E-commerce giant Coupang again came under fire from both sides of the aisle at the parliament over its refusal since August to permit an on-site inspection by the Fair Trade Commission. At a parliamentary audit of the FTC by the National Policy Committee of the National Assembly on Monday, lawmakers stressed their commitment to taking legislative measures to prevent business entities such as Coupang from refusing government inspections. Rep. Min Byoung-dug of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea

Seoul has received more than 100 complaints from foreign students regarding delays in tuition refunds over the past five years, data showed Wednesday. A total of 115 civil complaints were filed with either the e-People portal or the Education Ministry related to tuition refunds for international students who planned to study in South Korea, according to government estimates compiled by People Power Party Rep. Jung Sung-kook's office. Among them, 25 came through the e-People portal, a state-run w

Rep. Song Young-gil, a six-term lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, said Monday that the phased relocation of military forces stationed at the Gwangju Air Base to one in nearby Muan-gun, in Jeonnam-Gwangju, could be an alternative to the current reloation plan that has hit a snag. In a parliamentary forum held at the National Assembly on Monday, Song stressed that the key to expediting the relocation process would be to put a wider range of options into consideration. "Instead of s

Lawmakers of the right-wing People Power Party claimed Monday that the controversial South Korean political thriller "The Assassin(s)" had perpetrated a distortion of established historical facts about the death of a former first lady. The lawmakers made the claims during a visit to the birthplace of Yuk Young-soo in Okcheon-gun, North Chungcheong Province. Yuk, assassinated in 1974, was the wife of former right-wing President Park Chung-hee. The lawmakers say the film has distorted established

The National Assembly is set for its annual parliamentary audit, which starts this week and is expected to last for nearly a month, with leaders of foreign firms' South Korean operations already approved as witnesses. Those representing the Korean units of foreign-backed companies such as Google, Meta, Apple, Bytedance, Coupang, X and Telegram have gained parliamentary approval as witnesses in audits of standing parliamentary committees' state inspections throughout the month. Google Korea manag

The commercial viability of two of three US investment projects need further verification, South Korea lawmakers stressed Thursday, following US President Donald Trump's announcement. One of the two that needs further verification is the liquefied natural gas export project in Alaska involving the construction of a 1,300-kilometer natural gas pipeline traversing the Alaska state southward, for which the White House indicated a price tag of $54 billion. The other is a $120 billion project to buil

Summit odds rise: South Korea’s National Intelligence Service assesses roughly a 50 percent chance of US-North Korea talks around the APEC meetings in China this November, according to lawmakers briefed by the agency. Yonhap News Agency Pyongyang stays engaged: The NIS says North Korea appears intent on keeping the diplomatic opening alive, with officials handling US affairs reportedly becoming increasingly active. Yonhap News Agency Rhetoric stays restrained: Pyongyang has avoided direct attack

A US-North Korea summit being held this year appears to have about a 50 percent chance of occurring, with Pyongyang exercising restraint to keep the possibility alive, the National Intelligence Service reported Wednesday. In a briefing to lawmakers, the NIS said that a summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has about a "50 percent chance of taking place around the time of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conferences," according to Rep. Yoo Yeong-ha of the m

Seoul is targeting US lawmakers of constituencies that have attracted South Korean corporate investment in its efforts to support the creation of skilled worker visa quotas exclusively for South Koreans, data from the embassy to the United States showed Tuesday. The embassy's data also showed that a number of US lawmakers whom Seoul has reached out to are considered pro-Trump, which according to People Power Party Rep. Kim Gunn, who obtained the data, could present hurdles in the short term to a

South Korean military investigators are focusing on the theory that the blast that injured three military officers near the inter-Korean border may have been caused by North Korean land mines. According to a high-ranking military official involved in the investigation, as disclosed in a briefing to lawmakers, witness statements point to one or more North Korean devices in the incident on Sept. 21. The official, however, said that further investigation is needed to determine when the potential la

South Korean military and the United Nations Command on Saturday conducted a preparatory inspection as the onsite investigation into the cause of the blast in the Demilitarized Zone earlier this week. Some 20 troops led by Lt. Gen. Kwon Dae-won, a vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who leads a task force for a joint investigation, as well as a UNC colonel, was dispatched Saturday to the site near the explosion. They cleared the way for the upcoming investigation and ensured investigators' s

The liberal Lee Jae Myung administration is facing pressure over its failure to immediately launch an onsite probe in the demilitarized zone to identify the cause of unidentified explosions that caused injury of three South Korean military officers. Rep. Jang Dong-hyeok, chair of the main opposition People Power Party, said on his Facebook Saturday that a rain in the area Friday would have led to a loss of key evidence that a North Korean-made landmine had caused back-to-back explosions in the f

President Lee Jae Myung on Friday stopped by a concert of K-pop boy band Stray Kids at GNP Seguros Stadium in Mexico City. On his X post with a nine-second clip where Stray Kids perform "God's Menu," Lee wrote that he was at the concert venue and said he could "truly feel the great power of K-pop, spreading the word about Korea as a cultural powerhouse to the world." He also thanked J. Y. Park, chair of the Popular Culture Committee and founder of the K-pop agency to which Stray Kids belongs. Be

Main opposition lawmaker Rep. Bae Hyun-jin on Saturday urged J. Y. Park, founder of JYP Entertainment, to testify at the upcoming parliamentary audit of South Korean government bodies. Park, who is the ministerial-level co-chair of the presidential Commission on Pop-Culture Exchange, should "appear and testify confidently at the parliamentary audit," said Bae on Saturday on her Facebook post. This came amid speculations raised by Bae's office that the Culture Ministry had exclusively offered JYP

Kyiv has denied Seoul's claim that the two parties agreed to keep the recent transfer of two North Korean prisoners-of-war to South Korea confidential, sparking criticism from President Lee Jae Myung's political opponents. Regarding Seoul's claim that Kyiv had broken their consensus, Dmytro Lytvyn, communications adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Friday, "There was no such agreement, this is not true." "And it would be wrong to conceal the whereabouts of specific prisoners