Korea Now: Seoul Events, K-pop & Local Guide | NowHitz · 5

A treasure box gone in a day

Lotte Chilsung launched Captain Q in 1980, a rum-based Korean liquor. It was discontinued in 2015 and is back after about a decade. The bottle, cap and label look exactly as before; the liquid has been improved.

The 'Captain Q Treasure Box' package released on Oct. 14 sold through its prepared stock in a day. Hankyung reports 12,000 limited sets, and 1,980 of them, a nod to 1980, include a 1.5-don pure-silver coin.

300,000 app searches

Between Oct. 9 and 16, Seven-Eleven app users searched for 'Captain Q' more than 300,000 times, 15% of all stock-finder searches. Not soju, not beer: one old bottle took over the search bar.

The folk saying that you stay hung over for two days has only added to the buzz, with parents' memories and young shoppers' curiosity meeting on the same shelf.

Taegeukdang bread rides the same wave

GS25 teamed up with Taegeukdang, the Seoul bakery founded in 1946. Its Butter Cream Bread, released on Oct. 14, ranked No. 1 in sales among about 70 chilled dessert breads. Oranda Bread and Mini Mammoth Bread followed on Oct. 16.

Seven-Eleven says its nurungji and yakgwa snacks (three kinds) and a hallabong-cream snack have sold more than 150,000 units since late September.

The 'newtro' numbers

Seven-Eleven's whisky and liquor sales rose 15% year on year from Jan. 1 to Oct. 16. Products under KRW 20,000 rose 25%, beating the overall growth rate.

Song Seung-bae, Seven-Eleven's beverage and liquor MD, said shoppers increasingly buy "the history and story of a product along with the product."

Before you buy

Regular sales start on Oct. 21: a 360ml, 35% ABV bottle at KRW 9,900. From Oct. 21 to 31, paying with Woori Card takes 20% off, a perk Seven-Eleven says only it offers among the three big chains.

The Treasure Box is already gone. The app's stock finder is the quickest way to check a nearby store.

Ratings up seven points in four episodes

Nielsen Korea nationwide: 11.4% for episode 1, 14.9% for episode 2, 15.1% for episode 3, 18.5% for episode 4. Every episode beat the last. With the premiere on Oct. 9, that happened in under two weeks.

It airs first in SBS's Friday-Saturday slot and is also on Netflix.

9.9 million hours in week one

In the Global Top 10 Netflix announced on Oct. 14 for Oct. 5-11, it ranked No. 1 among non-English shows, with 9.9 million viewing hours and 4.6 million views in its first week.

It is Studio Dragon's tenth Netflix global No. 1, and the fifth straight year since 'The Glory' in 2022.

A Japanese original, Korean-style medical noir

The source is TV Asahi's 'Doctor-X: Surgeon Daimon Michiko', which began in 2012 and ran seven seasons through 2021. In Korea the lead is surgeon Gye Su-jeong, played by Kim Ji-won in her first solo lead.

Son Hyun-joo, Lee Jung-eun and Kim Woo-seok co-star. The story draws on Korean medical issues such as the law on CCTV in operating rooms and the strike over medical school quotas.

The medical-accuracy row came too

A viewer who says he is an orthopedic surgeon asked the Korea Media and Communications Standards Commission on Oct. 13 to review the show, saying surgery scenes differ from real clinical practice. He accepts dramatic exaggeration but worries it could plant wrong ideas.

Ratings kept rising and the global ranking followed.

What to watch next

Studio Dragon says Noh Hee-kyung's 'Slowly and Intensely' and Kim Woo-bin's 'Gift' will arrive within the year.

'Doctor X' continues on SBS and Netflix. The official trailer is on Netflix Korea's channel.

Where and when

This is the 5th K-Jewelry Jongno Festival, hosted by Jongno-gu. It runs from noon to 9 p.m. on Oct. 24 around Donhwamun-ro 10-gil and Seosunra-gil.

The theme is "the street where jewelry is born, Jongno": the idea is to show how jewelry is designed and made, right on the street.

14 things you can make

From 1 to 8 p.m., 14 hands-on programs run on Donhwamun-ro 10-gil. You pay only for materials. Book ahead through the Seoul public service reservation system or register on site.

The Seoul Jewelry Support Center runs a separate make-your-own-ring session. Craftsmen also give free demonstrations: initial engraving, cleaning, gemstone-reuse advice, metal polishing and embroidered name tags.

Auctions, a runway and free appraisals

A stage at the Seosunra-gil entrance hosts price-breaking auctions at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., followed by a jewelry runway show from 3 p.m.

