Most Popular
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Psy's touch or new trend in music? P Nation’s solo stars lose their shine
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Yoon warns North Korea against nuclear attack attempt
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Seoul to hold grand military parade on Tuesday, disrupting major city routes
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81-year-old model awarded ‘best dressed’ in Miss Universe Korea
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Shut up and dance
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Seoul mayor suggests shift in immigration policy
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NewJeans fans corner Hybe amid PR backlash, looming National Assembly audit
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Israel targets Palestinian group in first strike on Beirut center
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Brit pop legend Oasis to perform in Seoul next year
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'Smart pill'? ADHD treatment prescriptions spike this year
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EXO's Chen to join Barakatt onstage in Seoul concert
EXO member Chen will be joining composer and pianist Steve Barakatt on stage during his upcoming Seoul concert with the Herald Philharmonic Orchestra, according to UNICEF, Chen’s agency SM Entertainment and concert promoter Rainbow Bridge Story on Sunday.Chen will be performing John Lennon‘s song “Imagine” to the accompaniment of Barakatt, showing his support for UNICEF‘s work providing aid to vulnerable children around the world. Steve Barakatt is currently serving as a UNICEF Ambassador.Steve
PerformanceDec. 30, 2015
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‘Youth Over Flowers’ men take on Iceland
Following its wild adventures to the mountaintops of Peru and the Buddhist monasteries of Laos, this time around the newest stars of the hit TV reality series “Youth Over Flowers” are taking viewers to the glacier-filled, vast snowy wilderness of Iceland. Popular on-screen and musical stage stars Jung Sang-hoon, Jo Jung-suk, Jung Woo and Kang Ha-neul are the members of the latest series of tvN’s “Youth Over Flowers,” which has been labeled by producer Na Young-seok as the “funniest” series yet.
TelevisionDec. 30, 2015
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Democracy’s destabilizer: Too much information
For most of Martin Gurri’s 29 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency’s open-media group (now the Open Source Center), the world was very different from the one we now inhabit. “When I started out in government,” Gurri recalls in an interview, “it was a perfectly reasonable expectation that an analyst could absorb all the meaningful political information coming out in a day from even a very developed country like Britain or France. And, of course, now if you tried to do that your head
ViewpointsDec. 30, 2015
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China’s flirtation with surrogate motherhood
A studio portrait of eight sibling toddlers went viral in 2011 on Chinese social media. According to news reports at the time, two of the children were born to a wealthy couple in Guangzhou, and the other six were born to surrogates hired by the couple to skirt China’s one-child population-control policies.Chinese social media users, ever sensitive to class divisions, turned the portrait into a viral outrage, stoking the widespread belief that population policies don’t apply to the rich and well
ViewpointsDec. 30, 2015
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The capture of Ramadi from Islamic State
If you want to identify a recent low point in the war against the Islamic State, go back to May when the ineffectual Iraqi military cut and ran from Ramadi, a Sunni town just 112 kilometers west of Baghdad. They abandoned their equipment and fled. The Iraqis “showed no will to fight,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said. With that embarrassing defeat, the U.S. strategy for arming and training Iraqi soldiers to defend their country was left exposed as an apparent failure. Six months later, rev
ViewpointsDec. 30, 2015
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‘Korea needs harsher punishment on insurance fraud’
(123RF)Korea Life Insurance Association, the country’s leading representative of the life insurance industry, called for stronger punishment for insurance fraud crimes. “Insurance fraud is a grave crime that undermines public interest, but its relatively weak penalties are fueling moral hazards among a wide range of ordinary people,” KLIA said in a press release. In 2014, authorities caught insurance fraud cases worth 600 billion won ($512 million), up 15.6 percent from a year ago. Yet that nu
Dec. 30, 2015
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'Comfort women' deal did not include statue's removal: official
A South Korean official on Wednesday denied Japanese news reports that Seoul agreed to relocate a statue symbolizing victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery in exchange for compensation for the women.The statue of a girl, which sits across from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, has been a source of friction between the two countries as they have sought to resolve issues related to the wartime atrocity.Historians estimate that more than 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were forced to work in fron
Foreign AffairsDec. 30, 2015
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Government puts 19 troubled big firms on restructuring list
South Korea's financial watchdog said Wednesday it has picked 19 large companies to be placed under debt restructuring this year as part of efforts to prevent a sudden default in major industries.It is the result of the second inspection the Financial Supervisory Service carried out this year into 368 firms whose credit expansion surpassed 50 billion won ($42.59 million) and which show signs of going bust. Wednesday's decision brought the total number of companies subject to the forced restructu
Dec. 30, 2015
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Man arrested after taking hostage at opposition party chief's office
An armed man was arrested after staging a hostage situation at the local office of the main opposition party chief Wednesday, police said. The 55-year-old man, identified only by his surname Chung, stormed into the office of Moon Jae-in of the Minjoo Party of Korea -- formerly the New Politics Alliance for Democracy -- in the country's second-largest city of Busan, with a weapon at around 9:10 a.m.Moon was not at the local office as he was in Seoul to participate in a memorial ceremony of a form
PoliticsDec. 30, 2015
