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The Korea Society seeks to transform and enhance the images Koreans and Americans have of one another through the performing and fine arts. The programs are presented in collaboration with theaters, colleges and universities, museums and community organizations throughout the United States.
Each year, the Society organizes a tour encompassing four or more venues in the United States for two leading Korean performing arts companies. Most venues are theaters located on American university campuses where the opportunities for exposure to the Korean performing arts are relatively more limited than in major urban centers such as New York City.
The exhibitions mounted three or four times a year in The Korea Society Gallery introduce Americans to other aspects of Korea’s rich artistic and cultural heritage. Korean and Korean-themed art also is made available to audiences throughout the U.S. through the Society’s expanding traveling exhibition program. Whenever feasible, the exhibitions mounted in The Korea Society Gallery are made available to other venues throughout the U.S. for a modest, subsidized fee. In recent years, many of these exhibitions have been mounted in major American university galleries. Currently, there are four exhibitions available for travel: Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames, an exhibition of Korean comics detailing the nation’s history and societal background from the 1950’s to the 1990’s; Advertising a Dream: Movie Posters from Post-War Korea, an exhibition of 23 movie posters from 1950s and 1960s South Korea, a period when Koreans were just waking up from the nightmare of the Korean War yet only beginning to envision a prosperous future; Gods, Demons and Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism, an exhibition of six paintings representing deities who are fixtures of traditional shaman shrines; and Living Through the Forgotten War: Portrait of Korea, an exhibition of 39 black and white photographic prints that provide a human perspective on a war that forever changed the land and people of Korea and the many Americans who served in the war.
The Society’s newest venture in the arts is its role as the home of the New York Korean Film Festival. Initiated independently in 2001, the Festival came under the management of the Society in 2006. Annually, the Festival offers a rich array of recent Korean films that have been acclaimed by critics and loved by audiences, classic and masterpiece works, and a short film festival for film students. In addition, a monthly Korean Film Night, retrospectives of the filmography of prominent directors, panel discussions, a short film festival, a North Korean film festival, and other activities showcasing Korean film are presented.
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Arts 
