Most Popular
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10-man S. Korea lose to Indonesia to miss out on Paris Olympic football qualification
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Hybe-Ador feud should have limited effect on Hybe's overall performance: analysts
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Second Gimpo civil servant found dead, after apologizing for not finishing work
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DP leader says he will meet Yoon without conditions
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First-ever meeting of president, opposition chief set to finally happen
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NewJeans' singles, Japanese debut to proceed as planned, despite Hybe-Ador feud
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Blinken calls on China to press N. Korea to end its 'dangerous' behavior
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Experts raise concerns about Japan putting pressure on Naver over Line
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Samsung mobile chief, Google device head meet in Seoul
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Ship linked to NK arms shipments to Russia is moored in China: State Dept.
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Park's former aide confessed to receiving kickbacks: source
Hong Sa-duk, a close aide to ruling party presidential candidate Park Geun-hye, confessed that he received illegal political funds from a businessman, during a recent questioning, prosecution sources said Saturday. Hong, a former co-chairman of Park's primary campaign team and former six-term lawmaker, was summoned by prosecutors on Friday on suspicion of receiving kickbacks from the businessman,
Oct. 13, 2012
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Growing greens in the city
Urban farms promise to feed, teach and refresh stressed-out citizensWith beads of sweat dripping from their foreheads and the tips of their noses, groups of people work on a Saturday morning watering vegetables and crops, pulling out weeds and scattering organic fertilizer over fields. If it wasn’t for the wall of skyscrapers in the not-so-distant background, the scene could be mistaken for a typical farm field in the countryside. Yet, this is Nodeul Island in the Han River, right in the middle
Oct. 12, 2012
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Former Saenuri lawmaker summoned over illegal funding
Hong Sa-duk, a close aide to ruling party presidential candidate Park Geun-hye, appeared before prosecutors on Friday for questioning over allegations that he took illegal political funds.“I will sincerely respond to the questions,” the 69-year-old Hong told reporters before entering the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in southern Seoul around 9:45 a.m. Hong, a former co-chairman of Park’s primary campaign team and a former six-term lawmaker, is suspected of receiving a total of some 60 million won
Oct. 12, 2012
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Women use emoticons more when texting
Women are twice as likely as men to include emoticons -- graphic symbols to reflect moods or emotion -- in text messages, U.S. researchers say.Emoticons, graphic symbols that use punctuation marks and letters to represent facial expressions, help provide context to a person‘s texts and clarify a message that could otherwise possibly be misconstrued.Researchers at Rice University in Houston used s
Oct. 12, 2012
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Ban urged for Japan firms involved in forced labor
South Korea’s state arms procurement agency had dealings with Japanese firms accused of involvement in mobilizing Koreans for forced labor during the 1910-45 colonial rule, a lawmaker said Thursday, calling for barring such firms from military supply contracts.The Defense Acquisition Program Administration purchased 55 sets of binoculars worth 428 million won ($383,316) from Nikon, one of the companies of the Mitsubishi Group, in 2009, Rep. Kim Jae-yun of the main opposition United Democratic Pa
Oct. 11, 2012
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New international school opening on Jeju
Branksome Hall Asia, the second private international school in the Jeju Global Education City, will open next Monday, according to the Jeju Office of Education.The Branksome Hall Asia Jeju campus will have a 1,212-student limit for its 60 classes, where kindergarten to 3rd grade are co-ed, and 4th to 12th grade are split by gender. Some 300 students registered to attend school this year.The school finished construction in September and has finished recruiting 46 instructors from North America,
Oct. 11, 2012
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131 foreign workers rehired in new scheme
One hundred and thirty one foreign workers with re-employment permits thanks to their “exemplary” working records re-entered South Korea on Thursday in accordance with a revised law, the Labor Ministry said.The revised law, which took effect in July, allows “exemplary” foreign manual workers who have not left their designated workplaces for a certain period of time to be re-employed by the same employers three months after leaving the country.Those 131 workers left South Korea in July after rece
Oct. 11, 2012
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Tokyo court orders disclosure of Korea-Japan treaty
A lower court in Tokyo on Thursday ordered the Japanese government to disclose part of the classified 1965 Korea-Japan normalization treaty dealing with the issue of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery. The Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of 11 Korean and Japanese civic activists representing formerly enslaved sex workers, known as “comport women.”The pact covers compensation rights for the victims of the 1910-45 colonial rule.The Japanese government has been insisting that the sexual slavery iss
Oct. 11, 2012
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Water treatment firm aims to go global
Ilshin Environmental Engineering sharpens technological edge, readies for global advanceThe Korea Herald, in collaboration with the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute, is presenting a series of articles introducing small but promising environmental tech firms. The following is the fifth installment. ― Ed.From a small technology venture to one of Korea’s top 10 green innovators, the story of Ilshin Environmental Engineering Co. much resembles the history of Korea’s environmental
Oct. 11, 2012
