Traffic between Seoul and Gangwon Province is expected to surge considerably during the summer vacation season, with trips from Seoul to the eastern coast taking as long as five hours and 50 minutes. According to the Gangwon Provincial headquarters of the Korea Expressway Corporation, an estimated 433,000 cars a day were expected to be on the expressways of the province between July 25 and Aug.11, the peak of the vacation season in South Korea. This is up 11.6 percent from the daily 386,000 ca

Travel July 27, 2024

A high school girl who recently died at a church had been subjected to severe abuse by church members including sleep deprivation and physical labor, a bill of indictment provided by the South Korean prosecution showed. Rep. Yoo Sang-bum of the ruling People Power Party on Wednesday revealed the content of the document he received from the prosecutors, which showed details of their investigation related to the girl's death on May 15. Three members of the Incheon church are currently on tr

Social Affairs July 27, 2024

The Constitutional Court of Korea recently ruled in favor of the legal clause that effectively requires suitors in civil cases to check the e-documents related to their litigation within the week of the information being made available to them. In the ruling, Article 11-4 of the Act on the Use of Electronic Documents in Civil Litigations was unanimously ruled constitutional. The article concerns electronic documents related to the civil cases, which are registered to the court system and made av

Social Affairs July 26, 2024

South Korean police have kicked off an investigation into the death of a man in his 40s whose body was found in a local reservoir Thursday, believing him to be responsible for a drunk driving accident a day earlier. The man's body was found at 2:48 p.m. Thursday floating in the Yongjeong Reservoir in Goesan-gun, North Chungcheong Province. The initial probe showed no signs of foul play and no indications that the deceased took his own life. Surveillance footage of the surrounding area showe

Social Affairs July 26, 2024

A 30-year-old man has filed a criminal complaint against actor Yoo Ah-in for sexually attacking him, Seoul police said Friday, with investigators considering the possibility that Yoo had been under the influence of drugs when it occurred. Officials at the Seoul Yongsan Police Station are investigating the imitative rape case involving the 37-year-old actor, with plans to summon him for questioning soon. Imitative rape, stipulated by Article 297-2 of the Criminal Act, refers to rape via non-genit

Social Affairs July 26, 2024

A 25-year-old man currently serving a prison term for patricide will be released next Tuesday on parole, a Daegu-based civic group said Thursday. In a highly publicized case in 2021, the man was convicted after he stopped providing food and medication for his terminally ill father due to financial difficulties. The victim had been bedridden since suffering a brain hemorrhage in September 2020, not being able to eat or relieve himself on his own. But his son, who had been on his mandatory mili

Social Affairs July 25, 2024

A Seoul court recently sentenced a former hagwon teacher to a three-year jail term for selling TOEIC test answers to multiple test-takers for money. The Seoul Eastern District Court found the defendant surnamed Hong guilty of obstruction of business as stipulated in Article 314 of the Criminal Act. In addition to the jail term, the court also ordered the seizure of 76.6 million won ($55,000) in assets. Investigators found that the 27-year-old defendant had committed the crimes to fund internet

Social Affairs July 25, 2024

Roughly 4 out of 10 students who were victims of school violence said they had felt the urge to either inflict injury on oneself or commit suicide, a survey by an NGO showed Wednesday. The Blue Tree Foundation, a group dedicated to preventing school violence and help victims, said in a press conference that 3.5 percent of the respondents in their recent survey said they had been subject to violence at school, of which 39.9 percent said they felt the urge to hurt or kill themselves. The foundat

Social Affairs July 25, 2024

An analysis of 81 conglomerates categorized as "middle market enterprises" showed Wednesday that the second generation of owner families owns a total of 33.5 percent of company shares. Corporate tracker CEO Score analyzed the shareholding structure of companies with 2 trillion won ($1.44 billion) or more in assets, and found that the combined value of shares held by owner families' second generations came to 13.39 trillion won as of July 15. The second generation in the report r

Companies July 24, 2024

A local police station recently shut down an open message board on its website after a barrage of complaints concerning allegations of an officer's coercive investigation into a wrongly accused man. As of Wednesday, the page that had previously functioned as a general forum accessible to anyone has disappeared from the website of the Hwaseong Dongtan Police Station that serves the city of Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. Users are referred to a government-run website for placing police complain

Social Affairs July 24, 2024

A rape case that could have remained unresolved due to a lack of evidence has instead led to the indictment of the suspect, after investigators found that the sexual attack had been reflected in the lid of a washing machine. The Supreme Prosecutors' Office recently commended five cases for their outstanding use of forensic investigation in the second quarter of this year. Among the five were a Gangneung prosecutor's indictment of a rape suspect accused of six sexual attacks on his fo

Social Affairs July 24, 2024

Local education authorities said Tuesday that a group of students at an elementary school in North Gyeongsang Province has been refusing classes for days in support of their teacher who has been feuding with a parent. The 23 students in the provincial city of Chilgok refused to attend class from July 16 to the commencement of summer break on July 19, according to the Gyeongbuk Office of Education. The parents of the students said they will not attend second-semester classes until the children&

Social Affairs July 24, 2024

Same-sex couples in South Korea are expressing hope for the improvement of LGBTQ+ rights here, on the coattails of last week's Supreme Court ruling that recognized the legal rights of a same-sex couple for the first time ever. In the landmark ruling, the country's top court ruled that the plaintiff, So Sung-wook, should be eligible for spousal coverage under the National Health Insurance Service subscription of his male partner, Kim Yong-min. The court stated in its ruling that same-se

Social Affairs July 23, 2024

YouTuber Darcie on Tuesday apologized for her actions on what she had initially described as "housing fraud incident," which many people perceived as her trying to shift her own losses from a scam onto another victim. "I'm ashamed to admit that I failed to recognize the severity of the housing fraud issue, and made the mistake of referring to my personal experience as one. I apologize for the inaccurate depiction of my experience," she said in an apology posted via her

Social Affairs July 23, 2024

The bodies of two men were found at a beach in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province, the Boryeong Coast Guard said Tuesday. The two men, both identified to be 49-year-old residents of Boryeong, were found dead at around 10:57 p.m. Monday at Doksan Beach in the small coastal city. Officials suspect that they died due to an accident that occurred while they were doing "haerujil," or traditional barehanded fishing. Haerujil refers to shining a light at nighttime and catching the fish that

Social Affairs July 23, 2024