The number of discouraged workers in South Korea touched a fresh all-time high in 2021 due to a weak job market amid the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Monday. Asia's fourth-largest economy had 628,000 discouraged workers, the largest tally since related data tracking began in 2014, according to the data from Statistics Korea. Discouraged workers refer to those who are c...

Firefighters have been trying overnight to put out a blaze that broke out at a synthetic fiber manufacturing factory in the southeastern city of Ulsan on Sunday, authorities said. The fire broke out at 6:55 p.m. at a combined seven-story factory of Hyosung TNC Corp. and has not been contained for over 11 hours, according to the Ulsan Fire Department. Two of the factory's workers were sent to a ...

BEIJING -- People in a Beijing district with some 2 million residents were ordered Sunday to undergo mass coronavirus testing following a series of infections as China tightened anti-disease controls ahead of the Winter Olympics. The government told people in areas of the Chinese capital deemed at high risk for infection not to leave the city after 25 cases were found in the Fengtai district and...

North Korea's foreign ministry on Sunday criticized Japan's moves to revise a set of key security documents as "extremely dangerous" steps away from its long-held defense-oriented policy. Japan has reportedly been moving to revise its national security strategy and other key defense documents this year as it confronts an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-ambitious North Korea. "What is...

As the presidential election draws nearer, minor opposition candidates Ahn Cheol-soo and Sim Sang-jung are dishing out criticism against major candidates Lee Jae-myung and Yoon Suk-yeol, in apparent efforts to bring up their own support ratings. In a meeting with his supporters Saturday, Ahn Cheol-soo, the candidate for the People’s Party, criticized the phone call scandals related to Lee and Yo...

Cases exceed 7,000 for two days in row, with omicron taking up around half

Last year was the second hottest year for South Korea on record as climate change continued to drive up global temperatures, the national weather agency said Sunday. A report from the Korea Meteorological Administration said South Korea’s average temperature for 2021 reached 13.3 degrees Celsius, becoming the second-hottest year since data were compiled from 1973. The record follows 13.4 degrees...

Polls offer hope, but concerns remain

Iran has paid its dues to the United Nations with the country's funds frozen in South Korea in a move to immediately restore its voting power, Seoul's finance ministry said Sunday. Iran made an emergency request to South Korea on Jan. 13 for the use of Tehran's funds in Seoul to pay its dues after being informed by the UN it would immediately lose its voting rights for the arrears. Iran has mor...

South Korea's daily coronavirus cases on Sunday spiked to the second-largest figure since the pandemic outbreak, putting health authorities on alert amid the fast spread of the omicron variant. The country added 7,630 new COVID-19 infections, including 7,343 local infections, raising the total caseload to 733,902, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). Sunday's fig...

President Moon Jae-in returned home Saturday from a three-nation trip to the Middle East, where bolstering economic and defense cooperation was high on the agenda. In the United Arab Emirates, South Korea signed a preliminary deal to sell Seoul‘s midrange surface-to-air missiles to the Persian Gulf nation, in the latest sign of deepening defense cooperation between the two nations. The de...

South Korea‘s daily coronavirus cases jumped to over 7,000 for the first time in a month on Saturday amid the fast spread of the omicron variant. The country added 7,009 new COVID-19 infections, including 6,729 local infections, raising the total caseload to 726,274, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). It is the first time since mid-December that the numbe...

The Ministry of Justice has opened another third-party visa application center in London earlier this week, the latest in a series of moves to reduce the workload of embassy staff. “Starting from January 17, 2022, the Government of the Republic of Korea will open the Korea Visa Application Center (KVAC) in London, operated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to manage Korean v...

A court on Friday allowed a YouTube-based media outlet to broadcast most of its recordings of phone conversations between one of its staffers and the wife of main opposition presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol. In an injunction suit launched by Kim Keon-hee, Yoon's wife, the Seoul Southern District Court allowed Voice of Seoul to disclose the recordings, except for parts that delve into private...

Thousands of Buddhist monks held a rally in Seoul on Friday, demanding President Moon Jae-in apologize for what they called the government's anti-Buddhist bias after a ruling party lawmaker accused temples of collecting admission fees from visitors to national parks. The lawmaker, Rep. Jung Chung-rai of the Democratic Party, has been under a firestorm of criticism from South Korea's largest Budd...