Police said Friday they have recovered two butane canisters in a suspicious white box in South Korea's main airport near Seoul, but no accident was reported.Police said they received a report around 4:30 p.m. that the box suspected to contain explosive devices was found in a man's bathroom in Incheon International Airport, South Korea's main gateway.Police cordoned off the area as an explosive ordnance disposal unit was checking the bathroom.A scan from portable digital x-ray equipment showed th

Social Affairs Jan. 29, 2016

South Korea's new finance minister said Wednesday that the country should mobilize all resources to carry out structural reforms in order to put the economy back on a growth path and make it stronger."It's urgent to complete reforms in the education, labor, public and financial sectors in order to make a breakthrough in the low-growth trap," Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said in his inauguration ceremony. "All resources should be funneled into the task.""There is no tomorrow unless we revamp the ri

Jan. 13, 2016

A group of former "comfort women" declared Wednesday the nullification of the recent South Korea-Japan agreement on the wartime sexual slavery victims, urging the Seoul government to make a "proper" resolution.The agreement, reached on Dec. 28, has sparked a wave of public protests among victims and their supporters, who claim Japan got the better end of the deal by obtaining Seoul's promise to settle the issue once and for all if Tokyo fulfills its commitments.Under the deal, Japan apologized a

Social Affairs Jan. 13, 2016

Koreans pointed to political feuds as the biggest reason for deteriorating social conflicts in the country, a state-led survey showed Tuesday. 　According to the poll by the Presidential Committee for National Cohesion, 51.8 percent of the respondents said that the political wrangling between the ruling party and opposition bloc contributed most to worsening social confrontations. 　In the multiple-choice survey of 2,000 Koreans aged 19 and over, the wealth gap was chosen as the second-biggest fac

Social Affairs Dec. 29, 2015

Braving social bias and ostracism, Kim Hak-soon, a South Korean comfort woman, took to the podium in 1991 to testify about her wartime forced prostitution experiences for the first time in public. 　Another 237 Korean women, forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II, followed suit, demanding a sincere apology and legal compensation from the Japanese government. 　Later that year, Kim and three other victims filed a lawsuit against Japanese authorities. But Japan’s highest

National Dec. 28, 2015

South Korea’s state-appointed media monitoring agency said Sunday that it has set out specific guidelines to restrict the use of foreign languages in TV commercials.　According to the guidelines for the nation’s broadcasters by the Korea Communications Standards Commission, TV advertisements are now banned from containing foreign languages or songs for more than 15 seconds -- half of the 30-second time slot. 　The regulation covers the narrative of product slogans, company names and catchphrases s

Social Affairs Dec. 27, 2015

The Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that a law barring South Koreans from changing their resident registration numbers was unconstitutional.The court said the current law on resident registration numbers excessively violates citizens’ basic rights to make decisions about their own personal information, ordering the government to present a revision by the end of 2017. “It is an excessive violation of rights that the government does not allow Koreans to change their resident numbers regardles

Social Affairs Dec. 23, 2015

South Korea’s human rights watchdog said Tuesday that police and prosecutors were recently cautioned for denying foreign suspects’ rights to self-defense by detaining an African man for 12 days without contacting his embassy. 　According to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, police and prosecutors arrested a Nigerian and detained him for 12 days, ignoring his multiple requests to contact the Nigerian Embassy. 　Police arrested the man, who was at the time on the wanted list, on a theft

Social Affairs Dec. 22, 2015

Myanmar's boisterous election campaign draws to a close Friday, two days before milestone polls that could finally propel Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party to power after a decades-long struggle against the military. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) is eyeing an outright majority at Sunday's general election, the first the party has contested since 1990.Myanmar was ruled for half a century by a brutal and isolationist junta which crushed pro-democracy movements through a combin

World News Nov. 6, 2015