Private personal information is readily available online a month after a revision of the personal information protection law took effect, leaving much of the population here at risk. According to Internet security experts on Monday, private information including resident registration numbers of Grand National Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won, who ran for Seoul mayor, civil servants and people with di...

Pharmaceutical firms vow to defy measure designed to reduce insurance expenditures The government plans to slash the price of about half the drugs on the market by an average of 14 percent, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Monday. The price cuts, if approved by the Prime Minister’s Office in December, will be the largest since the government took away drug sales rights from doctors and g...

Police apprehended several Chinese students studying here for using cameras, mics and other devices to cheat on the state-administered Korean language test. According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency, officers have arrested a 22-year-old Chinese national surnamed Ma, along with two others for helping Chinese students here on study abroad programs cheat on the Korean Language Proficiency ...

President Lee Myung-bak is set to leave for St. Petersburg Tuesday to hold summit talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev before heading to Cannes to attend the G20 Summit. At the summit with Medvedev on Wednesday, Lee will discuss bilateral cooperation while talks are underway between the Korea Gas Corp. and Russia’s Gazprom, as well as between Gazprom and its North Korean counterpart on p...

Following the defeat in the Seoul mayoral by-election last week, key figures of the ruling Grand National Party are looking to reach out to the public, especially young voters. Former chairwoman and presidential hopeful Rep. Park Geun-hye is to present on Tuesday a complex policy model, suggesting that welfare should be realized through employment and self-support, according to officials. She w...

Four military personnel were arrested this month on charges of hacking into e-mails of a professor at Chosun University in the southeastern city of Gwangju, military investigators said Monday. The Criminal Investigation Command under the Defense Ministry said that security operatives broke into the e-mails of Gi Gwang-seo, political science professor at the university, and downloaded nearly 700 ...

The South Korean consul general in Irkutsk, Russia, has been called home to explain his conduct at a dinner with Russian government officials, a foreign ministry official here said Saturday. “We have summoned him earlier this week,” said the ministry official. “This is the first time to summon a head of an overseas mission for misbehavior.” The consul general to Irkutsk, whose name was withheld...

North Korea on Saturday denounced large-scale military exercises under way in South Korea as a “very dangerous preliminary war for invasion,” demanding the South halt the drills immediately or face “catastrophic consequences.” South Korea launched the Hoguk exercises across the country on Thursday for a nine-day run. On Friday, thousands of troops conducted maneuvers off the country’s northernmo...

The Seoul Family Court said Saturday it has granted a divorce to a housewife and ordered her husband to pay her compensation, finding him responsible for ruining the relationship with his constant belittling comments. The 37-year-old wife, identified only by her surname Park, filed for divorce, claiming she could not continue the marriage because her husband kept finding fault with the way she c...

DUBAI (AFP) ― The appointment of conservative Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz as heir to the Saudi throne raises concerns he could halt reforms were he to take power, say analysts, who add, however, that he may instead show a softer, more pragmatic side. “He has a strong reputation as an ultra-conservative ― close to religious and reactionary circles,” Gulf specialist Olivier Da Lage told AFP. “He ...

The number of smartphone subscribers in South Korea surpassed the 20 million mark last week, with nearly 40 percent of South Korean residents carrying such mobile devices, according to data from the country’s telecom regulator released Sunday. South Korean smartphone subscribers numbered slightly more than 20 million as of Friday, including 10 million users with industry leader SK Telecom Co., 6...