South Korea's parliament failed Monday to set up a vote on the disputed Constitutional Court Chief nominee amid an opposition party's legislative boycott over an arrest warrant against the head of a local broadcaster. Under a cross-party understanding last week, the National Assembly was set to vote on Kim Yi-su on the day. But the main opposition Liberty Korea Party opposed the vote with the sp...

The Ministry of Environment said Monday it has given conditional consent to the deployment of a US missile defense system, removing the last administrative hurdle for its full operation fiercely opposed by local residents and activists. The ministry said it found the adverse environmental impact from deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense on the designated region of Seongju, North Gye...

In the Korea Baseball Organization this year, no lead is safe against the Kia Tigers. But on the flip side, no deficit seems too big against them either. Take last Sunday's game, for instance. The Tigers took a 7-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth against the Nexen Heroes at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. Then the Heroes put up seven runs on the board against four Kia relievers to complete the larg...

The American action-comedy "Hitman's Bodyguard" topped the South Korean box office on its opening weekend by selling 556,100 tickets, data showed Monday. According to the computerized box office figures from the Korean Film Council, the R-rated film starring mega-stars like Samuel L. Jackson, Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek outdid its South Korean rival, "Midnight Runners," which gathered 286,097 ...

Taxing religious groups will add 64.7 billion won ($57 million) to state coffers annually starting next year, a report said Monday. The Moon Jae-in government has pledged to levy taxes on the clergy from 2018 onwards as part of its drive for equitable taxation, although people working for churches and temples have been exempted from paying income tax until now, as their work has been regarded as...

President Moon Jae-in's approval rating stood at 73.1 percent as of last week, even though the number fell slightly from a week earlier due in part to tensions with North Korea and problems with his nominees for senior positions. The Realmeter survey, conducted on 2,531 adults from Aug. 28 to Sept. 1, showed that Moon's ratings fell 0.8 percentage point from a week earlier. The survey had a marg...

South Korea and the United States have agreed to regularize their talks on extended deterrence to better counter North Korea's growing missile and nuclear threats, the foreign ministry here said Monday. The decision came one day after North Korea conducted what it claimed to be a successful test of a hydrogen bomb mountable onto an intercontinental ballistic missile. The allies launched the Ext...

South Korean crime-thriller “Memoir of a Murderer” has been invited to this year‘s BFI London Film Festival, the movie’s local distributor said Monday. The movie led by actor Seol Kyung-gu will be screened in the Thrill section at the 61st edition of the festival, which is the largest film festival in Britain. This year‘s event will run from Oct. 4-15. "Memoir of a Murderer" (Showbox) Previous...

The leader of the minor opposition Bareun Party on Monday hinted at resigning over an escalating graft scandal, which has threatened to derail its reform efforts and erode public support. "I hope that you trust the loyalty I hold towards the party, and I will soon make a decision for the party," Lee Hye-hoon said during a general meeting of the party's 20 lawmakers. "The only one who knows the ...

Nearly 7 out of 10 South Koreans believe that the national football team will qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, a survey showed Monday. In the survey conducted by Realmeter on 501 adults nationwide, 66.2 percent of them answered that South Korea will make their ninth consecutive World Cup appearance in Russia next year. Only 21.6 percent said that South Korea will not be represented at the 20...

Asiana Airlines Inc., South Korea's second-biggest passenger carrier, is struggling to improve its business amid an ongoing diplomatic row over the deployment of a missile defense system here and increased competition with budget carriers, industry sources said Monday. Under its three-year restructuring plan that ends in December 2018, Asiana Airlines has cut costs, incorporated redundant busine...

Nearly a quarter of salaried workers in South Korea did not use their vacation time from August 2015 through July of last year, a report by a local culture and tourism organization said Monday. The findings, based on a survey of 4,357 people nationwide by the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, showed 23.9 percent of those checked said they did not use their vacation time. The lack of free time...

A few thousand union members at Korea's two biggest TV networks went on strike simultaneously on Monday to protest alleged management interference in news coverage and unfair labor practices. Union members associated with the National Union of Media Workers at KBS and MBC, two of the country's biggest terrestrial networks, started a sit-in at midnight Sunday, calling for the removal of the netwo...

South Korea said Sunday it will continue to push for the denuclearization of North Korea through peaceful means in response to US President Donald Trump's tweet that accused Seoul of talking about "appeasement" policy. "Korea is a country that experienced a fratricidal war. The destruction of war should not be repeated in this land," the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said in a statement. "W...

NEW YORK -- The United Nations Security Council will meet Monday to discuss a response to North Korea's most powerful nuclear test yet, the United States ambassador to the UN said. The emergency meeting will be held in the open at 10 a.m. (local time) at the request of the United States, South Korea, Britain, France and Japan, Nikki Haley said in a tweet Sunday. (Yonhap) Earlier in the day, No...