More than half of all particulate pollution in Seoul in 2018 resulted from domestic causes such as heating and vehicles, while China was responsible for 38 percent, a report showed Thursday. Some 58 percent of PM 2.5 emissions -- ultrafine airborne particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and harmful to the human body -- originated within South Korea, up from 45 percent in 2016, acc...

Busan Mayor Oh Keo-don stepped down from his post Thursday, admitting to “unnecessary physical contact” with a female subordinate. “I realized the contact that occured during a short meeting that lasted five minutes could be taken as sexual harassment,” Oh said in a press briefing, adding that what he had done -- however light or heavy -- could not be forgiven. “As a responsible public se...

Faced with the novel coronavirus epidemic, South Korea’s schools began offering online classes this month in a step the education minister called a “new road we have never walked.” Distance learning, however, poses an unprecedented burden to parents and educators, with the quality of education for each student appearing to be closely linked to the level of preparedness of the schools, teachers a...

A Vietnamese woman filed a lawsuit against the Korean government on Tuesday over a massacre of civilians allegedly committed by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War, in the first of its kind filed some five decades after the atrocity. The plaintiff is Nguyen Thi Thanh, 60, who lost family members at the hands of Korean troops in Phong Nhi in Quang Nam province in February 1968. She seeks 3...

Only hundreds of meters away from the palace Gyeongbokgung in central Seoul, time travel into Korea’s history can begin in a temple enshrining Tangun, who founded the first kingdom of Korea in 2,333 BC. According to Korean tradition, Tangun was the legendary founder of Gojoseon, or old Joseon, the first recorded state in Korean history. The state occupied the northern part of the Korean Peninsul...

The South Korean government is mulling over whether to extend its social distancing campaign to fight COVID-19, amid concerns over community spread following Wednesday’s parliamentary elections and the Easter weekend. The campaign was scheduled to end Sunday. Despite the country’s tally of new cases of the novel coronavirus hovering around 20 for the fifth straight day, health authorities are on...

A total of 163 patients previously declared cured of COVID-19 have tested positive again in South Korea as of Friday, up 22 from a day earlier, giving the government a fresh headache in its fight against the virus. The recurring cases account for 2.1 percent of the 7,829 people released from quarantine after recovering. Studies are underway to find out why, according to the Korea Centers for Dis...

Six out of 10 citizens in Seoul said it was necessary to extend rigorous social distancing, a survey showed Friday, as the nationwide measure against the spread of COVID-19 is scheduled to end on Sunday. According to the survey for Seoul Metropolitan Government by Global Research, which was conducted from April 10-12 on 1,000 people living in Seoul, 63.6 percent of the respondents said it was to...

South Korea’s Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Friday warned against loosened social distancing amid the COVID-19 outbreak, calling the current situation “the calm before the storm.” “The spread of COVID-19 infection has clearly slowed in April. But taking a close look, it feels like the calm before the storm,” Chung said at a daily meeting on the country’s disaster response. Korea reported 22 ...

South Korea reported 22 new cases of the novel coronavirus Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 10,635. New cases of COVID-19 in the country, which once had the largest outbreak outside China, hovered around 20 for the fifth straight day. After reaching a peak on Feb. 29 with 909 cases, the country has since managed to massively reduce the number of new infections. The number of d...

This year’s parliamentary elections in South Korea, held amid the COVID-19 pandemic, solidified the dominance of its two major parties but laid bare the deep-rooted regionalism and saw a record number of female candidates taking constituencies. Although electoral reforms led to the overcrowding of the field, with 35 parties putting forward candidates, the race was between the governing Democrati...

Parliamentary elections in South Korea, which took place amid a global COVID-19 pandemic, turned out to be a referndum on the Moon Jae-in administration’s response to the virus. The government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak dominated campaign talk, with usually popular issues -- such as the approach toward North Korea, the slowing economy, prosecution and election reforms and corru...

A growing number of novel coronavirus patients who have tested positive after recovery are keeping South Korea on its toes, despite the country reporting fewer than 40 new cases for the sixth straight day on Tuesday. At least 124 patients who were thought to be cleared of COVID-19 had tested positive again as of Tuesday, with the number of recurring cases having more than doubled from 51 on Apri...

South Korea reported 27 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing the total number of infections to 10,564. The country, which once had the largest outbreak outside China, saw less than 50 new cases of COVID-19 for the sixth straight day. Of all patients, 7,534 people, or 71.3 percent, have recovered, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the new c...

“Things seem mostly normal, the streets weren’t quite as packed as before, but the restaurant was totally full,” said Rachel Ferree from the US, who went out to a wine bar with a friend in Hongdae on Saturday evening. “Everyone is aware that coronavirus is still a thing, hence the masks and hand sanitizer, but things have definitely loosened up,” she said. “It 100 percent feels like it’s almo...