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Opposition party confirms its name to be 'The Minjoo'
The main opposition party confirmed its new name Wednesday, in a symbolic move to reform its image before the general elections in April, officials said."The Minjoo Party of Korea" was officially confirmed in a meeting of senior party members, a party representative said, adding that the English abbreviation will be "The Minjoo." On the shortlist of English translations of the Korean name were "Democracy for All," "Harmonious Democratic Party," "Inclusive Democratic Party," and "The Democratic U
PoliticsDec. 30, 2015
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Election candidates to be temporarily allowed to electioneer
The country's election watchdog said Wednesday that it will temporarily allow candidates for next year's general elections to electioneer even if constituencies are not redrawn.Rival parties have failed to fully agree on redrawing the electoral constituency map for next April's general elections. The current electoral map becomes invalid at the end of the year. "There is no choice but to temporarily stop cracking down on election campaigning by candidates who will have finished registration by t
PoliticsDec. 30, 2015
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Majority of Koreans against relocating 'comfort woman' statue: poll
Nearly 7 out of 10 South Koreans disapprove of relocating a statue of a girl that symbolizes Korean wartime sex slaves in exchange for the recent "comfort women" deal between South Korea and Japan, a local survey showed Wednesday.Earlier this week, Japan apologized for sexually enslaving Korean women during World War II in a landmark deal between the two neighbors.But Japan reportedly stipulated that South Korea remove the statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in exchange for 1 billio
NationalDec. 30, 2015
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Korea to push moon exploration through 2020
South Korea's science ministry said Wednesday it plans to launch a lunar exploration project next year, eventually seeking to send a landing vessel by 2020.Under the first stage of the project that will run from 2016 to 2018, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning will allocate 197.8 billion won ($169 million) to conduct research and send an orbiter.The ministry said it has already secured a 20 billion-won budget for 2016.South Korea plans to develop the orbiter and the ground station
TechnologyDec. 30, 2015
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More Korean seniors familiar with instant messengers
The number of South Korean seniors using instant messengers increased sharply in 2015 from a year earlier in line with a jump in the use of smartphones, government data showed Wednesday.Around 72 percent of South Koreans aged 60 and above used instant messengers such as KakaoTalk or Skype, compared to the 62.6 percent posted at end-2014, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning and the Korea Internet & Security Agency.The figure stood at 90 percent for all
Social AffairsDec. 30, 2015
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China warns Korean journalists over reporting along North Korean
Chinese authorities have warned that South Korean journalists could face an unspecified "stern measure" if they report along the sensitive border between North Korea and China without prior permission, an official at the South Korean Embassy in Beijing said Wednesday. The warning came less than a week after South Korean journalists reported about activities of trade between North Korea and China in the Chinese border city of Dandong, following a sudden cancellation of a concert in Beijing by a N
Foreign AffairsDec. 30, 2015
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Sun King Li Sees $14.6 Billion Vanish Amid Wild Ride for Hanergy
This year’s wild ride for Hanergy Thin Film Power Group Ltd. ends with the solar equipment maker a shadow of its former self, about $14.6 billion in paper losses for its chairman, the departure of key executives, a lawsuit over unpaid rent, canceled contracts and a regulatory investigation.Chairman Li Hejun, the leader of the solar group and a self-professed solar visionary, stands, as usual, at the center. According to regulatory filings made public this week, Li has agreed to sell a 6 percent
World BusinessDec. 30, 2015
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Korea seeks rice supply-demand balance in 2018: government
South Korea is seeking a balance between the supply and demand of rice by 2018 through a gradual reduction in the size of paddies and expanding consumption, the government said Wednesday.The Ministry of Agriculture said it wants to reduce the amount of arable land set aside to grow rice from 799,000 hectares this year to 711,000 hectares in 2018. This is significantly smaller than the expected 749,000 hectares of paddies that would be in service even if no action is taken.It said that in the nex
Dec. 30, 2015
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Bank lending rates on household loans rise in Nov.
Bank lending rates on new household loans gained in November for the first time in six months ahead of the widely-expected rate hike in the United States, data showed Wednesday. The average rate for new loans to households gained 0.1 percentage points from the previous month to 3.16 percent in November, according to the Bank of Korea.It marked a turnaround from a five-month decline since June when the central bank announced a surprising rate cut, sending its policy rate to a record low of 1.5 pe
Dec. 30, 2015
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Seoul shares down 0.31% in late morning trade
South Korean stocks traded 0.31 percent lower late Wednesday morning due to losses from steelmakers and construction firms.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index lost 6.01 points to 1,960.30 as of 11:20 a.m.Steelmakers lost ground, with No. 1 POSCO falling 2.06 percent and Korea Zinc sliding 1.07 percent. Hyundai Steel shed 4.49 percent.Builders traded bearish, with Hyundai Engineering & Construction losing 1.2 percent and Daelim Industrial moving down 0.15 percent. GS Engineering & Con
Dec. 30, 2015
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Corporate restructuring needs pain sharing by all sides: finance minister
Corporate restructuring efforts aimed at bolstering South Korea's overall competitiveness should entail pain sharing by all interested parties, the top economic policymaker said Wednesday.Chairing his last meeting of economy-related ministers in Seoul, Choi Kyung-hwan said all restructuring efforts must be resolved in a speedy manner for the best possible effect."The government wants to push forward change, and it will insist on pain sharing by management, as well as workers," said the official,
Dec. 30, 2015