Prosecutors on Tuesday raided the residence and office of a close aide to an ex-chief of South Korea’s rail operator in its widening probe of suspected slush funds in connection with a now-defunct urban development project. Officials carry out boxes of confiscated items Tuesday from the office of an aide to the former president of the Korea Railroad Corp. in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul. (Yonhap) The Se...

South Korea’s state-appointed media monitoring agency said Sunday that it will set out guidelines to enable Web users to request for deletion of personal data online. Under the administrative guidelines to be proposed by the Korea Communications Commission, Web users will be able to demand that Web portals remove personal information that they do not want online. “We have studied the righ...

On a chilly Friday night last month, 24-year-old U.S. citizen Megan Stuckey had one of her most hurtful experiences in Korea. She was denied entry to a bar in Hongdae, Seoul, because she was a foreigner. Ock Hyun-ju/The Korea Herald The bar named Green Light, infamous in the expat community for refusing foreign customers, is one of a rising number of Korean-style dating joints where peop...

Defense Minister Han Min-koo on Saturday visited an Aegis-equipped destroyer tasked with immediately detecting North Korea's long-range rocket in case of a launch, his ministry said. Aboard the 7600-ton KDX-III destroyer Seoae Ryu Seong-ryong, Han instructed the troops to maintain full combat posture with North Korea poised to launch what it claims to be a space vehicle. (Yonhap) Pyongyang inf...

South Korean stocks are expected to move sideways during the holiday-shortened week on signs of a slowing Chinese economy and fluctuating oil prices, though falling odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike could ease downward pressure, analysts said Saturday. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closed at 1,917.79 on Friday, down 0.36 percent from a week ago. The index got off to ...

The 2015 corporate earnings this week showed that the manufacturing industry, once the backbone of the nation’s exports-driven economic growth, is losing steam at a fast pace. (Yonhap) The nation’s top two manufacturers ― Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor ― recorded a double digit year-on-year fall in their net profit last year, squeezed by falling demand in major overseas markets and growi...

The weekly rally held to protest Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II marked 24 years Wednesday, becoming the longest-running demonstration in the world. Despite the landmark deal between Seoul and Tokyo on Dec. 28, the decades-long ordeal of the victims -- euphemistically called “comfort women” -- appears to be far from over, with the victims and their supporters st...

The Cabinet has decided to raise President Park Geun-hye’s annual salary by more than 3 percent and expand the merit-based wage system in the public sector, the Ministry of Personnel Management announced Tuesday. Park is set to earn 212 million won ($179,000) this year, compared to 205 million won last year, after the Cabinet approved the bill on government employees’ salaries in the meeting hel...

South Koreans gathered across the street from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Wednesday to condemn Seoul and Tokyo for sealing a deal over Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean women without consulting the victims or gaining their consent. Enraged by what they called political collusion between the two countries, nearly 1,000 people jammed into a narrow downtown street to participate in the 1...

Kim Yang-gon, a top North Korean official in charge of cross-border affairs, was killed in a car accident, the North’s state media reported Wednesday, drawing attention to the impact of his death on inter-Korean relations. He was 73. Kim Yang-gon (Yonhap) The North’s Korea Central News Agency said that Kim, a secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party and director of the pa...