road to the world to meet with the artists and the public overseas, Contemporary Korean Arts Series will be presenting trends and specialty of Korean arts and boosting international artistic exchanges.

※Korean literatures are translated by the expert organization(Literature Translation Institute of Korea etc.), and traditional arts already have plenty of relative books, so the series excludes these two.

ARKO plans to publish three more titles of the series next year, and total 15 titles by 2015.

Hollym Corp., Publishers is in charge of publication and distribution of the Contemporary Korean Arts Series, which is priced as ₩10,000 per title.