Asian tourists have picked Seoul as their favorite destination for the third consecutive year, a recent survey found Wednesday. The survey, commissioned by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, questioned 3,200 people in China, Japan and Thailand and 600 others visiting Seoul last year. Of 1,050 Chinese surveyed, 16.4 percent picked Seoul as the city which they wanted to visit within a year, follo...

The Gyeonggi police agency said Wednesday that it had found letters thought to be written by the late actress Jang Ja-yeon. The letters had been sent to Jang’s acquaintance, known as Jeon, who is currently serving a jail term. The police inspected Jeon’s cell Wednesday morning and found 20 letters and five envelopes, believed to have been sent by the actress, and several newspaper articles. “T...

Carnival has returned to Haiti, a year after the devastating earthquake, but this time it is darker and more menacing rippling with violent under tones as Haitians seek to exorcise their demons. Papier-mache artist Jean-Marc Turin created a sculpture dubbed “Haiti Kolera” for this year’s carnival in the coastal town of Jacmel. The striking cardboard figure of a red and blue woman, vomiting down...

MANILA (AFP) ― Like some bad science-fiction movie, Philippine fishermen are encountering strange alien creatures: tough, speckled fish with sharp spines that tear and rip their nets. These suckermouth catfish from South America are just one of a growing number of foreign species that are spreading in local waterways and forests, threatening to edge out the country’s indigenous plants and animal...

The sun is shining on the tourism trade in Asia-Pacific with double-digit growth notched up in 2010, spurred largely by Chinese and Indian middle classes packing their bags for a break abroad. Strong economies, the proliferation of low-cost airlines and a burgeoning constituency of online shoppers are adding to the region’s rosy outlook. There was an 11 percent rise in arrivals in the region ov...

The South Korean government’s positive evaluation of two local sports federations has come under fire for its oversight of some recent wrongdoings by those bodies. The Korea Volleyball Association and the Korea Wrestling Federation each scored high marks in the recent evaluation by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and have received extra grants for training, according to sources. Th...

With about a month left until the start of the new season, teams in South Korea’s first-division professional baseball league said Wednesday they are hoping to draw a record number of fans in 2011. According to the Korea Baseball Organization, the combined number of fans that the eight teams hope to attract this season amounts to 6.63 million, surpassing the single-season record of 5.92 million ...

NEW YORK (AP) ― They do not quite stumble upon them, but high-tech, skin-care researchers and developers sometimes find new ingredients in unexpected places: under a rock, behind a tree, in the garden. The tips to look outside the laboratory can come from traditional medicine, alternative medicine, folklore and history. Just in the world of botanicals, where many beauty ingredients emerge, ther...