A group of haenyeo, female divers with age-old ocean harvesting skills, marches in a parade to celebrate the 15th Jeju Haenyeo Festival that kicked off on Saturday in Jeju Island. The two-day event has resumed after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandmic. (Yonhap)

A guide dog walks with a trainer during a press event at Samsung Guide Dog School in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance held the event to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the program, a pet project of the late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee. Dogs for eight people were assigned to people after being trained for years. (Samsung Electronics)

Posco Group Chairman Choi Jeong-woo (right) joins efforts to remove mud and debris at the steel giant’s plant in the southeastern city of Pohang on Saturday. Posco said it aims to fully normalize operations of the typhoon-hit plant by early December. (Posco)

This photo provided by Posco on Thursday shows inside of a submerged steelmaking plant in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, on Sept. 6, when up to 110 millimeters of rain per hour was recorded in the region. Repair work is underway, the company said, targeting a full recovery in three months, after it resumed operations of three furnaces earlier this week. Flooded electricity connections dealt a...

Celebrating this year's Chuseok holiday, the first one to be spent in three years with social distancing measures lifted, heavy traffic congestion are already apparent on the nation's major highways, since Friday morning. Meanwhile, people still prefer to wear their face masks in public areas that are usually packed with crowds. Passengers wait by the boarding entrance stairs of the Seoul Railw...

The four-faced stone sculpture is engraved with four Buddhas -- the Amitabha on the west, the Bhaisajyaguru on the east, the Maitreya on the north, and the Sakyamuni on the south. Along with Pohang, also in North Gyeongsang Province, Gyeonggju is one of the hardest hit by super-strong Typhoon Hinnamnor which passed through S. Korea early Tuesday morning.

A wholesale market in Incheon is crowded with shoppers buying food ahead of Chuseok, the Korean thanksgiving holiday that kicks off on Friday.

Super Typhoon Hinnamnor moved out of South Korea early Tuesday morning, forcing around 1,000 to evacuate. The typhoon left at least two person dead and nine others missing, according to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters of Korea. Damage has been concentrated on the southern Jeju Island and industrial cities along the southeastern coast, as Hinnamnor penetrated the regi...

Super Typhoon Hinnamnor moved out of South Korea early Tuesday morning about 2 1/2 hours after making landfall on the southern coast, the state weather agency said, as the country is assessing the damage from the storm. The typhoon moved off the southeastern coastal city of Ulsan, 307 southeast of Seoul, toward the East Sea at 7:10 a.m. after making landfall near the southern city of Geoje at 4:...

Batches of 50,000 won bills are transported from the Bank of Korea on Monday ahead of the Chuseok holiday that kicks off on Friday.

By Lee Si-jin ( sj_lee@heraldcorp.com )

Two of the oldest wooden Buddha statues in the country, which date back to the late-ninth century Unified Silla period are to be designated as national treasures, the Cultural Heritage Administration announced Thursday. Both are wooden seated Vairocana Buddhas at Haeinsa in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang Province -- one (pictured) from the temple's Beopbojeon hall, and another from its Daejeokgwangj...