The government on Wednesday reaffirmed its stance that it was not considering giving a second chance to medical students who refused to take the medical licensing exam in protest of the government’s now-stalled plan to recruit more new doctors. Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said in a press briefing that the government has yet to receive any request from any final-year medical students abou...

The same day, former lawmaker Park Hyung-jun revealed he was mulling a run. Park, who previously held a constituency in Busan, recently obtained office space in the city, which raised speculation that he might be planning to run in the by-election. He is planning to make an official announcement after the Chuseok holiday at the end of this month. The PPP’s former Rep. Kim Se-yeon, who has won e...

The 11th typhoon of the year has formed, but South Korea will likely be safe from its influence, the national weather agency said Wednesday. The Korea Meteorological Administration said Typhoon Noul formed Wednesday around 3 a.m. off the southwestern coast of the Philippines. As of 3 p.m., the typhoon was advancing west toward Vietnam at 10 kilometers per hour. The typhoon is expected to grow t...

Schools in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province will resume in-person classes next week as South Korea has eased its social distancing measures in parts of the country, the Education Ministry announced Tuesday. Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said in a press briefing that kindergartens and elementary, middle and high schools there will allow students to return to classrooms from Sept. 21. The dec...

More than half of working parents are considering giving up their work due to child care issues amid the coronavirus epidemic, a survey showed Tuesday. According to a survey of 283 workers in dual-income families conducted by the office of Rep. Jang Chul-min of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, 50.5 percent of respondents said they have considered hanging it up to provide care for their chil...

Gyeonggi Province is launching a provincewide voucher system for teenagers to buy feminine care supplies starting next year. A total of 486,000 girls aged 11 to 18 in the province will be eligible for the program, receiving 132,000 won a year. Another 24,000 girls from low-income families already receive subsidies for feminine care products. The initiative has been on a test run in Yeoju, Gyeon...

Sejong University in Seoul ranked ninth among South Korean universities in the 2021 world university rankings from the Times Higher Education, the college announced Monday. The UK institution for higher education moved Sejong University up one notch compared with last year’s evaluation. Its standing among 1,527 universities in 93 countries climbed from 401st-500th place last year to 301st-350th ...

Coronavirus cases have surged again in Korea, and so has the use of single-use plastics. As the country struggles to curb a second wave of COVID-19 infections, people are buying food and drinks via takeaways or deliveries that come in plastic packaging. Official data has yet to be compiled, but environmentalists say it is evident that the heightened Level 2 social distancing scheme, imposed n...

A brutal war of words erupted on social media from what started as a mistake by a Filipino American TikTok personality. Over the past few days, ethnic Koreans and Filipinos have been exchanging derogatory and discriminatory insults over social media, with the Filipino side sharing posts with hashtags like #CancelKorea. An air of reconciliation was looming just as the weekend arrived. It all com...

South Korea will see a wider variety of e-textbooks offered for elementary school students with the government’s plan to allow more options to schools and students. The Ministry of Education announced Friday that it plans to open up development and selection of social studies and science digital textbooks for third grade to sixth grade students to private publishers and have them government-auth...

South Koreans are in fury after a drunk driver fatally ran over a man in his 50s who was on his way to deliver fried chicken. A public petition on the Blue House website uploaded Thursday by someone claiming to be the deceased man’s daughter gained more than 300,000 signatures as of 11 a.m. Friday. Petitions with 200,000 signatures or more are entitled to a response from the Blue House The writ...

A train line connecting Incheon with Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, will open Saturday, linking two major cities in the capital region via a trip that will take 70 minutes. The Transport Ministry announced Thursday the full opening of the Suin Line on Saturday. The line is divided into three sections, and two spanning over 20 kilometers were already in operation. A total of 2 trillion won ($1.68 bil...

North London Collegiate School Jeju has produced its best batch of graduates ever, despite uncertainties and difficulties stemming from the coronavirus. The international school on Jeju Island, with English as its language of instruction, said its latest batch of graduates who left school in June reached the highest level of academic proficiency and college advancement in the school’s history, o...

Infamous child rapist Cho Doo-soon is set to be freed from jail in December after completing his prison term. Cho, who brutally assaulted an 8-year-old girl in 2008, will be released Dec. 13 from a correction facility in Cheongsong, North Gyeongsang Province, where he has been imprisoned for 12 years. The criminal’s scheduled return to society has been a source of fear for many here -- parents ...

Children under the age of 9 will be offered free flu shots starting Tuesday as the government is keen to prevent the coronavirus and influenza from spreading simultaneously this fall. The group is the first cohort to be offered free flu vaccinations this fall as part of the government’s disease control initiative, which will eventually be extended to 19 million people. Health authorities are kee...