A total of 294 people were arrested between March and June for crimes related to child sexual exploitation, and more than half of the offenders were teenagers, police said. Of 786 arrests made in the four months for cybersex crimes, 294 people, or 37.4 percent, were either using, producing or distributing child sexual abuse materials, the National Police Agency said. Noticeably, 54.5 percent...

South Korea’s exports of ice cream reached an all-time high in the first half of this year, data showed, amid a global heat wave and the growing popularity of Korean culture. Overseas shipments of South Korean-made ice-cream products came to $50 million in the January-June period, up 14 percent from a year earlier to reach a record high, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service. ...

Manchester United duo Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire were the most abused players on Twitter last season, according to a new report. Nearly three quarters of Premier League soccer players received abusive messages with some of them receiving daily abuse. The report, carried out by The Alan Turing Institute and Ofcom and using a new machine-learning technology, analyzed 2.3 million messa...

Nearly 1.4 million people have visited the former presidential compound of Cheong Wa Dae since it opened to the public on May 10, data showed. A total of 1,396,859 people, including 5,055 foreigners, visited the complex in central Seoul through July 27 since its public opening, according to data from the Cultural Heritage Administration submitted to Rep. Kim Seung-su of the ruling People Power...

Efforts to close the global gender gap improved slightly this year after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed gender equality by at least three decades, the World Economic Forum said. In its 16th Global Gender Gap Report, the WEF said overall gender disparity across politics, work, health and education improved and it will now take 132 years to reach full parity compared with 136 years last year. Bef...

South Korea’s exports of information and communication technology products in the first half of 2022 soared 18.9 percent on-year to set a new semiannual record tally, thanks to brisk overseas demand for chips and computer products, data showed. Outbound shipments of ICT products came to $122.6 billion in the January-June period, up from the $103 billion tally a year earlier, according to data ...

North Korea‘s economy is estimated to have contracted for the second straight year in 2021 on global sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic, according to South Korea’s central bank. The North’s economy, which has been hit by tightened UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs, shrank 0.1 percent last year from the previous year, the Bank of Korea said in a report. Still, last year’s...

The number of registered vehicles in South Korea rose 0.6 percent in the second quarter to over 25 million, with that of eco-friendly cars exceeding 1.36 million units, government data showed. Car registrations came to 25.22 million units as of end-June, up from 25.07 million units a quarter earlier despite a global chip shortage, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a st...

The number of South Korean and foreign migrants fell at the fastest-ever pace last year as the COVID-19 pandemic restricted cross-border movements, data showed. The number of international migrants, or those who stay in South Korea for more than 90 days, declined 347,000, or 28.1 percent, on-year to 887,000, according to the data from Statistics Korea. The data is calculated based on cross-b...

Sales of K-pop albums have once again reached an all-time-high in the first half of this year, a local market tracker said. According to Kim Jin-woo, head researcher of Circle Chart, which reports accumulated sales and streams, combined sales of the nation‘s top 400 physical albums have risen to 34.9 million copies in the first half of 2022, up 34.6 percent from a year ago. It was the highest ...

Around 65 countries in which monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease as confirmed cases cross 15,600. The rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization‘s highest level of alert, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on July 22. The illness, which spreads through close contact and was first...

Drug offenders in their teens to their 30s grew sharply in the past three years to represent 58.9 percent of those convicted of drug crimes last year, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said. The number of young drug offenders in those age brackets stood at 1,566 in 2019, accounting for 48.9 percent of all drug offenders, before growing to 1,769 at 51.2 percent in 2020 and 1,839...

World food prices fell for a third consecutive month in June, but remained close to record-high levels set in March, the United Nations’ food agency said. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index, which tracks the most globally traded five major food commodities - cereal, meat, dairy products, vegetable oils and sugar - averaged 154.2 points last month versus a revised 157.9 fo...

Advanced nations continued to assess China’s national image negatively, according to Pew Research Center. Northern powers of US, Canada and Germany saw China unfavorably as 82 percent of Americans and 74 percent of both Canadians and Germans had negative views of China as shown in the center’s surveys conducted from January to June. The numbers turned out worse for China’s Pacific neighbors....

The United Nations estimated that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year. In a report released on World Population Day, the UN also said global population growth fell below 1 percent in 2020 for the first time since 1950. According to the latest UN projections, the world’s population could grow to...