At Ibis Ambassador Seoul Insadong and the Dorothy showroom, 35 companies show natural stones and rare minerals from 1 to 7 p.m. Bring gems from home for a free appraisal.

Where your wallet opens

Twenty Jongno-based brands and makers set up pop-ups on Seosunra-gil, and nearby shops mark prices down 10-20%.

Spend KRW 30,000 or more at the festival for a prize-draw ticket. There is a treasure-hunt stamp mission, and the wedding-ring event gives one selected couple a 14K couple ring and an on-stage proposal.

Before you go

Popular hands-on sessions can fill up, so booking through the Seoul public service reservation system is the safer route. On-site registration is also available.

Auctions are at 1 and 5 p.m., the runway at 3 p.m., seminars at 2 and 4 p.m. Pick what you want to catch first and plan your route around it.

The 'AI PC' arrives at COEX

Nvidia held the RTX Spark launch event at COEX in Samseong-dong on Oct. 16. Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI are shipping notebooks with the chip.

It is a Windows PC chip that puts CPU and GPU in one package. Nvidia first unveiled it at Computex in June; Korean sales followed about four months later.

The spec that matters: memory

A 20-core Grace CPU and a Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores share up to 128GB of memory. AI throughput is 1 petaflops at FP4.

Nvidia says that design lets 70B-class open AI models and agents run directly on the laptop.

Why is it so pricey?

The cheapest in Korea is the MSI Prestige N16 at KRW 5,799,000. The US starting price is $2,599 (about KRW 3.46 million), and top models climb into the KRW 9 million range.

An Nvidia official admitted that 128GB looked affordable at the design stage, but "we did not expect memory prices to rise this much."

The 'no token anxiety' pitch

Nvidia VP Keita Ida pitched on-device AI with no limit on token usage. Sensitive data stays on the machine; heavy jobs go to the cloud.

The company also says creative apps such as Photoshop and Premiere finish jobs faster.

Before you buy

Laptops are sold through each maker's official site and major retailers. Samsung and LG were not on the first list; Inews24 reports talks are said to be under way.

Price and how well existing software runs on Arm are the hurdles. More models at different price points are expected from next year.

The car that arrives empty

Once you book, an operator at a control center drives the car to your requested spot remotely. There is no one inside.

From there you drive yourself. Park it anywhere when you are done and a remote operator takes it back to the depot.

Who gets to try it

This round is a business pilot open only to employees of companies in Pangyo Second Techno Valley. It runs for about three months, through year-end.

The car is Kia's mid-size purpose-built vehicle, the PV5 Passenger. Booking is through an app; pricing and fleet size were not disclosed.

What if the signal drops?

Remote driving means a control center operates a vehicle with nobody on board over 4G and 5G networks, so connectivity is the obvious worry.

Kia says it built a triple communication network, trains its operators and has an emergency dispatch system.

How it got here

Kia received a remote-driving regulatory-sandbox exemption from the transport ministry in April 2025. In November 2025, after about 70 hours and 1,000 km of testing in Jeju, it said it became the first domestic automaker to pull off a remote-driving demo on public roads.

Kia calls the Pangyo pilot the first domestic case of testing the business case for remote driving in a real service environment.

What to watch

Kia plans to widen the service in 2027 and push toward commercializing PV5-based remote-driving service.

It is not open to the general public yet. Questions go to Kia's PR team at +82-2-3464-2105.

140,000 sheets on Oct. 23

The stamps show Faker's career and award moments. There are 140,000 sheets plus a stamp booklet.

On Oct. 10, Seoul Central Post Office's Stamp Museum held a ceremony handing him the real thing. He got his stamps two weeks before the rest of us.

A Faker room at the Stamp Museum

A Faker special exhibition hall opened alongside the ceremony. It shows the commemorative stamp and a player uniform, and adds video screenings and a game zone.

Korea Post head Park In-hwan said the museum should become "a landmark that draws many domestic and foreign tourists as well as a space for stamp culture."

Jamsil first, then Seongsu

Riot Games' 'Music & Worlds 26' pop-up runs at Lotte World Mall in Jamsil from Oct. 23 to Nov. 1. Trendpod by Olive Young N in Seongsu follows from Oct. 29 to Nov. 8.

Expect music-video photo zones, music and esports quizzes, cheer messages for teams heading to Worlds, a lucky draw and a build-your-own Lolvatar station. Faker's stamp is on display too.

Riot says its League music catalogue tops 1,500 tracks and 16 billion streams.

Watch the video before you go

This year's Worlds anthem, 'Know My Name', is performed by virtual group True Damage. The official music video dropped on Oct. 9 and follows Faker's road to three straight Worlds titles.

