The minimum wage for North Korean workers being hired by South Korean companies operating at the inter-Korean industrial park in the North’s border town of Kaesong rose by 5 percent this year, the same annual rate of increase since 2007, the Unification Ministry said Monday. Despite frequent cross-border tensions between the two Koreas, the joint industrial park in Kaesong has been in operation ...

The nation is expected to see more rainfall, adding salt to the wound for many still facing restoration work after severe flooding and landslides last week, according to the state’s weather agency Monday. Amid record rainfall, the southwestern provinces of North and South Jeolla, the southern island of Jeju and other parts of the south coast of Korea will be hit with strong gusts, thunderstorms ...

A month after a ban on multiple trade unions was lifted, changes are in the making on the country’s labor scene, long dominated by two umbrella groups, officials at the Labor Ministry said Monday. Some 300 new unions have been formed, most of them not affiliated with neither the Federation of Korean Trade Unions nor the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. “The multiple trade union system appe...

A 39-year-old man was arrested for sexual violence in a series of daybreak attacks on women over the past six months, police said Monday. The offender, only known by his surname Kim, had allegedly attempted to rape a 27 year-old woman near an apartment in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, on July 26, leaving the victim with injuries that would take three weeks to heal completely. An investi...

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on Monday that it will hold a referendum on Aug. 24 on whether the city should proceed with its free school lunch program. Seoul citizens will be asked to choose between providing free lunches to selected students or to all students in the vote requested by conservative civic activists opposing what they called "welfare populism" by the main opposition...

South Korean and Chinese naval forces are close to agreeing on holding joint search and rescue exercises, a high-level government source said on Sunday. “China expressed the wish to hold joint SAR (search and rescue) exercises last Saturday during the inaugural South Korea-China strategic defense dialogue,” said the official. The talks were led by Air Force Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the...

Maritime police have yet to find a crashed Asiana Airlines cargo plane and its pilot and co-pilot, police officials said Sunday. Mobilizing 10 army and police vessels, three aircraft and underwater sonar, police and the navy have for three days searched the waters off Jeju, where the Boeing-747 aircraft, operated by Asiana Airlines Co., went down early Thursday. “We found nothing special yet, e...

A grenade presumed to be from the Korean War was found on a university campus in Seoul, police officials said Sunday. The explosive was found Friday afternoon in one of the flowerbeds at Ewha Womans University, in Sinchon, central Seoul, by a member of the cleaning staff. It did not have a safety pin in it. Police, who arrived on the scene with a bomb squad, determined that it had been deactiva...

Seoul’s southern ward of Seocho, hit hard by heavy rains last week, may be declared a special disaster area, the home administration ministry said Sunday. If the cost of flood and landslide damage exceeds 9.5 billion won ($9 million) in Seocho, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security will approve the designation. The Seocho Ward Office puts the estimated damage at more than 100 milli...

Residents of mountainside villages hit by multiple landslides from Mount Umyeon may sue local authorities, claiming that their neglect led to the calamity which claimed the lives of 18. Kwak Chang-ho, who represents tenants of Raemian Art Hill Apartment in Bangbae-dong, in Seoul’s southern ward of Seocho, said Sunday that he will work to form an emergency committee of tenants in order to prepare...

YEONCHEON (Yonhap News) -- A Korean worker was slightly injured Saturday after an unidentified explosive device went off near the heavily fortified border with North Korea, military officials said. The accident happened around 9:40 a.m. when the 40-year-old, identified only by his family name Cho, was overseeing excavation work near a military base. Cho is currently being treated for debris inj...

Korea's prosecution said Friday that it detained five Koreans on charges of spying for North Korea by forming an underground anti-state organization. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said five locals were imprisoned on suspicions of violating the country's national security law as they allegedly set up an anti-state organization, ordered by North Korea's ruling Workers' Party. A 4...