Q. Who is eligible for the relief funds? Anyone with a registered address in Gyeonggi Province, which encompasses 31 cities and counties surrounding the country’s capital Seoul, is eligible for the relief funds regardless of their income, age or occupation. Some 14 million residents of Gyeonggi Province, including its nearly 580,000 foreign residents, are to receive 100,000 won either on credit...

Six out of ten office workers in South Korea said they will not visit their families in their hometowns during the Lunar New Year holiday due to the spread of the coronavirus, a survey showed Monday. According to a survey of 1,434 officer workers conducted by a job search engine Saramin, 63.4 percent of the respondents said they will not travel to their hometowns in what is normally the busiest ...

Facilities for homeless people at Seoul Station were temporarily shut down Tuesday after coronavirus infections were traced there, according to the Seoul city government. Three homeless people and two employees linked to the homeless support center and emergency shelter at Seoul Station Plaza had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Tuesday, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government. ...

South Korean government pushes to reform family-related laws to accommodate various types of familial and household structures such as cohabiting couples who are not married. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family laid out a basic plan for family policy on Sunday to be effective from 2021-2025, though revisions to related laws must pass through the parliament before they take effect. The cu...

The controversy over life-size sex dolls traces back to 2017 when a local firm filed a suit against the Incheon customs agency that had blocked its import of sex dolls. The lowest court ruled against the firm, but the appeals court overturned the decision, saying sex dolls are for private use and should be treated differently than pornography. The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in June...

South Korea reported nine more cases of COVID-19 variants over the past week, health authorities said Monday as they scrambled to block the influx of highly contagious new strains into the country. Nine people were infected with the mutated virus variants over the past week -- four from the United Kingdom, three from South Africa and two from Brazil, according to the Korea Disease Control and Pr...

Those aged 20 or younger appear to have been hit harder by the coronavirus outbreak in terms of labor income. The Gini index for the age group rose by 0.017, compared with 0.011 for those aged between 30 and 54 and 0.014 for those aged 55 or over. Overall income inequality has narrowed steadily under the Moon administration, with the Gini coefficient for labor income having fallen from 0.335 in ...

Seoul education office’s push to protect LGBT students and eradicate discrimination at schools is facing opposition after the office released its 2021-23 draft plan to protect the human rights of students. In the draft plan, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education included its plan to support and protect minority pupils –- from multicultural to LGBT students -- to make sure schools are free f...

Over the past year, there were 141 infections for every 100,000 people in the country. Of the confirmed patients, 51 percent were women. By age, 61.3 percent of the patients were in their 20s to 50s. By location, 6 in 10 cases were registered in the Seoul metropolitan area -- Seoul (31.1 percent), Gyeonggi Province (25.1 percent) and Incheon (4.9 percent.) Daegu, which was the epicenter of cor...

The service is only available in Korean for now. Among the districts in Seoul, home to some 9 million residents, Gangnam had the greatest number of restaurants offering vegetarian options, 110. It was followed by Jongno with 70, Songpa with 68, Mapo with 57, Yongsan with 54 and Seocho with 52. The majority of the eateries, 418, served Western food. Korean food was served at 322 of the establish...

All residents of Gyeonggi Province, including registered foreigners, will receive 100,000 won ($90.90) in emergency cash payouts to cope with the COVID-19 economic fallout regardless of their income, age or occupation, with the exact timing to be decided soon. Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung said Wednesday at an online press conference that it is appropriate to dole out the second round of cash reli...

Women in Seoul spent almost four times longer than men on household chores and were paid less in 2019, highlighting the persistent gender disparity in the country’s capital, according to a report by the Seoul city government. Girls and women aged 15 or older spent about two hours and 26 minutes on housework in 2019, about 3.6 times longer than men who devoted 41 minutes, according to the 2020 Se...

A victim of sexual harassment by former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon on Monday urged a ruling party lawmaker to resign and apologize over the suspected leakage of information about her complaint against the mayor. “I am horrified by the fact that the complaint against Park could be revealed to him even before I filed the complaint with the police,” the victim and her family said in a statement. Re...

South Korean webtoon artist Yoon Seo-in was mired in controversy after writing a post that appeared to hail pro-Japanese collaborators and insult Korean independence fighters on his Facebook. The controversial cartoonist faces a lawsuit from an association of the independence fighters who fought against Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, after describing them as “people who h...

Three more coronavirus cases were reported in connection with a US Army base in Seoul, US Forces Korea said Monday. Two American civilian employees at the US Army base in Seoul and the spouse of another American employee, who had tested positive last week, were confirmed to be infected with the virus, according to the US military. The civilians, who work at the Yongsan base, contracted the viru...