A total of 72 school students from across the country gathered for a forum in Seoul last week and demanded the government grant students aged 13 and older voting rights in the election of educational superintendents. They also requested that relevant ministries standardize educational programs for elementary school students to learn about elections and voting rights. The demands came at the Kore...

Elegant piano tunes echo through a ballet studio in Gwacheon, a southern Seoul suburb, on a Sunday afternoon. Besides the pitter-patter of raindrops that occasionally beats through the classical piece, the air is still, the atmosphere almost solemn. Fourteen white ballet flats bend and flex as a group of male ballet dancers warm up beside wooden bars. What catches the eye is the seven dancers’ a...

Group to open Korean office soon to focus on nuclear power, maritime environment The main issues in Korea in the last 10 years have been peace, environment and energy. Greenpeace’s announcement in June that it would open a Korean office looks set to stir these issues further. Greenpeace started in Vancouver in 1971 to protest nuclear weapons testing. Its Korean office, to be opened late this mo...

Ewha Womans University, the nation’s most prestigious women’s school, on Friday scrapped its plan to build a campus on the site of a former U.S. military camp in Paju, north of Seoul, citing price issues. The price of the campus site, owned by the Ministry of Defense, has gone up to a level that the university cannot afford anymore, the university said in a press statement. “It seems nearly imp...

A 38-year-old woman has been booked for abandoning her four newborn babies in Namhae, South Gyeongsang Province, local police said. The mother admitted that she deserted four babies including a 4-day-old boy she gave birth to last month. She was seen on closed-circuit camera leaving her baby in a plastic bag after giving birth to him in a public toilet. When the officers opened an investigation...

The late former Director-General of the World Health Organization Lee Jong-wook received a posthumous honorary doctorate on Wednesday from Seoul National University for his contributions to the development of public health. “Lee made a tremendous contribution to the development of public health and medicine. He was a true doctor as well as an activist scholar who spread hopes and planted a spiri...

Shin Chang-won, who stunned the nation with his jailbreak in 1997 and more than two years of life on the run, was in critical condition after attempting suicide in his prison cell on Thursday, prison officials said. The 44-year-old convict attempted suicide via strangulation using a rubber glove in his solitary cell in Andong in North Gyeongsang Province. He was spotted by a prison guard and was...