Actress Song Hye-kyo was careful to begin her interview with The Korea Herald on Monday with an apology. A week has passed since news of a tax evasion scandal involving the actress shocked many of her fans. The timing was especially unfavorable for Song, who was set to promote her new movie “My Brilliant Life” ahead of its Sept. 3 release. She nevertheless decided to open up to the media to apo...

Gyeonggi Province, the largest local jurisdiction in South Korea, has recently become a test bed for a political coalition between the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy. This rather radical idea came from Gyeonggi’s new governor Nam Kyung-pil, a former ruling Saenuri lawmaker, as he is seeking cooperation from the provincial council, which is dominat...

South Korea’s iconic community development movement ― Saemaul Undong ― is to be expanded to developing countries in a joint effort with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, according to a top banker on Tuesday. “The global spread of the Saemaul Movement in partnership with the IFAD is very meaningful for South Korea, the only nation to have transformed into an aid donor from a re...

Ever wondered how properties are divided and borders are set? Ever asked who those people are standing in the middle of the road with a tripod looking as though they are taking a picture? Land surveys, measurements and management have been led by Korea Cadastral Survey Corp. in South Korea for over 100 years. With some 4,000 experts in geospatial science and technology, the quasi-government en...

The name Jamal Sims was not familiar to people in Korea until he appeared on “Dancing 9,” a dance survival show on cable channel Mnet, as a judge for the final round. But he is an established choreographer in the United States, where his recent projects include choreographing the “Step Up” film series and “Footloose,” and working with stars like Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Usher and the Spice Girls...

For U.S. lawyer David Linton, last week was a meaningful step toward more involvement with his expertise in South Korea. The 42-year-old was given special naturalized Korean citizenship in gratitude for his ancestor’s contribution to the country’s independence movement during the Japanese colonial rule. A total of 15 other foreign nationals ― also descendants of Korean independence supporters ― ...

COLOMBO ― A former top U.N. expert on women’s rights urged Japan to come up with a resolution to a decades-long dispute over its wartime sex slavery, criticizing Tokyo for moving “backwards” with its historic revisionism. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women from 1994-2003, warned that the issue of the so-called comfort women would “come back to bite” Japan...

The global demand for green products and services has sharply expanded in recent years as the world strives to meet its needs for economic growth and environmental protection. Korea’s environmental industry is stepping up a foray into the flourishing market, especially in developing countries, capitalizing on technology, knowledge and experience accumulated through the country’s rapid industrial...

Hyundai Motor Group has notched up a number of achievements in its carmaking business over the past decade, becoming the world’s fifth-largest automaker in 2009. However, one area in which it has failed to make progress is labor relations. The automotive group is poised to set a national record, as its union prepares for its 24th annual strike this month ― the most strikes for a single company ...

Three hours before show time, the lobby of the D-Cube Art Center is dark, with hardly any sign of human presence. But this is when the backstage area comes to life. One by one, cast members arrive for the night’s show ― “Chicago,” a timeless Broadway hit now on its 10th run in Korea. Ivy, who plays the show’s lead character Roxie Hart, is one of the first to arrive. With a friendly and cheerful...

Korea’s 2010 enrollment in the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee was a milestone in the history of its economic growth, epitomizing its unprecedented ascent from a war-stricken backwater to an aid donor. The country has since been scaling up its aid commitments and personnel to help the developing world fight poverty, disease, climate change and other grave challenges. Last year, it doled ...

South Korea aims to bolster its forest partnership with Central Asia by sharing its forest expertise and boosting cooperation in restoring the region’s damaged forest ecosystem, the national forestry chief said. “Central Asia is becoming an important region to South Korea as a growing number of Korean companies have been making inroads into the countries, which have abundant natural resources an...

Amid persistent concerns over its fourth underground blast, North Korea should put a moratorium on nuclear testing and join a global treaty to outlaw it, the head of the agency monitoring the ban said Wednesday. Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the preparatory commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, called for greater international pressure to stop Pyongyang f...

The future has always been uncertain. And with the rapid advancements in technology, it is even harder to predict. This is why Lee Kwang-hyung, head of KAIST’s Graduate School of Future Strategy, called for the development of new scientific and technological skills to enable the next generation to think creatively by converging their knowledge in various fields. Through such “convergent thinkin...

James Dator is dubbed as one of the inventors of futures studies, but what he has tried to do for the past 40 years is to persuade people that the future cannot be predicted. Instead he found that all images of the future can be clustered into four categories, which he calls continued growth, collapse, disciplined society, and transformation. In an interview with The Korea Herald, the futurolog...