South Korea’s case fatality rate from the novel coronavirus reached 1.64 percent Monday, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a significant rise from March 1’s 0.4 percent. The KCDC said that as of midnight Sunday, 158 out of 9,661 confirmed with the virus have died. Epidemiologist Dr. Kim Dong-hyun, who is on the medical societies’ joint committee for virus respon...

South Korean police said Thursday a teenage boy suspected of being behind a second online child sexual abuse ring has been sent to prosecutors. Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said its cybercrime unit apprehended the 16-year-old last month for allegedly operating the Telegram group chat, of which an estimated 8,000 to 20,000 men were members. Thousands of images and videos sexually exploiting ...

Prosecutors grilled Cho from 10:20 a.m. to 11:35 a.m. Thursday after he agreed to undergo questioning in the absence of an attorney. In an announcement made the same day, the Justice Ministry said the task force team leading the response to the mammoth scandal will be joined by Seo Ji-hyeon -- a high-profile prosecutor who set off the #MeToo movement here with televised testimony that she had be...

Most kids who catch COVID-19 will fare better than adults and get mildly sick, new findings suggest, but not all will be spared from falling severely ill. Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Tuesday data show the number of patients under 10 here stood at 105, accounting for 1.15 percent of the total 9,137 cases, and those under 20 stood at 475, or 5.2 percent. “No one under 20 is...

South Korea is lauded for its open-border policy in its virus response. But now that the outbreak has reached a pandemic scale, calls are growing for tighter border controls. In a phone interview with The Korea Herald, former director of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Jung Ki-suck stressed that government measures to contain imported infections are just as crucial as social d...

South Korea has called for expanded public participation in social distancing for the next two weeks, as the country witnesses a wave of community spread and imported infections leading to a resurgence in new cases of COVID-19. In announcing the 15-day plan for more stringent social distancing, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said Saturday that adhering to the practice was of utmost importance to ...

A teenage pneumonia patient who died Wednesday morning in Daegu was coronavirus-negative, health officials said Thursday. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a briefing the 17-year-old’s death was not linked to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Medics at the Daegu hospital had tested him for COVID-19 several times, as his chest imaging showed sign...

South Korea is instituting amplified checks on arrivals at its air and sea ports to monitor infections coming in from abroad. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that of 64,497 arrivals at the Incheon and Gimhae international airports in the past week, 17 had tested positive for the virus. So far, 79 returnees and travelers were later found to be infected after the...

Experts say chest CT scans and X-rays can reveal COVID-19 infections that go undetected by RT-PCR, which is currently the chief method for determining if a person has the disease. Speaking at a conference organized by the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies last week, radiologist Do Kyung-hyun of Asan Medical Center in Seoul said the chest radiographs of otherwise asymptomatic ...

Health authorities and experts on Wednesday held a meeting with the World Health Organization for research on South Korean cases of COVID-19. On Tuesday, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the UN agency would be joining the COVID-19 cohort studies led by researchers here. The Wednesday meeting, organized by the National Medical Center, was attended by four officials from ...

South Korea’s health authorities said Wednesday that they were looking into the death of a 17-year-old at a hospital in Daegu for a possible link to the novel coronavirus. If COVID-19 turns out to be a factor, it will mark the country’s first teen death from the disease. The patient died of multiple organ failure at 11:15 a.m. at Yeungnam University Hospital in the city’s Nam-gu district, where ...

What’s making the fight against the coronavirus harder in South Korea is the spread of misleading information surrounding the new disease. The National Police Agency embarked on a crackdown on circulation of coronavirus fake news as early as January, in coordination with the Korea Communications Commission and other relevant agencies. The police said producing and peddling false information reg...

The spring semester is set to start in 10 days after closing for three weeks, but is it safe for children to go to school? The Ministry of Education says it plans on resuming K-12 classes March 23, a date that has already been postponed twice over the outbreak of coronavirus here. “Pushing back the school calendar further is not something we are considering at the moment. But then again, noth...

The new coronavirus outbreak in Seoul, a city of 9 million, is feared to grow after an infection cluster was identified Monday at a call center in a heavily trafficked district in Guro. Health officials said one of the workers who tested positive for the virus started having symptoms as early as Feb. 22 before being diagnosed this week. The confirmed cases linked to the call center numbered 102 ...

South Korea is telling its citizens to stay home and avoid gatherings, in an anti-coronavirus campaign known as “social distancing.” But staying put is a luxury for many rent-paying small business owners and workers who can’t afford to take time off. The coronavirus cost Shin Hye-ryong, who runs two cafes in Suwon and Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, nearly half of his regular revenue last month. He ...