Super Junior's Kyuhyun injured in knife attack

Kyuhyun of boy band Super Junior has been injured after attempting to restrain a woman wielding a knife in the backstage of a musical. According to his agency Antenna on Monday, Kyuhyun was wounded while trying to stop a woman in her 30s who broke into the dressing room of “Ben-Hur” in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, western Seoul, and wielded a weapon against the actors at 6 p.m. on Sunday. Police reportedly arrested the woman on charges of special intimidation. Police believe that Kyuhyun

Nov. 20, 2023

Child kills man with stone, sparking debate over legal immunity of children

A 70-something man was killed Friday by a stone thrown by an elementary school student, touching off a dispute across the country over the South Korean legal clause that bans punishing those under the age of 14. According to Nowon Police Station in Seoul, the victim was walking in an apartment complex with his wife around 4:30 p.m. when a stone thrown from about 10 stories above struck him. Rescue workers were dispatched to the scene, but the victim died on the spot. A subsequent police investig

Nov. 20, 2023

[Graphic News] Number of non-wage workers edges up in 2023

The number of non-wage workers, such as the self-employed, in South Korea rose 0.56 percent on-year in 2023, data showed. There were 6.72 million non-salaried workers as of August, up by 38,000 from the same period in 2022, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. The number accounts for 23.4 percent of all employed people in the country, down 0.1 percentage point over the cited period. Of the total non-wage workers, one-man operations, which do not hire workers, inched up 0.8 percent

Nov. 20, 2023

Arrest warrant sought for man over murder of stepmother

Police said Sunday they have sought an arrest warrant for a man in his 40s on charges of murdering his stepmother and discarding her body in a reed field near his father's home. The man allegedly strangled his stepmother, identified only by her surname Lee, who was in her 70s, to death at her home in Seoul during an altercation on Oct. 19 after he demanded that she give him money she earned from part-time work. Two days later, the day laborer buried his stepmother's body in a reed fiel

Nov. 19, 2023

Priciest elite private high school costs over W30m a year

The average annual cost of sending a child to what is called an autonomous private high school in South Korea amounted to 8.62 million won ($6,649) last year, data released by an opposition lawmaker on Sunday showed. The total expenses including tuition, admission fees, room and board and after-school program fees for the most expensive autonomous private high school came to over 30 million won per student, Rep. Lee Eun-joo of the Justice Party said, citing data she received from the Ministry of

Nov. 19, 2023

Will Suneung without ‘killer questions’ reduce reliance on private education?

Half a million took the Suneung, South Korea’s national college entrance exam, on Thursday, as this year’s test saw the scrapping of the so-called highly difficult “killer questions” for the first time. All eyes are on whether the new test format will reduce reliance on private education, as a slew of test takers assessed this year’s Suneung to be more difficult, despite the absence of such questions. In the run up to the test, many examinees expected the difficulty

Nov. 19, 2023

Govt. working to restore administrative network after major disruption

The government was working to fix the administrative network that suffered a system failure, officials said Sunday, two days after the breakdown caused disruptions to public access to government-approved papers. More than 100 government officials and private technicians were working to restore the servers and network systems at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, 139 kilometers south of Seoul, the interior ministry said. They have replaced some of the network equipment believe

Nov. 19, 2023

Rising obesity in S. Korea comes amid doubts over BMI's reliability

A concerning trend in South Korea's public health profile emerged in recent data released by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, a research arm of the Health Ministry. According to the report, made public Oct. 18, 32.5 percent of Korean adults were classified as either overweight or obese with Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or above in 2022, increasing by a third from a decade before when the figure stood at 24.5 percent. Although nearly 1 in 3 South Koreans are now classified as

Nov. 18, 2023

Gov't administrative network down for 2nd day; recovery efforts under way

The government's online civil service portal temporarily resumed operations Saturday after experiencing a major outage, officials said, although disruptions to the government's administrative computer network persist. The Saeol administrative network used by public workers went down on Friday morning, followed by a suspension of the online portal, Government 24. The outage caused an unprecedented halt to all services of issuing government certificates and civil documents. On Saturday,

Nov. 18, 2023

Seoul to expand monthly transit pass to cover Incheon

People traveling from Incheon to Seoul by bus will be able to use an unlimited monthly transit pass from next year, Seoul City said Friday. It is an expansion to a 65,000 won ($50) pass that gives commuters unlimited access on all public transport within Seoul, and bus rides that depart from Seoul to other metropolitan areas. The announcement came as Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok signed a "Seoul-Incheon Transportation Business Agreement" at Seoul City Hall and