At an Oct. 10 screening at CHZZK LoL Park, Faker said he was "deeply impressed because the journey from the early days of my career to our three-peat was captured in such detail."

Dates to keep straight

Stamp issue day and the Jamsil pop-up opening are both Oct. 23, so a post office stop followed by Lotte World Mall makes a neat one-day route.

Riot says opening hours and the merchandise lineup will be released in stages. Seongsu opens six days after Jamsil, so double-check which venue you're heading to.

The mood shifts with the clock

The AI looks at business type, time of day, season and weather, then picks and plays music to suit the shop. Playlists change automatically to follow morning, lunch and evening crowds.

It is aimed at cafés, restaurants, hair salons, clinics and academies. KT says no extra equipment or music know-how is needed.

Announcements on a schedule

It does more than play songs. Owners can run announcement and scheduled broadcasts for opening hours, events and promotions.

No more walking over to press play on the closing-time notice.

Promotion and a guestbook, too

Register your shop on RaiDIO Biz and it shows up for users of the music app Raidio. That is one more way for new customers to find the door.

Sign-up also brings a QR sticker. Stick it up and visitors can leave a quick guestbook entry, handy for keeping regulars.

The price: 9,900 won a month

The fee is 9,900 won a month including VAT, added to your KT mobile bill. There is no separate music licensing contract or complicated payment step.

New subscribers get up to three months free as a launch promotion.

Before you sign up

Sign up through KT.com or the My KT app. A text message then sends a dedicated URL; register your account there and you can start, using the RaiDIO Biz app or web.

KT's Son Jung-yeop, head of the Device Business Division, said the service "pairs an AI music service with store-promotion tools and should help small businesses run more efficiently."

No signature move needed

She finished both the quarter-final and the final with hold-downs. The reason she kept her trademark uchimata in the bag is her knee.

The same knee limited her throws at the Asian Games too, yet smart match management delivered her first Asian Games gold, and she carried it into the National Sports Festival.

Not at full strength

After silver at the Paris Olympics she had shoulder surgery and missed many international events. More recently the knee has been the problem.

A check-up after the Asian Games brought no good news. She will skip surgery and rehabilitate instead, and this event ends her season.

A gold every year

Heo was born in Japan to a Korean father and a Japanese mother. In 2021 she took Korean nationality, following her grandmother's last wish to see her compete for Korea, and she has won National Sports Festival gold every year since the next one.

"When I first competed here, hardly anyone was cheering," she said. "Today I heard a lot of cheers, and that was nice."

Next stop: Namyangju City Hall

After this event she leaves Gyeongbuk Sports Council for her new club, Namyangju City Hall. Her targets are the Asian and World Championships next year and gold at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

She missed this year's World Championships because they overlapped with the Asian Games team event. Her younger sister Heo Mi-o took bronze in the women's 48kg at the same Festival.

A bug with a commute

'Worm Train' is inspired by Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis.' Jae-hoon, a young office worker worn out by company life, turns into a giant insect and sets off for work anyway.

The centrepiece is a packed subway car, where the bug is jostled by other passengers and feels more isolated the more crowded it gets.

Even the AI blinked once

Kim started on the idea in February. A subway full of passengers tangled up with a giant insect proved too hard to render, so he stopped in March.

He restarted in August with production support from Kling AI. The film is built on Kling AI's video generation model 4.0.

"Two years of work in two days"

Scenes from the film were shown for the first time as a trailer on Oct. 11 at a conference session during the Asia Contents & Film Market at the Busan International Film Festival. "For a director to see the scene in their head on screen takes at least a year or two," Kim said. "With AI, what took two years became possible in two days."

He added: "The technology can show anything you imagine, but the value in the footage is made by people."

An AI team and a film crew

Producer Creative Mango says it is not all AI. VFX supervisor Ryu Jae-hwan, who made the AI opening of the drama 'Kim Bu-jang,' leads the AI footage, with four AI artists and art, editing and music directors alongside. Dexter The Eye handles colour grading and Monocon sound.

Production is about 70% done and in post.

Where can you watch it?

No release date or viewing route for 'Worm Train' has been announced.

The same company's AI short project with the Seoul Independent Film Festival, 'The Collaboration 2026,' premieres on Nov. 27 at CGV Apgujeong. Directors Lee Myung-se, Jang Cheol-soo, Shin Yeon-shick, Ahn Sang-hoon, Park Shin-woo, Jo Ba-reun and Kim Da-min each paired up with an AI director to make seven shorts.

