South Korea will launch a slimmed-down, indictment-focused replacement for the Prosecutors’ Office on Oct. 2, staffed by about 1,900 prosecutors. Separately, nearly 70 percent of the current office’s investigator positions will be eliminated as investigative authority shifts to a new agency. The Public Prosecution Service will focus on indictments and courtroom prosecutions, while the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency will take over major criminal investigations currently handled by prosecutor

North Korea’s nuclear program has become “a major open wound” in the global nonproliferation system that the international community has neglected for far too long, the head of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in Seoul on Monday. Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of the US-based organization behind the Doomsday Clock, said Pyongyang’s nuclear threat remains a major unresolved challenge to the international nuclear order and called for renewed urgency in addressing it. Founded in 1945 b

Seoul National University has embedded anti-deepfake signals into some 5,800 portraits in its 2026 graduation yearbook, two years after women’s graduation photos were used to create sexually explicit deepfakes in a digital sex crime case involving SNU alumni. The university’s student council signed an agreement with StealCut, a startup founded by SNU alumni, to apply its StealCut Protect technology to the photos. StealCut described the project as the first use of such technology in a South Korea

South Korea’s top court has ruled that a first grader who injured a classmate by pushing him off a podium did not commit school violence, stressing that not every act causing physical or psychological harm between students should automatically be classified as such. The Supreme Court on Sept. 3 upheld an appellate court ruling that sided with a local education office’s Administrative Appeals Commission, which had canceled a corrective measure imposed on the student, according to legal circles Su

Seoul will proceed as planned with building a permanent campus for an alternative high school serving young North Korean defectors in Gangseo-gu, the city's education authorities said Sunday, despite opposition from some nearby residents. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education held a town hall meeting with residents Friday to explain plans to renovate the former Seoul Yeomgang Elementary School, which closed in 2020, to accommodate Yeomyung School and the city’s Early Childhood Education and

South Korean students and parents on Saturday demanded that the Education Ministry cancel any college applications submitted after the initial deadline, protesting the ministry's decision to grant relief to those unable to hand in their applications due to a system outage. A group of high school seniors and their parents held a demonstration in front of the National Assembly, calling on education authorities to invalidate all applications submitted after the original deadline and arguing that th

Foreign visitors will be able to pay for rides on Seoul buses by tapping the contactless credit or debit cards they use at home, without buying or topping up a local transit card. Tmoney said Thursday it plans to introduce the service on Seoul city buses in 2027, followed by buses in Incheon and airport bus services. System development and testing are scheduled to run through the end of 2026. The service will use an open-loop payment system based on EMV, the global standard used for contactless

Uzbekistan will add Korean language as an official category in its national academic competition under a new set of agreements that broaden education cooperation with South Korea into artificial intelligence, teacher training and higher education. South Korea signed three memorandums of understanding with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on Wednesday on the sidelines of the inaugural Korea-Central Asia summit in Seoul, the Education Ministry said Thursday. Under the agreements with Uzbekistan, the two

The Seoul High Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling acquitting former President Yoon Suk Yeol of perjury over testimony he gave at the insurrection trial of former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo. The appeals court said the special counsel failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Yoon had lied when he testified that he planned to convene a Cabinet meeting before Han suggested doing so on the night martial law was declared. Yoon was charged over testimony he gave during Han’s trial in

A Seoul court ruled Wednesday that North Korea must pay the South Korean government more than 44.6 billion won ($32.5 million) for demolishing the inter-Korean joint liaison office in Kaesong in June 2020. The ruling marked the South Korean government’s first victory in a damages suit filed directly against North Korea. How Seoul could enforce the judgment remains unclear, as there are currently no practical means of compelling Pyongyang to pay. The Seoul Central District Court ordered North Kor

A system outage that disrupted applications for South Korea’s highly competitive early university admissions process has raised fresh concerns about fairness, with education authorities warning that far fewer than the roughly 1,200 initially affected applicants may qualify for relief. Education authorities said late Tuesday that they would apply “strict eligibility standards” to prevent unfair treatment in the admissions process. The Ministry of Education and the Korean Council for University Ed

A South Korean man convicted of killing three Koreans in the Philippines and accused of running a major drug distribution network while behind bars had plotted to escape prison by flying over its walls while suspended from a heavy-duty drone, according to a report aired Monday. Park Wang-yeol, 47, devised the plan shortly before he was temporarily transferred to South Korea in March, local broadcaster JTBC reported. The plan called for Park to strap himself to a large drone capable of carrying u

A 33-hour difference in a wage formula brought Seoul’s bus system back to the brink of a citywide shutdown, eight months after a 44-hour walkout left the same dispute unresolved. At issue is whether drivers’ ordinary hourly wages should be calculated using 176 or 209 working hours per month. The figure serves as the denominator, meaning the lower benchmark produces higher hourly pay and, in turn, higher overtime, night and holiday allowances. The dispute follows a December 2024 Supreme Court rul

South Korea’s association of universities on Monday apologized over a system outage that disrupted applications for the 2027 early admissions cycle, pledging relief measures for affected applicants. Lee Ki-jeong, president of the Korean Council for University Education, said in a statement that he felt “a heavy sense of responsibility and deep regret” for the anxiety and confusion caused to students and parents at the final stage of the application process. “For applicants who were unable to com

Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin said Monday he would put a dedicated ministry unit in charge of exploring a government-backed smartphone for teenagers, as concerns grow over digital addiction among children. “If necessary, I will designate a dedicated department within the Education Ministry to actively address the issue,” Choi said during an interpellation session at the National Assembly. “Public discussion is important. For our students to use such a device, there needs to be discussion among