The number of children in South Korea with at least one foreign parent nearly tripled over the past four years, as international marriages continued to increase, statistics showed. According to data released by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security on Thursday, there were 151,154 such children registered as of Jan. 1, surpassing the 150,000 mark for the first time. This year’s figure

Mom, two daughters stricken by mysterious lung diseaseAt 0:30 on Sunday morning, Jin-ju finally stopped breathing.It was the 93rd day since the 15-month-old baby girl had been hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, which turned out to be an unidentified acute lung disease that has claimed the lives of four patients since May. “I went to Busan (where she was hospitalized) upon hearing the news, had h

This is the second installment of a three-part series looking into problems in Korea’s tertiary education. ― Ed. Lee, a 30-year-old computer engineering graduate, has been jobless since he graduated from a university in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, more than a year ago. There seemed to be a lot of job openings in the information technology industry, but for some reason, he did not feel he was qualif

Korea’s Supreme Court ruled Monday that a U.S. decision to transfer the domain name “hpweb.com,” registered by a Korean national, to Hewlett-Packard Co. was appropriate. “The domain name ‘hpweb.com’ is confusingly similar to the HP mark. The plaintiff’s registering and perusal of the domain name amounts to cybersquatting under the U.S. federal law,” Judge Kim Ji-hyung said. A Korean surnamed Kim r

North Korea replaced its top envoy to Germany, the country’s official news agency said Saturday.Ri Si-hong was appointed the new ambassador to the European nation under a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s legislature, according to a one-sentence dispatch of the Korean Central News Agency.It provided no further details.Little is known about Ri, except that he acc

North Korea has nothing to gain from provocations against South Korea, Seoul’s Cabinet minister handling inter-Korean relations said Saturday, urging the communist nation to carry out reform and open up to the outside world.Unification Minister Hyun In-taek accused Pyongyang of launching “reckless political provocations after militaryprovocations,” referring to the North’s unilateral disclosure of

The government will consider changing the working hours of public sector employees and splitting up the long school winter vacation into several breaks in an effort to spur domestic demand, officials said Saturday.The measures were among a package of proposals discussed at a meeting of Cabinet and other top government officials that President Lee Myung-bak presided over to brainstorm ideas on how

Hong Joon-pyo puts self forward as anti-factional candidateThe race to become the new chief of the governing Grand National Party is shaping up to be a competition among young, reform-minded members from the capital area, with no clear frontrunner, political observers said Sunday. With about two weeks to go before the July 4 party convention, three lawmakers threw their hat in the ring on the day,

The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs confirmed Sunday that an Asiana jetliner was “following a normal route” when Marine Corps mistook it as a North Korean military plane and shot at it late Friday. “The Asiana flight was flying normally. In fact, another plane had taken that route just 20 minutes before,” a ministry official said. It backed the claim by Asiana Airlines that the fl

WASHINGTON (AP) ― A Senate committee is looking to block the reorganization of U.S. forces in east Asia, which it sees as too costly and impractical, the panel’s chairman said Friday.Legislation backed by the Senate Armed Services Committee would prohibit funding to relocate the U.S. Marine base in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. It also would suspend plans to relocate thousands of famili

This is the first installment of a three-part series looking into problems in Korea’s tertiary education system. ― Ed. After nearly a year of job hunting, Lee decided to lower her expectations. The 27-year-old graduate of a university in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, now goes to a vocational training institute in Seoul to learn how to make coffee. Hopefully, after completing this four-month course,

Students of the prestigious Seoul National University favor opposition leader Sohn Hak-kyu as the next Korean president, but think female conservative politician Park Geun-hye is most likely to win the race, a poll released Tuesday shows. According to the survey of 660 students conducted by the Seouldae Journal, a student newspaper at the university, Sohn, the chairman of the Democratic Party, was

The nation’s public and private universities will face a sweeping audit by the Board of Audit and Inspection from August, amid a growing public outcry over exorbitant tuition fees, officials at the state audit agency said Friday. “It will be the largest-ever scale,” said Sohn Chang-dong, a BAI spokesperson. About 200, or one third of the entire BAI staff, will be mobilized for the inspection, whic

South Korea’s ruling camp will cooperate for the parliamentary endorsement this month of a bill designed to help improve North Korea’s dismal of human rights conditions, officials from the government and the ruling party said Friday. “We agreed that the National Assembly of South Korea should no longer sit idly by on the problem of human rights infringements in North Korea,” Rep. Lee Ju-young, the

North Korea on Thursday threatened to disclose voice recordings of a secret meeting with South Korea where it said rejected the South’s proposal to hold a series of summits. “If all (South Korean officials who attended the meeting) refuse to admit the truth, we will have to disclose the full recordings of the contact,” the Korea Central News Agency, the north’s state news agency, reported, quoting

Kim suspected of peddling influence to help savings bankA former chief of Korea’s financial regulator appeared before prosecutors Thursday to face questioning over allegations of influence peddling in a widening investigation into corruption at mutual savings banks. Kim Jong-chang, who was until March governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, is suspected of exerting his influence to help Bus

Prosecutors suspect lax or corrupt auditing worsened savings banks problemsProsecutors investigating corruption at mutual savings bank are set to scrutinize accounting firms which they say stood by while the lenders engaged in massive illegal lending and cooked books to conceal their true financial status. Investigators on Wednesday raided an office of Deloitte Anjin LLC in Gwangju, South Jeolla P

The parliamentary move to scrap the state prosecution’s elite investigation unit faces a murky outlook after the presidential office sided with prosecutors Monday to oppose plans to scrap it. The presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae threw its weight behind Prosecutor General Kim Joon-gyu who argued that removing of the Central Investigation Department at the Supreme Public Prosecutors’ Office woul

Presidential office urges GNP to consider unit repeal with cautionProsecutors will continue with corruption investigations at mutual savings banks to the end, despite the move by politicians to scrap the state prosecution’s central investigation unit, Prosecutor General Kim Joon-gyu said Monday. “If a ship sails to a wrong destination, the captain should take the responsibility. There is no reason

Forensic agency boasts world-class science to catch the bad guys“Mondays are busy here. A lot of dead bodies from the weekend,” said Chung Hee-sun with a friendly smile, as we sat down for an interview in her office in western Seoul. Behind her, the motto “Science sheds light on the truth” hung on the wall. “My staff told me that we had a famous singer in for an autopsy over the weekend,” she cont