South Korea’s Air Force is going lenient on its hair regulations, doing away with the shaved head tradition for new recruits, according to reports Monday. The revision follows the National Human Rights Commission of Korea’s recommendation Monday, urging the Air Force to amend its practice. Under the revised rule, Air Force recruits can opt to have three to five centimeters of hair, as allowed f...

Seocho has become the first district in Seoul to pay men subsidies for taking paternity leave. Men who have lived in Seocho for over a year and taking paternity leave after Jan. 1 this year will be qualified to apply for a monthly stipend of 300,000 won ($259) for as long as a year, the district office said. The proposed budget is 243 million won for an estimated 135 beneficiaries for six month...

Former boyband Big Bang member Seungri appeared at court on Monday morning for a hearing on an arrest warrant filed by prosecutors. The 29-year-old arrived at Seoul Central District Court in Seocho, southern Seoul, at around 10:05 a.m. He did not respond to questions from reporters. On Dec. 8, prosecutors sought the arrest warrant for Seungri regarding several counts of pimping and gambling cha...

A Canadian English teacher at an after-school private tutoring service in Sejong is accused of showing preschoolers a video about cannibalism. According to the Sejong Police Station, the Canadian in her 20s on Wednesday showed a class of 6- and 7-year-olds a YouTube clip in which severed human body parts were visible as acts of cannibalism took place. In fact, the clip, made by a BBC science pr...

Scores of employees at the national postal service either killed themselves or died on the job in the past five years. According to statistics released by Korea Post on Sunday, 29 workers at the service run by the Ministry of Science and ICT took their own lives between 2015 and 2019. Twenty-one of them were mail carriers. Reasons for the suicides included family troubles, financial difficultie...

Millennials everywhere get a bad rap, and South Korea is no exception. As more millennials join the workforce, theories and assumptions about the millennial ways abound. Millennial workers have been called weak and entitled, or are portrayed as not trying hard enough. They also hold a reputation for being quitters and job-hoppers. But blaming the “millennial mindset” for traits seen in young w...

South Korea’s public human rights watchdog asked the government on Wednesday to improve basic residential standards and increase the availability of housing for disadvantaged groups. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea said in a report addressed to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport that the country’s minimum requirements for housing needed revisions in order to ensure ...

Seven in 10 lung cancer patients who have undergone surgery at Asan Medical Center in Seoul have survived, the hospital said in a report. The cardiothoracic surgery department at Asan Medical Center in southern Seoul said Monday the postsurgery survival rate of patients with lung cancer, the sixth most common cancer among Koreans, has improved markedly over the past decade. In the hospital’s st...

Sixteen of Korea’s elite private high schools have united to oppose the Moon Jae-in administration’s plan to strip them of their administrative autonomy, calling it “unconstitutional” in a joint statement to be submitted to the government Monday. “Abolishing the private school system undermines the diversity and autonomy of education -- a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution -- and f...

Law enforcement authorities are introducing measures to better protect the rights of children of incarcerated people. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea said Sunday the Supreme Court, the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Justice have decided to implement the commission’s instructions for protecting children of prisoners. Last May, the state human rights commission issued a ...

The cold spell did not deter Koreans from welcoming the new year outdoors. Mountains around the country drew early morning hikers seeking to catch a glimpse of the rising sun. Making New Year’s wishes, resolutions while watching the sunrise is a Korean tradition. Retiree Lee Young-gi, 72, said he has spent the first dawn of the year at the nearby mountains of Cheonggye and Gwanak for the last ...

A new decade has dawned. Unprecedented challenges await Korea from an aging and shrinking population to accelerated warming of the peninsula. The Korea Herald has prepared a four-part series looking into some of the changes and challenges facing the nation in the 2020s. -- Ed. Come 2020 and those born in 2001 -- the first year of the third millennium -- will be children no more. They are the fi...

The new year sees a wide range of changes across the spectrum of South Koreans’ daily lives. From new passports to salary hikes for military conscripts, here are some of the changes that 2020 will bring. Sex offender registry available on mobile Parents and guardians of minors will be able to view information about registered sex offenders in their districts on their mobile devices. Currently, ...

South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Friday said it found no apparent points of constitutional contention in the 2015 Seoul-Tokyo deal over Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean girls and women during World War II. The court said it would dismiss the constitutional complaint filed by 29 survivors of sexual slavery at Japanese military brothels and 12 family members of deceased victims. The cour...

Archbishop Kim Hee-joong of Gwangju wished justice would be served for victims of atrocities committed during martial law in May 1980 in a Christmas message issued Monday. Speaking about the recently unearthed human remains at a former prison site in Gwangju, a city with a history of pro-democratic struggles, the archbishop said he hoped perpetrators of the violent crackdown on civilian proteste...