North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over a politburo session of the Workers' Party in his first public appearance in a month and discussed convening a key party meeting and organizational matters, state media said Saturday. During the session, the North decided to hold a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Party in early June to take "additional state measures for solving pending problems urgent for the economic work and people's living," the official Korean Central N

North Korea June 5, 2021

An Air Force non-commissioned officer has died after receiving a second dose of AstraZeneca vaccine, military officials said Friday. According to the officials, the senior master sergeant based in Gimhae, 450 kilometers south of Seoul, got the second jab of the vaccine on May 24, and became brain dead a week later. The officer died Thursday. This is the first death of a soldier following vaccination. It wasn't immediately clear if the death is directly related to the vaccine. The surviving f

Social Affairs June 5, 2021

More than 1 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's Janssen COVID-19 vaccine arrived in South Korea from the United States on Saturday in what Seoul and Washington officials touted as a sign of the two countries' robust alliance. The KC-330 military aircraft carrying the vaccine for 1.01 million people arrived at 12:40 a.m. at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, after it departed from an air base on the US west coast Thursday (US time), officials said. The shipment came after US

Social Affairs June 5, 2021

Cho Ju-bin, the mastermind behind a notorious online sex blackmail ring, has appealed his 42-year sentence to the Supreme Court, legal sources said Friday. Cho's legal representative submitted the appeal earlier Friday, three days after the Seoul High Court sentenced the online sexual predator to 42 years imprisonment, according to the sources. This week's ruling reduced Cho's sentence by three years, after he was convicted on charges of violating laws on protecting minors from sexual abuse,

National June 4, 2021

A court issued an arrest warrant for a former executive of a state-run state housing developer on Friday over alleged real estate speculation. The man, whose identity was not made public, became the highest-ranking official of the Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH) to be arrested in a massive land speculation scandal over the state developer. The Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court in Gyeonggi Province issued the arrest warrant, saying that the former official is a flight risk and could

Social Affairs June 4, 2021

The first-place team in South Korean baseball this season will lose an ace for the rest of the year to an elbow surgery, with another starting pitcher facing a similar fate. The SSG Landers announced Friday that submariner Park Jong-hun will undergo a season-ending elbow operation in Los Angeles next week. Park flew to the US earlier this week to get a second opinion on his ailing right elbow from Dr. Neal ElAttrache at Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic. A doctor in Seoul initially recommended su

Baseball June 4, 2021

Lee Jae-yong, the imprisoned de facto head of Samsung Group, was fined on Friday on charges of illegally taking propofol shots. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office slapped Lee with a 50 million won ($44,800) fine in a summary indictment, which doesn't require a formal trial. Lee was accused of having excessively and illegally taken the anesthetic at a plastic surgery clinic in Seoul in 2017-2018. A complaint was filed against him with the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission

Social Affairs June 4, 2021

Unionized parcel delivery workers threatened Friday to delay work and refuse to sort packages starting next week, in a bid to press logistics firms in ongoing negotiations on measures to prevent overwork and improve conditions. The country's leading logistics companies agreed in January to take responsibility for sorting parcels, blamed for couriers' long work hours, promising additional workers, extra payment and automatization of the job. The agreement involving the workers' union, companies

Social Affairs June 4, 2021

President Moon Jae-in visited the headquarters of South Korea's state spy agency in southern Seoul and received a briefing on its reform measures Friday. It was Moon's second visit to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) since he took office in May 2017. Reforming the powerful body is one of his major campaign pledges. The NIS was accused of having been a hotbed of deep-rooted evils, including operations to oppress political dissidents. Under a revision to the NIS-related law in late 2020,

Politics June 4, 2021

President Moon Jae-in accepted the resignation of South Korea's Air Force chief Friday over a recent sexual assault case that led to the death of a female victim. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Lee Seong-yong offered to step down to take responsibility for his organization's handling of the incident. The victim, a master sergeant, was found dead in an apparent suicide at her official residence in late May, about three months after suffering unwanted physical touching by a male colleague of the

Politics June 4, 2021

A special episode of Netflix's popular original Korean series "Kingdom" will be released next month, the US streaming media service said Friday. "Kingdom: Ashin of the North" will be released July 23 as a "sidequel" to the global Korean zombie sensation "Kingdom" (2019) and "Kingdom Season 2" (2020), according to Netflix. It tells the backstory of the resurrection plant, or "saengsacho" in Korean, which causes a mysterious plague that

Television June 4, 2021

With South Korea set to resume their World Cup qualifying campaign on home soil on the weekend, national team head coach Paulo Bento is metaphorically putting on his noise-canceling headphones. Bento finds himself in the hot seat after South Korea dropped a friendly match to rivals Japan 3-0 in March, a result that led to growing calls for the Portuguese coach's dismissal. Bento hasn't gone anywhere, and he now has a chance to redeem himself and put South Korea back on track. South Korea will

Soccer June 4, 2021

GIMCHEON -- A local court on Friday sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison for abandoning a 3-year-old girl and causing her death. The Daegu District Court's branch in Gimcheon delivered the sentence to the 22-year-old sister of the baby, surnamed Kim, and ordered her to complete 160 hours of a child abuse treatment program. The accused was arrested in February after the body of the 3-year-old was discovered at an empty house in Gumi, 260 kilometers southeast of Seoul. Kim was found to have

Social Affairs June 4, 2021

South Korea's agricultural agency said Friday it plans to expand surveillance on fire blight amid growing concerns over the nationwide spread of the deadly disease for apple and pear trees. The move came as an apple farm in Andong, 268 kilometers south of Seoul, confirmed another case of fire blight, which marked the first infection to be reported from North Gyeongsang Province, according to the Rural Development Administration. North Gyeongsang Province accounts for around 60 percent of South

Social Affairs June 4, 2021

A 2-year-old girl has been in a coma for nearly a month since her adoptive father abused her to the point she fell unconscious with bleeding in her brain. Doctors say she is unlikely to wake up given the extent of the trauma she suffered when her father, 36, allegedly slapped her face and knocked her down a total of four times at their home in Hwaseong, about 40 kilometers south of Seoul, on May 8. An investigation revealed that the adoptive father had abused the girl multiple times prior to M

Social Affairs June 4, 2021