The Seoul city government on Tuesday announced that it would offer online Korean classes during a six-month trial period, starting Friday this week. According to the city government, the online language classes will be available on the official website of King Sejong Institute Foundation, a public institution operated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The classes will be available,...

Park argued that Busan is well suited to host the Expo. “The World currently needs transformation, and Busan is a city that can show what type of transformation the world needs in the future,” Park said. Park highlighted Busan’s plan to build the world’s first floating city prototype, which will consist of 15.5-acre-wide interconnected platforms that can initially accommodate 12,000 residents an...

South Korea’s first confirmed monkeypox patient, who entered the country from Germany, was found to have proceeded unchecked through Incheon Airport’s health inspection, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The KDCA said the monkeypox patient reported at the airport’s lobby after having passed the airport’s screening Tuesday. When entering the country, the patient’s sym...

The Ministry of Employment and Labor on Thursday announced its policy plans, which are expected to increase labor market flexibility. During the first press briefing held after his inauguration at the government complex in Sejong, President Yoon Suk-yeol‘s first Labor Minister Lee Jung-sik focused on two issues, the country’s 52-hour workweek policy and seniority-based pay models adopted by the ...

Only 14 percent of South Koreans paid for online news content last year, according to a recent report. The proportion of people who said they paid for news content, however, has been gradually increasing over the past years, the report added. According to the 2022 Digital News Report, published by Reuters Institute, the proportion of survey respondents who had paid for online news content in Sou...

Police interpreters in South Korea are often underpaid, mistreated and unprotected, prompting many to avoid taking on the role, a local study shows. Police interpreters are individuals who engage with non-native speakers in interpreting in police interviews and courts. The study, written jointly by police officer Choi Seob-min of National Office of Investigation and professor Jeong Ji-su of Kor...

The rallies near the homes of President Yoon Suk-yeol and his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, are turning into partisan feuds among people with little regard for residents affected by the demonstrations, with both sides proposing a volley of revisions to amend the demonstration law. Since April this year, a total of seven legislative motions, most of them separately, by the People Power Party and Demo...

Chungjeong Apartment, one of the oldest apartment buildings in South Korea, will be torn down, as part of plans for redevelopment in central Seoul, the Seoul city government said Thursday. The city has looked to redevelop the area for about 40 years, but projects have been put off because of disputes over compensation. With the fate of the building decided, delayed plans for the redevelopment a...

Seo Kyung-duk, a professor at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul and an expert on Dokdo issues, on Wednesday, said that Dokdo islets were absent from the online maps provided by embassies of major countries. The Dokdo islets are controlled by South Korea but also claimed by Japan. The dispute has been a cause of much tension between Seoul and Tokyo, as well as between the people of the two cou...

Nurturing individuals who are not only competitive but also collaborative is the end goal, according to Schreider. Schreider said the school aims “to foster future leaders that derive better solutions to the world’s real problems collaboratively, and shape a better world together.” At Branksome Hall Asia, students themselves have also developed their own motto -- “I Shine When You Shine” -- to h...

The South Korean government is expected to shorten the country’s COVID-19 quarantine mandate to five days, according to health officials on Tuesday. A government task force has reportedly been discussing the possibility of lifting the mandatory quarantine, but some experts from the group currently see lifting the mandatory quarantine as still risky. At the moment, it is more likely that the gove...

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon of the ruling People Power Party met with Gyeonggi Governor Kim Dong-yeon of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea on Monday to discuss cooperation between the two regions. The two leaders of the Greater Seoul area pledged to work together for mutual benefits. Oh and Kim both stressed that their political backgrounds should not matter in dealing with issues related...

The government will conduct a large-scale survey on long-term effects of COVID-19 to better understand post-COVID-19 symptoms and their causes, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Friday. “Many people are experiencing long-term effects of COVID-19, but (the government) responses have not been sufficient,” Han said during a COVID-19 response meeting on Friday. “The government currently plans to cond...

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said he would bring changes to the Seoul City-run media company Traffic Broadcasting System, which has often been accused of political bias in favor of the Democratic Party of Korea in one of its flagship radio shows. Oh, revealing the plan regarding TBS during an interview with Korean Broadcasting System on Wednesday night, said TBS would focus more on education programs ...

Late-night subway services on additional subway lines were resumed Tuesday amid robust demand for transportation services at night, following the lifting of most social distancing rules. According to Seoul Metro, the operator of the Seoul subway system, the operation hours of Line No. 2, and Line Nos. 5 to 8 are extended by one hour to 1 a.m. on weekdays. The subway operator said that late-nigh...