Nov. 17, 2023

Team carries out Korea's first successful uterus transplant

Samsung Medical Center has carried out the first successful uterus transplantation in South Korea. During the surgery in January this year, the multidisciplinary team were able to transfer the uterus to a 35-year-old woman with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome. MRKH is a rare disorder, which affects about 1 in 5,000 females at birth, characterized by an underdeveloped or absent uterus. A uterus transplant gives women without functioning wombs -- such as those with MRKH -- the opportunity

Nov. 17, 2023

Resale tickets for League of Legends World Championship go up to 3 million won

The 2023 League of Legends World Championship tickets for the final round are being sold on online resale platforms for more than 10 times their face value. The annual championship, held annually since 2011, brings together the top teams from leagues worldwide to determine the best team of the year, making it the largest global esports event. The final round of the 2023 League of Legends World Championship will take place on Nov. 19 at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, featuring Korea's T1, led by

Nov. 17, 2023

First snow of winter falls in Seoul

The first snow of the season fell in many regions, including Seoul, Friday. The Korea Meteorological Administration explained that the first snowfall in Seoul, at 11:20 a.m., was observed earlier than usual. Friday's measured precipitation in Seoul was not immediately available as of 3 p.m., but the KMA predicted about 1 centimeter of snowfall in the Greater Seoul area until Saturday. The weather agency officially announces the first snow in Seoul when an observer at the Seoul Meteorologica

Nov. 17, 2023

Seoul to push through bill to ban dog meat consumption

The South Korean government and the ruling People Power Party on Friday agreed to introduce, before the end of this year, a special act to end dog meat consumption in Korea by 2027. In a special consultative meeting at the National Assembly, the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and ruling party officials agreed to push for the passage of an anti-dog meat bill banning breeding and slaughter of dogs, as well as dog meat delivery and sales. Under the legislation, farms, butcheries, distribution compani

Nov. 17, 2023

Network error grinds government network to halt, restoration still in progress

Local governments across the country have suspended issuing government certificates and civil documents due to a failure in the administrative computer network, followed by a series of suspensions of the Government 24 online service, causing massive inconveniences. The Interior Ministry said it was working to restore the system. An indefinite suspension of all services was announced on the Government website at 1:55 p.m., with the explanation that the system was malfunctioning. The Government 24

Nov. 17, 2023

Suneung difficulty rekindles 'killer question' controversy

A majority of Suneung test takers viewed this year’s College Scholastic Ability Test or Suneung as being difficult overall, rekindling doubts that the government was able to tackle "killer questions." A poll on 2,764 students conducted by the Educational Broadcasting System showed Friday that a combined 85.9 percent found this year's Suneung either "extremely difficult" or "moderately difficult." This came after test takers who took the state-administered

Nov. 17, 2023

Police decline to detain rape suspect 'because he is old'

A recent media report showed that local police did not arrest an 80-something man suspected of rape and left him unsupervised, citing that he was very old and is not a flight risk. The suspect, whose identity was withheld by authorities, is accused of attacking a woman in her 80s at her apartment in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, on June 2. The victim's son saw the attack and overpowered the suspect, turning him over to police who were called to the scene. Despite apprehending the susp

Nov. 17, 2023

Nightmare before Christmas: 'rape announcement' issued at Seoul billboard

A local department store's event to celebrate Christmas through its digital billboard has gone horribly wrong, as it ended up with an anonymous threat to "rape all Korean women" being flashed on the digital screen in central Seoul. According to local police, the message saying "I'm going to rape all Korean women" appeared around 10 p.m. Tuesday on a giant screen on the exterior of Lotte Department Store in Myeong-dong, Seoul. The department store had been holding a

Nov. 17, 2023

Confirmed cases of lumpy skin disease hit 100

Confirmed cases of lumpy skin disease hit 100 as health authorities expect the cattle disease to peak later this month, officials said Friday. The country has reported 101 confirmed cases nationwide, including three new infections from the previous day, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Last week, South Korea completed the inoculation of all 4.05 million cattle in the country. Authorities, however, anticipate additional infections for the time being, considering t

Nov. 17, 2023

S. Korea to return remains of 25 Chinese troops killed in Korean War

The remains of 25 Chinese troops killed in the 1950-53 Korean War will be sent to their home country next week, the defense ministry said Friday, marking the tenth repatriation of its kind. A ceremony for the handover of the remains will take place at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, next Thursday, jointly organized by the ministry and China's veterans affairs ministry. South Korea has so far returned 913 sets of remains of Chinese troops killed during the war since the tw

Nov. 17, 2023