He hit the first pitch out

LG struck first: Song Chan-ui took James Naylor deep to left in the 2nd. KIA answered at once, with Harold Castro tying it 1-1 over the right-field wall in the bottom half.

The game turned in the 4th. With one out, Kim Do-young jumped on LG starter Anders Tolhurst's first pitch and put it in the left-field seats for a 2-1 lead.

The runs LG gave away

LG had runners on first and second with none out in the 6th and grounded into a double play. The bottom of the inning went the other way: left fielder Song Chan-ui dropped a fly ball, third baseman Moon Bo-gyeong booted a grounder, and KIA had first and third with nobody out.

Kim cashed it in with a sacrifice fly to right.

The 8th-inning clincher

Two out, runner on first in the 8th. LG's fifth pitcher, Jang Hyun-sik, threw a splitter and Kim sent it over the center-field wall. 5-1.

Kim finished 2-for-3 with two homers and four RBIs; two home runs ties the record for a single semi-playoff game.

Naylor goes seven

Naylor allowed one run on four hits over seven innings with six strikeouts; the only homer he gave up came in the 2nd. Closer Jeon Sang-hyeon locked down the 9th for the save.

Tolhurst took the loss, giving up three runs (two earned) in five innings. Park Hae-min went 3-for-4 for LG.

Game 2 is Sunday at 2 p.m.

The best-of-five semi-playoff has been played 17 times, and the Game 1 winner has reached the playoffs 12 times, or 70.6%.

Game 2 is at 2 p.m. on Oct. 18 at the same Gwangju park, with Lim Chan-kyu (LG) and Adam Oller (KIA) listed as probable starters.

Watch the show, then make something with the cast

The campaign began Oct. 16. With the culture ministry and the Korea Performance Tourism Association, it runs performance-tour promotions on online travel agencies in China, Japan, Taiwan, the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The first-time experience add-ons stand out. After Painters, visitors make marbling art with a cast member; Nanta offers a souvenir made from stage props; Jump adds taekwondo; Youngjae Haneumhoe offers a Korean traditional instrument.

Dialogue-heavy shows, with caption glasses

Wordless shows are the usual safe pick for visitors. This campaign also puts dialogue-based works within reach with AI smart caption glasses that follow the lines for audiences who find Korean hard.

You can try them at the musical Inside Me or at the pop-up booths.

A taste in central Seoul

Showcases run on Oct. 17-18 and 24-25 in the outdoor yard of Hiker Ground, with highlights from Anarchist and Finding Kim Jong-wook.

Pop-up booths with show information and caption-glasses demos stay open through Oct. 29 at Hiker Ground and around Daehak-ro.

What KTO says

Baek Man-seong, head of KTO's Korean Wave Content Team, said the goal is for watching a performance itself to become a new reason, and purpose, for visiting Korea.

Before you go

Hiker Ground is at 40 Cheonggyecheon-ro, Jung-gu, a two-minute walk from Jonggak Station Exit 5, and closed on Mondays.

Showcase times and experience-product prices are not published. Check the travel-agency promotions or the show's ticketing page for booking.

Cabbage at 6,256 won, radish at +33%

As of Oct. 6, a head of cabbage retailed at 6,256 won, down 6.5% from a year earlier. Good weather is expected to lift fall cabbage output by more than 19%.

Radish went the other way: 2,778 won each, up nearly 33%. Maeil Shinmun and YTN reported the same figures.

The seasoning aisle is the real test

Salted shrimp (saeujeot) rose over 23% to 18,973 won per kg, and peeled garlic climbed almost 25% to 11,789 won per kg. Cheaper cabbage does not offset a pricier filling.

The government discount is 20%, capped at 10,000 won per person per week; traditional markets get 30%.

More people buy their kimjang ready-salted

The share of households making kimchi at home fell 2.2 points to 62.3%. Among cabbage buyers, 58.9% pick pre-salted cabbage.

Lotte Mart's first pre-order round priced 20kg at 29,900 won for Haenam (event card), 35,900 won for Goesan and 59,900 won for Pyeongchang highland. E-Mart's contract-grown salted cabbage is 27,800 won with a card discount. Lotte Mart's first batch sold out early.

A UNESCO-listed day of making it together

Kimjang was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. The listing recognises families and neighbours making large batches in late autumn to last through winter, and sharing them.

Which is why rising prices rarely empty the kimchi tubs.

Dates to mark before you buy

The second salted-cabbage pre-order round opens Oct. 23 at the three big marts. The government's kimchi-vegetable supply plan is due Oct. 25, and pickup of pre-orders starts Nov. 5.

Peak kimjang in the capital area and Chungcheong is mid-to-late November, when cabbage and radish discounts begin.