Most Popular
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1 in 3 Koreans live alone, family types becoming diverse
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Korea, Japan finance chiefs vow to tame rampant FX market volatility
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US 'incredibly concerned' about suspected NK-Iran military ties
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K-pop group's manager dismissed for setting up spycam in theater dressing room
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K-pop singer lost consciousness after being hit by foul ball, cancels show
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Korean Muslim YouTuber's plan to build mosque in Incheon goes viral
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[Kim Seong-kon] Democracy and the future of South Korea
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Yoon's office denies considering liberal figures for key posts
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Why is Apple Pay struggling to get purchase in Korea?
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Seoul says Fu Bao loan 'not going to happen'
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[Editorial] Grant abuse
Government grants towards the recovery of Ansan City from the shock of the Sewol ferry sinking were found to have been abused. According to data submitted Saturday by the city government to Suh Bum-soo, a National Assembly member of the ruling People Power Party, Ansan received 1 billion won ($759,000) to 2 billion won in “Sewol ferry tragedy grants” annually for six years, from 2017 to this year. The grants came from central and local governments under the special act regarding th
Nov. 16, 2022
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[Editorial] Joint efforts to deter NK
It is meaningful that the leaders of South Korea, the US and Japan confirmed they share the same view on North Korea’s continued missile launches that threaten security on the Korean Peninsula and destabilize geopolitics in the East Asian region. President Yoon Suk-yeol, while on his two-nation tour, met with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Phnom Penh on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Cambodia on Sunday and issued a joint statement pledging to step
Nov. 15, 2022
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[Editorial] False quotes
The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea apologized for distorting a foreign envoy’s remarks. Its chairman Lee Jae-myung and European Union Ambassador to South Korea Maria Castillo Fernandez held a closed-door meeting in his office in the National Assembly on Tuesday. In a back briefing after the meeting, party spokesperson, Kim Eui-kyeom, said Fernandez said that there seems to be a limit to the Yoon Suk-yeol administration's response to North Korea's escalating provocation
Nov. 14, 2022
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[Editorial] Tarnished start
President Yoon Suk-yeol marked his first six months in office Thursday. Unfortunately, the scorecard for his starting period of a five-year term, usually filled with hopes for change and reform, is not so pretty. To be fair, Yoon confronted a host of thorny challenges on many fronts. The continued missile provocations of North Korea, the deepening economic woes including credit crunch and high inflation, and the Itaewon tragedy took place under his stewardship, to name just three negative factor
Nov. 11, 2022
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[Editorial] Excessive offense
Yang Kyung-sook, a Democratic Party of Korea member of the National Assembly, said during the Assembly's inspection of the presidential secretariat Tuesday that the Yoon Suk-yeol administration cornered many young people into a deadly situation in Itaewon. She likened the Yoon government to those who gripped military power and mobilized troops to massacre civilians in Gwangju in 1980. Yang probably made the remark to rebuke the absurd government response to the Itaewon crowd crush that kill
Nov. 10, 2022
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[Editorial] Worsening debt crisis
Worries about the negative impact of rising interest rates on the South Korean economy are mounting, with some experts calling for a flexible approach in policy to tackle soaring debts shouldered by the government, companies and households. The predominant monetary policy trend both at home and abroad clearly leans toward raising the rates to keep high inflation under control. Last Wednesday the US Federal Reserve, as widely expected, raised its short-term borrowing rate by 0.75 percentage point
Nov. 9, 2022
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[Editorial] Miraculous rescue
A day before the national mourning period ended for the 156 people who died in the Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon, good news had come from Bongwha, North Gyeongsang Province. Two miners were rescued from a collapsed shaft in a zinc mine in the county of North Gyeongsang Province on Friday night. Their miraculous return brought a message of hope to the nation lost in grief over the Itaewon tragedy. Team leader Park Jeong-ha (62) and an assistant surnamed Park (56), both walked out alive, help
Nov. 8, 2022
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[Editorial] Deepening doubts
As a special investigation unit unearths details about what happened on Oct. 29 when a tragic crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district killed at least 156 people, deeply disappointing facts have emerged about the police response, especially regarding high-ranking officials and a dysfunctional chain of command. The investigation into what went wrong in responding to the Halloween crowd surge is ongoing, but the details that have been revealed so far are outrageous enough to question whether
Nov. 7, 2022
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[Editorial] Stern response
North Korea‘s military provocation seems to be going to the extreme. It fired 25 missiles, including short-range ballistic missiles, into the East and West Seas on Wednesday. One of the ballistic missiles flew across the Northern Limit Line, a de facto maritime border, with South Korea. It is reportedly the first time since the division of the Korean Peninsula into the communist North and capitalist South in 1945 that a North Korean ballistic missile landed south of the borderline. Its mil
Nov. 4, 2022
