South Korea has joined the European Union’s digital COVID-19 certificate system, to come into effect from Friday. The connection to the system allows certificates of vaccination issued in South Korea to be valid in EU countries, and vice versa. “The equivalent COVID-19 certificates will facilitate travel between South Korea and the 31 member states of the EU,” the Korea Disease Control and Preve...

Gangwon Province, on the east coast of South Korea, is set to have more autonomy as a municipality. A Cabinet meeting on June 7 voted in favor of laws giving Gangwon Province new status as a “special autonomous province,” which will come into effect from June 11 next year. The special status was proposed as a pledge during the 2012 and 2017 presidential campaigns, but was never fulfilled. Gang...

The estimated annual number of abortions has declined drastically in Korea over 10 years from 241,411 in 2008 to 23,175 in 2018, before climbing slightly to 26,985 in 2019 and 32,063 in 2020. “At this point it’s hard to make an association between the change in abortion’s legal status in Korea and in the rates of incidence,” Byoun Soo-jung, a population policy researcher at KIHASA, told reporter...

Prosecutors who worked closely with President Yoon Suk-yeol while he was the prosecutor general are returning to fill top jobs at anti-corruption departments of the prosecution service. Many of the reshuffled prosecutors were those who were demoted during the Moon Jae-in administration for their role in special counsel investigations against the former president’s close aides. The Ministry of...

Lee’s son sent an open letter to Yoon on June 17, a day after the Coast Guard announced there was no evidence of a defection, in which he thanked the president for remembering his promise. “My mother, my younger sister and I had to live the past year and nine months as the family of a defector,” he said in the letter. “My father disappeared overnight. I couldn’t understand what was happening and...

The thousands of cases South Korea is still counting every day may be as low as the numbers are going to get, according to some top public health officials. In the last 24 hours ending Tuesday midnight, South Korea logged 10,463 new cases, exceeding the 10,000 mark for the first time in nearly three weeks. Lim Sook-young, a senior Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency official, told a new...

Former President Lee Myung-bak, 81, was granted a stay of sentence due to his health concerns, Suwon prosecutors said Tuesday. The Suwon prosecution service’s deliberation committee said in a press release that Lee was deemed to be “physically unfit” to be in jail, and that he would be granted a three-month break from his time. The deliberation committee decided that the ex-president could face ...

The family of Lee Dae-jun, a South Korean fisheries official who was killed by North Korean troops at sea in 2020, and their lawyer said Tuesday they plan on reaching out to a United Nations expert on extrajudicial killings for help. The official’s older brother, Lee Rae-jin, and his lawyer Kim Ki-yun met with Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in North ...

The Ministry of Justice is seeking a constitutionality review of a series of prosecution reform laws passed during the final two weeks of the previous Moon Jae-in administration. In a press release, the ministry said it has asked the Constitutional Court to determine whether it was within the jurisdiction of the National Assembly to restrict the functions delegated to the prosecution by the Cons...

The family of Lee Dae-jun, a 47-year-old fisheries official who was fatally shot by North Korea in 2020, has asked for the Democratic Party of Korea’s support in the disclosure of records from the Moon Jae-in administration. Among the information the family is seeking are what was briefed to Cheong Wa Dae by the intelligence and armed services in the time between the capture and killing of Lee o...

The family of Lee Dae-jun, a fisheries official who was killed by North Korean troops in 2020, is seeking disclosure of what former President Moon Jae-in did in the time from when he was alerted of Lee’s capture by the North until he was shot dead six hours later. “President Moon had about six hours to take action and possibly save him,” the slain official’s older brother, Lee Rae-jin, told The ...

Putting North Korea’s numbers into perspective North Korea’s official figures, which are likely vastly underreported, defy a typical COVID-19 trajectory. For one thing, its highest one-day death count to date was eight logged on May 14, a day after cases were announced for the first time, Dr. Oh Ju-hwan pointed out. “If we were to take North Korea’s numbers at face value, their infections relat...

South Korea raised the alert level for monkeypox after confirming its first patient on Wednesday. The patient had come from Germany on Tuesday afternoon, and was sent straight to the Incheon Medical Center nearby the airport for showing possible monkeypox symptoms, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. His symptoms were a low-grade fever of 37 degrees Celsius, sore throa...

The family of Lee Dae-jun, a South Korean fisheries official killed by North Korean soldiers at sea in 2020, on Wednesday filed a criminal complaint against national security and civil affairs officials of former President Moon Jae-in’s Cheong Wa Dae. Kim Ki-yun, an attorney working with the family, told reporters outside Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office that three ex-Cheong Wa Dae off...

South Korea may revisit another controversial North Korea decision made during the Moon Jae-in administration, President Yoon Suk-yeol hinted Tuesday. Speaking to reporters, Yoon said his administration may look into the 2019 repatriation of two North Korean fishermen who sailed into South Korean waters. The two, aged 22 and 23, said they wished to defect to South Korea in handwritten statements...