A hungry 6-year-old boy in Oregon was reportedly rescued after crashing his mother’s minivan which he had driven to buy food on Sunday. The boy, whose name has not been revealed, had managed to drive his mother’s vehicle to buy some food, according a local newspaper. Though he did not wear the seatbelt, the boy was not injured because the car was running very slowly. It crashed into some mailbo...

Six local administrations will receive subsidies of 2 billion won ($1.8 million) to boost medical tourism, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Monday. Gyeonggi Province is to invest in the field of minimally invasive surgery; Jeju in oncology treatment; Daegu in hair implantation and treatment; South Jeolla Province in joint treatment; North Jeolla Province in robot surgery and Daejeon in me...

After weeks of mild spring weather, thunder, storms and even snowfall are expected this week on the Korean Peninsula, the Korea Meteorological Administration said Monday. According to its weekly forecast, rain will pour across the nation by Tuesday, drawing up to 80 millimeters of rainfall in Gangwon and North Gyeongsang Provinces while smaller amounts are expected in other regions, including Se...

Donations for disaster relief in Japan surpassed 55 billion won amid an exceptional outpouring of sympathy toward Korea’s closest neighbor. According to major charities on Monday, the total donations made here amounted to about 55.6 billion won ($51 million) one month after the deadly earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s northeastern coast on March 11. The Korean Red Cross collected 39.2 b...

Korea’s Supreme Court suggested Monday that judges be allowed to discharge suspects on conditional bail as a way to bridge differences with the prosecution over the country’s controversial pre-trial warrant issuance system. The two legal sectors have long been at odds over what prosecutors claim is the court’s “much too strict” standard in issuing arrest and search warrants. The court argues suc...

A 12-year-old boy was reportedly handcuffed and detained by a U.S. school resource officer after an argument over milk he spilt. The sixth-grader at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Indiana was to face juvenile probation, according to a local newspaper. On Tuesday, the school staffer ordered him to clean up after he spilt milk on the table during lunch. The boy refused and shouted back at him...

A man planning to commit suicide decided not to die thanks to Twitter. On April 16, a man wrote that he was leaving a will on Twitter because he didn’t have paper. The message was directed to his parents and friends, as well as his brother serving in the military. Twitter users, shocked by the message, started retweeting the message along with a note saying that the man should be stopped from c...

The number of South Korean college graduates outside the labor force was close to 3 million in the first quarter due to the country's sluggish job market, a government report showed Monday. According to the report by Statistics Korea, 2.95 million people with two-year college degrees or higher were not in the labor force during the January-March period. The number accounted for roughly 18 percen...

President Lee Myung-bak on Monday called for tearing down prejudices about the disabled, saying that their physical challenges never mean they cannot be as competitive as the non-disabled. "I believe that the disabled can be competitive workers as much as they want, depending on the types of work and duties," Lee said in his biweekly radio address ahead of the April 20 Day for the Disabled, call...

South Korea and the U.S. have agreed to carry out a joint study on safe ways to store spent nuclear fuel, including exploring the feasibility of pyroprocessing technology, the government said Sunday. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said the two sides agreed to conduct two years of preliminary storage-related research up till 2012 that is technologically and economically viable,...

The family members of the deceased former President Syngman Rhee are to make their first official apology to students killed in the April 19 revolution in 1960. Rhee In-soo, the foster son of the late president, will visit the graves Tuesday morning, the 51st anniversary of the revolution, and pay respect to the victims who died under police fire, according to the Syngman Rhee Committee on Sunda...

The state human rights watchdog said Sunday that it has started an investigation into the punitive tuition system at Korea Institute of Science and Technology following recent student suicides at the school. The minority New Progress Party filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission on April 8, claiming that the tuition system, under which students pay different amounts of fees ba...

The government resorted to expedience and bypassed set inspection rules to extend the operational life of South Korea’s oldest nuclear reactor, an opposition lawmaker claimed Saturday. Rep. Kim Young-hwan of the main opposition Democratic Party said when engineers tested the pressure vessel of the Gori-1 reactor in 2005, the critical system did not meet minimum safety requirements. He also argu...

Seoul City on Sunday launched a mobile clinic to offer free medical checkups for foreign residents here, officials said. The traveling clinic provides medical inspections including for blood sugar, liver and kidney functions and hepatitis. People who are found to suffer from any illness will be guided on medical institutions where they can receive treatment free of charge. Starting with Itaewo...