Most Popular
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40 flights canceled on Jeju Island due to bad weather
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Korean labor force to shrink by 10 million by 2044: report
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Pandemic left Korea more depressed than before: report
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[AtoZ Korean Mind] Does your job define who you are? Should it?
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Allegations surrounding BTS resurface, enraged fans demand apology
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Students with history of violence will be barred from becoming teachers
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Medical feud leaves hospitals in financial crisis
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Samsung mocks Apple over iPhone alarm glitch
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Chip up cycle won’t stay long: SK chief
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Govt. asks hospitals to mitigate impact of medical professors' absence
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Admission fraud widespread in Seoul's two major int'l schools
SEOUL, May 20 (Yonhap) -- A dozen officials at two prestigious international schools in South Korea have been caught falsifying documents to grant admission to unqualified students, the municipal education office said Monday. After a month-long special audit of Seoul's Younghoon International Middle School and Daewon International Middle School, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education ordered the schools to punish faculty members involved in admission corruption, while referring 11 officials
May 20, 2013
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Justice minister vows to better protect marriage immigrants
Justice Minister Hwang Kyu-ahn vowed on Monday to step up efforts to eradicate domestic violence against marriage immigrants and their children.He outlined policies to better protect immigrants from bias, discrimination and violence in the sixth Together Day ceremony aimed at promoting multiculturalism. “We will make this year as the beginning year of preventing domestic violence against marriage immigrants in order to protect marriage immigrants and their children from bias and violence, and to
May 20, 2013
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Seoul on guard against Chinese bird flu
The Seoul government is enhancing monitoring of a new strain of deadly bird flu originating from China.Prime Minister Chung Hong-won inspected on Saturday Incheon International Airport’s passenger terminal and customs and ordered a beefing up of quarantine measures.Twenty additional officials as well as quarantine dogs will be placed at the airport to monitor travelers, according to the Prime Minister’s office.The foreign ministry has already issued a travel warning for those living in or travel
May 19, 2013
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Public see groping scandal harming running of country
A survey showed that around 80 percent of the public believed the alleged sexual assault by former presidential spokesperson Yoon Chang-jung would likely affect President Park Geun-hye’s state management. According to the survey conducted by private poll taker Mono Research last week, 76 percent of 1,191 survey participants agreed “his acts would inevitably affect state management of the current government” for either a short or long period of time. Another 22 percent agreed that “it might not h
May 19, 2013
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Law firm eyes compensation bill for Gaeseong companies
The country's largest law firm is preparing to draft legislation aimed at compensating companies that have taken a hit from the suspension of an inter-Korean industrial complex in North Korea, a law firm official said Sunday.The factory complex in the North's border city of Gaeseong has remained idle since early April as Pyongyang pulled all its workers from 123 South Korean companies there, citing South Korea's provocations."A task force of lawyers has started its research on the special compen
May 19, 2013
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Truck spills poisonous hydrofluoric acid
SIHEUNG-- A large container of hydrofluoric acid fell off of a cargo truck and spilled onto a road in Siheung near an industrial complex southwest of Seoul, police said Saturday. Police said the container fell off of the truck while it was making a right turn in a residential area, causing three lanes of the road to be covered with the acid. It said there were no immediate injuries caused by the accident, but the toxic acid spill encompassed at least 30 square meters of road leading to the
May 18, 2013
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Magnitude 4.9 quake occurred near Baengnyeong Island
A magnitude 4.9 quake occurred near waters off of Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, marking the eighth time in a week that a tremor was reported in South Korea, the Korea Meteorological Administration said Saturday. The seismic event took place at 7:02 a.m. with the epicenter located 31 kilometers south of the island that is the northernmost of the West Sea that lie just south of the sea demarcation line that separates the two Koreas. The KMA said the quake was the sixth largest detected
May 18, 2013
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Korea honors May 1980 pro-democracy uprising
GWANGJU—Koreans on Saturday honored the 33rd anniversary of a popular uprising in the southern city of Gwangju that acted as the watershed event in the nation's transition into a democracy. The official event was attended by 2,500 people including President Park Geun-hye, senior government officials, political figures, related organizations and civic groups, and took place at 10 a.m. The ceremony, held at the May 18 National Cemetery where people killed by troops under Chun Doo-hwan are buri
May 18, 2013
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Defense ministry to build country's first trauma center
The country's first trauma center is expected to be built by 2015 to treat patients with severe external injuries, the defense ministry said Friday.Under the plan, the ministry and Seoul National University Bundang Hospital will jointly operate the center to be built inside the Armed Forces Medical Command in Seongnam, just south of Seoul.The center is expected to be equipped with 160 beds and treat both military and civilian patients, the ministry said."Officials from the defense ministry, the
May 17, 2013
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[Newsmaker] Ministry halts Janssen’s Tylenol production