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Sex trafficking ring members arrested
Police have caught three members of a sex trafficking ring who smuggled Korean women to the United States and forced them to work as prostitutes, the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency said Thursday.Police requested an arrest warrant for 47-year-old man on charges running the sex trafficking ring and booked two of his accomplices without physical detention. The remaining six members of the ring have been put on the wanted list.Yu and the others allegedly arranged for the illegal entry of five Kor
Oct. 11, 2012
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Fears of unintended consequences as adoption tightened
Striving to shed its reputation as a major exporter of children overseas, Korea recently tightened its law on adoption to ensure stricter state control, a transparent process and better protection of adoptees.While the new regulations are hoped to help stem the child trade in disguise and human rights abuses, concerns are growing over their unintended consequences in a society that highly values blood relations and deems out of wedlock births shameful.Some fear that the new law will lead to ille
Oct. 10, 2012
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Prosecutors raid Korea’s biggest drug company
Prosecutors raided Dong-A Pharmaceutical Wednesday as part of an investigation into suspicions that the largest drug company in Korea bribed hospital officials to purchase of its products. Investigators confiscated transaction records, accounting documents, and computer hard drives from the firm in Seoul.The investigative team was tipped off that the firm had provided illicit favors to officials at hospitals, clinics and drug stores through agencies. Dong-A Pharmaceutical was called an innovativ
Oct. 10, 2012
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Female judge tapped to top court
Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae on Wednesday nominated a woman to fill the last remaining seat on the Supreme Court’s 14-member bench, long considered as a share of public prosecutors. The selection of Kim So-young, a senior judge at Daejeon High Court, follows the resignation in July of Kim Byeong-hwa, a senior prosecutor and one of the four that Yang chose to replace four retiring justices, amid doubts over his ethics. The new designate must go through a parliamentary hearing and confirmation proc
Oct. 10, 2012
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Obesity rate doubles in 12 years
The percentage of seriously obese Koreans has nearly doubled in the last 12 years, the government said in a report Wednesday, attributing the problem mainly to Westernized eating habits.The Ministry of Health and Welfare said the rate of very obese people in the overall population jumped from 2.4 percent in 1998 to 4.2 percent in 2010. By gender, the proportion of extremely obese men surged to 3.7 percent from 1.7 percent, while the obesity rate in women increased to 4.6 percent from 3 percent i
Oct. 10, 2012
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Court dismisses appeals by netizens who libeled Tablo
The Seoul Central District Court dismissed Wednesday the appeals of eight online community members convicted of libel for spreading false rumors that hip-hop artist Tablo falsified his academic background at Stanford University.Online cafe “We Demand Tablo Tell the Truth,” known as “Tajinyo” in Korean, began operating in May 2010, accusing the Epik High member of lying about his academic achievement to court popularity. As malicious comments snowballed online, Tablo filed a lawsuit against 22 me
Oct. 10, 2012
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Safety negligence led to gas leak accident: police
GUMI, South Korea, Oct. 9 (Yonhap) -- Police said Tuesday that workers not properly following safety guidelines caused the gas leak at a chemical factory last month that killed five employees and sickened thousands of nearby villagers.On Sept. 27, some eight tons of hydrofluoric acid, an acute poison that can damage lungs and bones and affect the nervous system, leaked from a chemical factory in G
Oct. 9, 2012
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Solomon Islanders to adopt Hangeul to keep spoken language alive
The inhabitants of the Solomon Islands will adopt Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, to preserve their spoken languages, officials announced on Tuesday.Two provinces, Guadalcanal and Malaita, which have a population of some 60,000, recently designated Hangeul their official written system to transcribe their spoken languages, the Center for Humanities Information of Seoul National University said.The SNU center, with support from United Nations Global Compact in Korea, developed textbooks, and also h
Oct. 9, 2012
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Online Korean dictionary goes on trial run
A new Internet-based Korean language dictionary began a trial service amid growing demand for Korean language study among foreigners at home and abroad.The National Institute of the Korean Language said the dictionary became available at http://krdic.korean.go.kr, on Tuesday, the national day for commemorating King Sejong’s creation of Korean alphabet known as Hangeul.The digital dictionary has some 50,000 entries of basic Korean words explained in simple Korean language as well as other informa
Oct. 9, 2012
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Surviving as a Korean native in international environment
You wake up with the sun rise and get up. Looking around, you find three guys from different countries: Nepal, the U.S. and Germany. It makes you think that you are not in South Korea but somewhere international. However, you are in Korea.I have lived my entire life in Korea. I do not have any experience in any foreign countries using English. The only traveling experience abroad I have is to Japan for five days about 20 years ago. As a native Korean, I attend Handong Global University, and this
Oct. 9, 2012
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Foreign schools show Korea’s social divide
Elitism coupled with obsession with English learning and lack of regulations create highly expensive schoolsAbout 60 parents were recently summoned by prosecutors on suspicion of acquiring forged documents to enroll their children in a special international school in Korea.They are said to have paid some 50 million won ($45,000) to brokers in Latin American countries including Guatemala to obtain fake citizenship certificates and passports. Under the current law, only children who have lived ove
Oct. 9, 2012