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[Editorial] Blame game won’t help
Public figures have belatedly apologized for their improper responses to the Itaewon tragedy that killed at least 156 people, but questions are being raised over what went wrong, who is responsible for the missteps and what might have been done to prevent the disaster. At the heart of the raging dispute is whether police failed to take proper actions to prevent the weekend Halloween crowd surge in advance, especially after transcripts of emergency calls were disclosed, showing that police had re
Nov. 3, 2022
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[Editorial] No distorting facts
A post titled "I want only to fact check" on the Itaewon tragedy went viral on social media and online communities on Monday. It was written anonymously on an online community called "theqoo." The source of the information was not disclosed. It contained six questions and answers to them. For example: “Was the police force deployed this year smaller than that in the past? Yes. Eight hundred officers had been posted at one time in the past. This year it was 200 officer
Nov. 2, 2022
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[Editorial] Deadly crush in Itaewon
The Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul, well known for clubs, nightlife and Halloween festivities, turned into a terrible disaster zone late Saturday, as a sudden crowd surge in a narrow alley left 154 people dead and 149 injured as of Monday afternoon. The tragedy took place as thousands of people were packed into the alley, which measures only 4 meters wide and slopes downward. People got pushed and dragged, with victims being crushed or suffocated to death. Rescue efforts were desperately made to
Nov. 1, 2022
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[Editorial] Abrupt warning
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an abrupt warning to South Korea on Thursday. Putin reportedly said that South Korea has decided to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine and that this will destroy South Korea-Russia relations. His words came at the 19th annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow. But this is not true. South Korea's support for Ukraine has been limited to such materials as helmets and blankets as well as medical supplies and medicines. The South Korean
Oct. 31, 2022
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[Editorial] Proliferation of drugs
When Don Spike, a K-pop composer and TV celebrity, was arrested last month on charges of buying and using methamphetamine on multiple occasions, the public was initially shocked to see a fairly familiar figure entangled in a drug case. But more shocking was the scale of the crime involved. When the 45-year-old was apprehended, police confiscated 30 grams of meth, an amount equal to about 1,000 doses. Police referred him to the prosecution early this month. What matters is that Don Spike is not a
Oct. 28, 2022
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[Editorial] No free lunch
A special committee of the National Assembly to reform pension systems held its first plenary meeting Tuesday. The ruling and opposition parties had agreed to create the ad hoc committee in July to discuss plans to replenish four fast decreasing public pensions -- the national, government employee, military and teachers’ pensions. The severity of pension problems is too well known. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s fourth forecast of pension reserves, announced in 2
Oct. 27, 2022
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[Editorial] Credit crunch
The outlook was rosy in May when a local Legoland theme park opened in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. Around 2 million visitors were expected to visit the new attraction each year, creating growth momentum and new jobs in the region. As the initial phase of excitement passed, the number of visitors, which hit a peak of 130,000 in May, began to drop to around 100,000 in June and then 70,000 in July. But Legoland’s flash-in-the-pan popularity is nothing compared with what has followed in conne
Oct. 26, 2022
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[Editorial] Far-fetched proposal
Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, proposed last Friday that a special counsel should be appointed to investigate allegations that he gave preference to developers of Daejang-dong, a district in Seongnam, while he was the mayor. He made the proposal as prosecutors were looking into suspicions he received illegal funds for his presidential bid. The prosecution arrested Kim Yong, his close aide and deputy head of the Institute for Democracy, a think tank of
Oct. 25, 2022
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[Editorial] No more ‘bloodstained bread’
A wave of protests is raging over the death of a young worker at a bread-making factory run by an affiliate of South Korean bakery giant SPC Group, illustrating the public anger over the negligence and malpractice that were glaringly laid bare. The 23-year old employee was killed Oct. 15 after her upper body was caught in a sauce mixer at the factory of SPL in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. SPL is owned by Paris Croissant, a firm wholly owned by SPC Group Chairman Heo Young-in and his family. He
Oct. 24, 2022
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[Editorial] Rice populism
The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea passed its revision bill to the Grain Management Act unilaterally through the Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee of the National Assembly on Wednesday. The party has a majority of 11 seats in the 19-member committee. The bill makes it compulsory for the government to purchase overproduced rice if rice prices drop more than 5 percent from the average level or if production exceeds expectation by more than 3 percent. Under
Oct. 21, 2022
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[Editorial] Dispute over regulations
The aftermath of the worst-ever server outage of Kakao Corp. over the weekend is still reverberating throughout the South Korean business and political sectors, with debates heating up over the scope of regulations for private firms. The fire, which broke out Saturday at the data center in Pangyo, south of Seoul, paralyzed a wide range of mobile services run by Kakao, including the country’s biggest mobile messenger KakaoTalk. The service outage, which lasted for more than 10 hours, caused
Oct. 20, 2022