North Korea has sent around 240 balloons carrying trash toward South Korea and about 10 of them landed in the South, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. As of 10 a.m., there had been no balloons detected floating midair, after North Korea launched such balloons Saturday, according to the South Korean military. A very few balloons landed in northern areas of Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul, as North Korea appears to have sent them despite winds blowing in northern and northeastern directions.

North Korea Aug. 11, 2024

Lee Da-bin grabbed a bronze medal in the women's heaviest weight class in taekwondo Saturday, giving South Korea its third medal in its traditional martial art at the Paris Olympics. Lee defeated Lorena Brandl of Germany 2-1 (4-2, 5-9, 13-2) in one of the two bronze medal contests in the women's +67-kilogram event at Grand Palais in the French capital. South Korea sent four taekwondo practitioners to Paris, and three of them came away with medals. Before Lee, Park Tae-joon won the men&

More Sports Aug. 11, 2024

  PARIS -- South Korea defeated Germany to claim the bronze medal in the women's table tennis team event at the Paris Olympics on Saturday. The trio of Shin Yu-bin, Jeon Ji-hee and Lee Eun-hye beat Shan Xiaona, Wan Yuan and Annett Kaufmann by 3-0 after taking one doubles and two singles matches at South Paris Arena 4 in the French capital. This was South Korea's second medal in the women's team event, which was added to the Olympics in 2008. South Korea won bronze that first year and went 1

More Sports Aug. 10, 2024

LPGA veteran Amy Yang is six shots off the lead heading into the final round of the women's golf tournament at the Paris Olympics. Yang, world No. 3, shot a two-under 70 in the third round on Friday at Le Golf National in Guyancourt, south of Paris, to reach three-under for the tournament. She had four birdies and two bogeys for her best round of the tournament so far. Yang is tied for 11th place with Hannah Green of Australia. They are six strokes behind two co-leaders, Lydia Ko, a South

Golf Aug. 10, 2024

South Korea came within a win of collecting its third straight taekwondo medal on Friday, with Seo Geon-woo losing in the bronze medal match of the men's -80-kilogram event. No other South Korean athlete came close to contending for a medal on this day, as the competition heads into its final weekend. South Korea's gold medal tally remained at 13, tied for its record for the Summer Games. Earlier on Friday, Seo seemed to be on his way to delivering the record-breaking gold medal. But

More Sports Aug. 10, 2024

The number of foreign medical doctors in South Korea has been on a steady increase, data showed Saturday, amid a prolonged walkout by doctors and trainee doctors here over a government-proposed spike in the medical school quota. The report comes amid plans by the health ministry to allow foreign medical doctors to practice medicine in the country when needed, even before they obtain local licenses. According to the data submitted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to Rep. Kim Mi-ae of the r

Social Affairs Aug. 10, 2024

South Korea and the United States will hold their sixth round of negotiations in Washington next week to determine Seoul's share of the cost for stationing the 28,500-strong US Forces Korea (USFK), the chief US negotiator said Friday. Linda Specht, US lead negotiator for security agreements at the State Department, released a statement on the plan to hold the negotiations in the US capital from Monday through Wednesday. South Korea's delegation is led by Lee Tae-woo, a senior diploma

Defense Aug. 10, 2024

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to bring victims of recent heavy downpours to the capital city of Pyongyang to take care of them without outside help, state media said Saturday. Kim made a two-day trip on Thursday and Friday to Uiju County in the northwestern province of North Pyongan to meet flood victims staying at a temporary shelter and offered support, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. He announced "an emergency system" to bring children, the elderly, disable

North Korea Aug. 10, 2024

Suga of K-pop superband BTS was fully drunk with a blood alcohol level of over 0.2 percent when he fell to the ground in Seoul earlier this week while driving an electric scooter, police said Friday. Suga has been booked for investigation after being found lying on the ground in Yongsan district, central Seoul, on Tuesday night after falling off his electric scooter while driving under the influence of alcohol. Police said Friday that a breathalyzer test conducted on the day of the accident show

K-pop Aug. 9, 2024

A dozen years after competing in what turned out to be his last Olympic Games, former South Korean weightlifter Jeon Sang-guen received his bronze medal in a ceremony in Paris on Friday. In a special ceremony by the Eiffel Tower on the sidelines of the 33rd Olympic Games, Jeon was belatedly presented with the bronze medal from the men's +105-kilogram event at the 2012 London Olympics. Jeon, now 43 and long retired from the sport, originally placed fourth with a total of 436kg. Ruslan Albego

More Sports Aug. 9, 2024

Questions have been raised over the crisis response capacity of Mercedes-Benz Korea Ltd., as the company remained largely silent for over a week on an electric vehicle fire scare that started from one of its vehicles. Public concerns over EV safety mounted in the country after a spontaneous fire that began in a parked Mercedes-Benz EV ended up obliterating an entire parking garage inside an apartment complex in Incheon, 27 kilometers west of Seoul, either completely destroying or damaging over 1

Industry Aug. 9, 2024

The main opposition Democratic Party vowed Friday to reveal the truth behind the recent death of a senior official of the state anti-corruption agency, saying government pressure led to his death. Until recently, the official of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission had served as acting chief of the agency's anti-corruption bureau and oversaw inquiries into politically sensitive cases, including first lady Kim Keon Hee's acceptance of a luxury handbag and opposition leader Le

Politics Aug. 9, 2024

North Korea has unilaterally applied to list taekwondo, a traditional Korean martial art, as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, the UNESCO website showed Friday. The North submitted an application to the UNESCO headquarters in March to include taekwondo on the ICH list, according to the UNESCO website. UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is expected to decide on the application in 2026, after assessing taekwondo's qualificat

North Korea Aug. 9, 2024

President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the headquarters of the armed forces in the central city of Gyeryong on Friday to inspect security posture and examine preparations for upcoming joint military drills between South Korea and the United States, his office said. Yoon's visit to the Gyeryongdae military headquarters, about 160 kilometers south of Seoul, came on the last day of his five-day summer vacation. During the visit, Yoon met with the top commanders of the Army, Air Force and Navy at a wa

Politics Aug. 9, 2024

The chief of Qoo10, the Singapore-based parent firm of TMON and WeMakePrice, said Friday it has begun a process to merge the two e-commerce platforms to help resolve the liquidity crisis facing the companies. On Thursday, Qoo10 applied for the establishment of a new business entity named K-Commerce Center for World with an initial capital of 1 billion won ($730,000) to proceed with the merger plan, the company said in a statement. The merger between TMON and WeMakePrice requires approval from th

Industry Aug. 9, 2024