Red clump ( RC ) stars are widely used as an excellent standard candle .
To make them even better , it is important to know the dependence of their absolute magnitudes on age and metallicity .
We observed star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud to fill age and metallicity parameter space , which previous work has not observationally studied .
We obtained the empirical relations of the age and metallicity dependence of absolute magnitudes M _ { J } , M _ { H } , and M _ { K _ { S } } , and colours J - H , J - K _ { S } , and H - K _ { S } of RC stars , although the coefficients have large errors .
Mean near-infrared magnitudes of the RC stars in the clusters show relatively strong dependence on age for young RC stars .
The J - K _ { S } and H - K _ { S } colours show the nearly constant values of 0.528 \pm 0.015 and 0.047 \pm 0.011 , respectively , at least within the ages of 1.1–3.2 Gyr and [ Fe/H ] of -0.90 to -0.40 dex .
We also confirmed that the population effects of observational data are in good agreement with the model prediction .