The two ministers of defense and land, transport and maritime affairs on Tuesday renewed calls for civic groups to halt opposition to a strategic naval base being constructed on Jeju Island. They made a joint statement two days after a Jeju court accepted the petition the government and the Navy filed to stop villagers and civic groups from impeding construction. “The government hopes that as t...

The government will start expanding a crime prevention system nationwide this September as its pilot program has proved effective in safeguarding vulnerable people such as women and children, officials said Tuesday. The Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the National Police Agency have jointly test-run the “SOS Public Relief Service” since April. During the four-month trial run, ...

A 30-year-old woman was booked without detention on Wednesday after she pretended to be pregnant to steal household goods, the police said. The woman surnamed Lee left a mall in Daegu without paying for 900,000 won ($880) worth of household items. When a security guard stopped her, Lee said that she had lost her receipts. She slipped out of the mall arguing that she was pregnant, saying: “Are y...

A top South Korean court said Tuesday that it is unconstitutional for the government to make no tangible effort to settle disputes with Japan over its refusal to compensate Korean women mobilized as sex slaves during its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The Constitutional Court ruled in a 6-3 vote that the government violated the basic rights of the former “comfort women” with its ...

The prosecution will summon the wife of Seoul’s education chief for questioning Wednesday, on allegations that her husband bought a rival candidate out of race in last year’s election, officials said Tuesday. It will also subpoena two confidants of Kwak No-hyun, superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, on the same day, to grill them on their alleged involvement in negotiations w...

Seoul education chief uspected of bribing former election rival Seoul’s education chief Kwak No-hyun may face subpoena as early as Wednesday in an intensifying probe into allegations that he bought a rival candidate out of race during last year’s election, sources at the prosecution said Tuesday. The Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office, which leads the investigation, detained for questioning a co...

Samsung Medical Center and Seoul National University Hospital Healthcare System Gangnam Center in southern Seoul were selected as the best hospitals for medical checkups in a Korea Consumer Agency survey. The agency said Tuesday that in a poll of 450 consumers, both Samsung and SNU hospitals scored 5.45 out of 7 to take joint first place in terms of consumer satisfaction with medical screening p...

Children in and around Seoul start learning to speak English at an average age of 3.7 years, the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education said. Its latest survey of 1,200 elementary school first- and second-graders in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, found that 92.7 percent received their first-ever English education around 3-5 years old. Only 7.3 percent in the same age bracket said they had not...

Minors have accounted for one out of 10 prostitution cases, police said Tuesday, prompting calls for proper measures to discipline and protect youth. According to the data collected by the National Police Agency, 1,184 adolescents aged 13-19 were caught for buying or selling sex in the first seven months of this year, accounting for 9.7 percent of the total of 12,212 offenders. Among them, 908...

A 27-year-old college student collapsed in a PC room in Busan after playing online games for seven consecutive hours. The student surnamed Kim was quickly taken to nearby hospital but was pronounced dead upon arrival. “I shook him when he fell forward while playing games but he was not conscious,” a man sitting next to Kim told the Yonhap news agency. The police said that Kim had played online...

A regional court on Monday issued an injunction against angry protesters who for months have been blocking the construction of a major naval base on South korea's southern resort island of Jeju. South Korea's central government began building a naval base on Jeju's southern coast facing the South China Sea in January. When completed in 2014, the base will be home to about 20 naval vessels and tw...