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced Thursday that it would order Janssen Korea to halt production of five drugs including Children’s Tylenol syrup and file a criminal complaint against the company.The measures were drawn up as a result of an audit conducted after it was revealed the company delayed recalling Children’s Tylenol syrup last month despite being aware that the product may contain unsafe levels of acetaminophen, its main active ingredient, violating the Pharmaceutical Affai
May 16, 2013
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Korea urged to embrace diversity
Korea should recalibrate its multiculturalism policy toward a greater acceptance of cultural diversity and broader social integration of ethnic minorities, a senior official said Thursday.“It is the time to change the policy direction so that Koreans can better embrace differences and accept the identities of ethnic minorities here as part of efforts to create a truly inclusive society,” said Chung Hae-moon, secretary general of ASEAN-Korea Center at an international forum on multiculturalism in
May 16, 2013
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Nine fake eye condition to dodge draft
The military recruitment agency has referred nine people suspected of feigning an eye condition to dodge military service to the military prosecution, officials said Thursday.The Military Manpower Administration said they attached “Kimite,” a popular motion sickness patch, below their eyes to have their pupils enlarged temporarily before their physical checkups so that they could pretend to have eye problems.They applied the patch for around six months in 2009 and 2010, and claimed that their ey
May 16, 2013
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Military, Microsoft end dispute over software fees
The Defense Ministry and Microsoft have signed a pact on bilateral technology cooperation, putting an end to their dispute over the pricing of the firm’s software products used by the ministry, Seoul officials said Thursday.“Microsoft has agreed not to demand the fees for us using its software any more. Resolving the dispute, the two sides have agreed to cooperate on defense information and technology,” a ministry official told reporters, declining to be named.“We anticipate Microsoft’s technolo
May 16, 2013
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Top court recognizes marital rape as crime for first time
The nation's top court ruled Thursday that forced sex with a spouse constitutes rape, recognizing marital rape as a crime for the first time.Upholding a lower court's verdict, the Supreme Court sentenced a 45-year-old man, whose identity has been withheld, to three years and six months in prison for forcing his wife to have sex with him by threatening her with a lethal weapon. Spousal rape has not been seen as a crime in South Korea since the Supreme Court denied such a crime in the 1970s, excep
May 16, 2013
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Education woes seen as Achilles‘ heel of Brazil
Education woes seen as Achilles‘ heel of BrazilSEROPEDICA, Brazil (AP) _ There‘s a storage room just off a university lab that gives students more experience than many can handle: Skinned pigs and cats, disembodied cow livers, intestines, brains and the other unidentifiable detritus of years’ worth of dissections fill a dozen wading pool-sized vats to the brim.With the veterinary department‘s incinerator long on the fritz, the stomach-turning, formaldehyde-drenched mass of animal carcasses and o
May 16, 2013
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Hundreds of local English instructors face layoffs
Hundreds of local non-regular instructors who teach English conversation at primary and secondary schools submitted a petition to the rights watchdog Thursday against massive layoffs, calling on the government to keep its pledge to guarantee their job security.The Association of Non-regular Workers at School said they asked the National Human Rights Commission to step in to prevent the government from terminating the contracts of some 600 irregular English conversation teachers upon their expira
May 16, 2013
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Seoul eyes special training for foreign babysitters
In the wake of continued complaints from local parents about unqualified foreign babysitters, the government plans to push for special training programs for applicants from overseas, Seoul’s civil rights commission said Wednesday.While up to 60,000 foreigners, mostly ethnic Chinese, work as babysitters and housekeepers for Korean households, no job training programs for the role exist, leading to problems caused by cultural differences and misunderstandings.Under the envisioned plan drawn up by
May 15, 2013
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Seoul City wins U.N. prizes for citizen-friendly policies
Seoul City won four United Nations Public Service Awards, which are given to public officers or organizations in recognition of their excellence in public services. The city government said Wednesday that the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the organizer of the annual award competition, notified the city of the achievements in three sectors: Preventing and combating corruption in the public service, fostering participation in public policy decision making through innovative mecha
May 15, 2013
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Prosecutors raid 30 construction firms in river project investigation
Prosecutors raided more than 30 construction firms Wednesday that are suspected of creating slush funds, embezzlement and price-fixing in connection with the four-river refurbishment project under the former Lee Myung-bak administration. Scores of investigators from two teams at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office searched the headquarters and local offices of GS Engineering & Construction, Daewoo E&C, SK E&C, Samsung C&T Corp, and POSCO E&C, in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and South Jeol
May 15, 2013
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Ex-Korean sex slaves to visit Japan for rallies
Elderly South Korean women forced by Japan into sex slavery during World War II plan to visit the neighboring country this week to hold rounds of rallies to let the people know of their predecessors’ wrongdoing, a local organization said Wednesday.Two victims ― 88-year-old Kim Bok-dong and 86-year-old Kil Won-ok ― will head to Japan on Friday to hold street rallies and press conferences to testify about the hardship they were forced to endure, according to the Korean Council for the Women Drafte
May 15, 2013