A top executive of South Korea’s biggest amusement park operator, Samsung Everland, has held talks with China’s Foreign Ministry officials, during which they discussed preparations to send giant pandas to Seoul, according to the Chinese ministry on Saturday.Chinese President Xi Jinping made a state visit to South Korea in July last year. Since then, the two nations have designated Samsung Everland, which operates South Korea’s largest amusement park in south of Seoul, as a host for the bears. Se

A new submarine for the South Korean Navy will be named after a revered independence fighter, military officials said Sunday.The Navy announced that its sixth Type 214, 1,800-ton attack submarine will be named after Yu Gwan-sun (1902-1920), a female student activist who played a major part in the 1919 civil uprising against Japan’s colonial regime.“After holding policy meetings over the name of the submarine, we’ve christened it ‘Yu Gwan-sun,’” the Navy said in a statement.“This will be the firs

The Constitutional Court on Thursday struck down South Korea’s controversial adultery law, ending a decadeslong debate.In a 7-2 decision, the court ruled that the anticheating law breaches the individual’s sexual rights and privacy, and thereby violates the Constitution. Six votes were needed to overturn the law.Under the law, adultery was a crime punishable by up to two years behind bars. Any third person involved in a love affair could also face criminal charges. The regulation was only applic

Human-to-human transmission of a deadly tick virus has been reported for the first time in South Korea, health authorities said Wednesday, raising concerns over the potential spread of the disease. Four medical staff in Seoul were confirmed to have been infected with the virus in September last year by a 68-year-old woman who was suffering from severe fever due to thrombocytopenia syndrome, or SFTS, a fatal disease contracted through tick bites. Hospital sources suspect that the virus was transm

Korea’s top court on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s ruling that filming sex with a consenting teenager is not a crime.The Supreme Court acquitted a 27-year-old man surnamed Kim who was accused of producing and distributing pornographic material after he video-recorded himself having sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend with her consent in January 2012. He later deleted the video upon the teenager’s request, law officials said. Under the youth protection law, producing pornographic material of chi

Public health concerns rose Monday as yellow dust from China prompted the government to issue alerts for the second day running. This year’s first yellow dust warnings swept the capital and a dozen surrounding areas after the advisories were issued and elevated Sunday, the Korea Meteorological Administration said. It was the capital’s fifth yellow dust warning since 2002. A man with a protective mask walks along the Hangang River, where visibility remained low due to high levels of yellow dust i

People who love spicy food are more vulnerable to stress, a study showed Tuesday, indicating that one’s choice of food is related to one’s stress level. According to a study led by psychiatry professor Kim Sung-gon of Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, a group of spicy food lovers showed higher cortisol level in a stress test than those who liked milder food. Cortisol is a steroid hormone that is released in response to stress or low levels of blood glucose. The two groups were asked to

The annual migration of South Koreans for the Lunar New Year began Tuesday with millions heading to their hometowns ahead of the traditional holiday.Lunar New Year’s Day, which falls on Thursday this year, is one of the largest holidays in South Korea with this year’s holiday running from Wednesday to Sunday.Lunar New Year, or “seollal,” provides a rare opportunity for South Koreans to go home and spend quality time with family and friends. Families typically eat rice cake soup to mark adding a

A women’s college in Seoul accused a member of its teaching staff of sexually abusing a student, sources said Monday, amid rising concerns over a series of similar cases reported in other schools. Last month, Duksung Women’s University filed a police complaint against a professor, whose personal information has been withheld, for molesting a student. The professor is alleged to have forcibly kissed the student after drinking together early last year. The school’s unusually proactive response to

A gas leak in a boiler room at a hotel in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, killed one and injured six Saturday, officials said. A 45-year-old hotel employee surnamed Park died from carbon dioxide poisoning while working in the underground boiler room at Colon Hotel, the police said. Six others were hospitalized for minor injuries, they added. “The fire alarms suddenly rang while (they were) replacing the insulators, and then there was a leak of carbon dioxide,” the wounded workers testified

Quarantine officials confirmed a fresh case of foot-and-mouth disease in the country’s central region on Tuesday, adding to fears of the viral disease spreading across the country.Dozens of pigs at a farm in Danyang, North Chungcheong, tested positive for the viral illness, a day after they showed symptoms, officials said. Quarantine authorities restricted access to the farm and enhanced the disinfection measures. Some 4,600 pigs were being raised on the farm, according to officials at the local

Seoul needs wider flexibility in reopening inter-Korean dialogue, a political scientist said, urging the Park Geun-hye administration to actively engage in “preventive diplomacy” with Pyongyang to keep cross-border tensions from escalating.Moon Chung-in, a political science professor at Yonsei University, stressed that the nation should be proactive in tackling North Korean issues, noting that after all, the South would have to bear the full brunt of any conflict on the peninsula. Moon Chung-in

A Seoul appellate court on Monday sentenced a former national intelligence chief to three years in prison for violating state intelligence and election laws, going back on a previous ruling that acquitted him of election meddling. The Seoul High Court ruled that Won Sei-hoon, former director of the National Intelligence Service, interfered in the 2012 presidential election by ordering staff to make political postings online to sway public opinion. “The agency’s cyberactivity interfered in public

President Park Geun-hye will carry out a “small-scale” Cabinet reshuffle after her prime minister designate gets parliamentary approval, sticking to her plan despite surging demand for a change in her leadership and her unilateral personnel choices.“(The president) is expected to conduct a Cabinet reshuffle with the recommendation of the new prime minister after the parliamentary approval of nominee Lee Wan-koo is completed,” presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook told reporters on Sunday.“What I

Concerns over the bird flu spreading escalated Friday as avian influenza was detected in Seoul for the first time.A highly pathogenic H5N8 strain of avian influenza was confirmed from the feces of migratory birds at Jungnangcheon Stream in the western part of the capital, officials said. The stream is a habitat for more than 4,200 wild birds including mallard ducks. About 600 birds also reside in a national park located near the stream, raising concerns that the virus may further spread.The Seou

The Supreme Court said Sunday it would allow children under 19 who suffered from domestic violence or child have abuse to sue their parents over parental rights as part of efforts to secure their rights and welfare conditions. Abused minors can now directly request a court to suspend or strip off the parental rights of their parents, officials said. They were previously only allowed to file lawsuits through legal representatives. Otherwise, they had to wait until their legal age of 19. This is p

An annual average of at least 16 people died of anesthesia-related accidents in Korea in recent years, a report showed Thursday, raising concerns over the safety of patients undergoing surgery.According to Samsung Medical Center’s report, 82 out of 105 patients who suffered anesthesia-related accidents died between July 2009 and June 2014. The others suffered permanent physical disorders. The report was written by the center’s research team, led by anesthesiology professor Kim Duk-kyung.“This on

All foreign students in Korea will be required to subscribe to the national health insurance program as part of the state’s efforts to better secure their living conditions during their stay, welfare officials said Wednesday. All foreign nationals with proof of staying in Korea for more than three months have been allowed to join the public health care system but the subscription has not been compulsory.In order to boost the health insurance subscription, the Health and Welfare Ministry said it

One out of 3 three tourists visiting the capital of South Korea is Chinese, with the proportion gradually increasing over the years, a public think tank reported Tuesday.According the Seoul Institute, Chinese nationals accounted for about 36 percent of all tourists to the capital in 2013, followed by Japanese with 24.2 percent. This is the first time that the number of Chinese visitors surpassed that of Japanese. Travelers from the U.S. and Taiwan took the third and fourth spots with 6.5 percent

South Korea called on North Korea Monday to discontinue misusing a recent confession by a famous North Korean defector and key witness to a U.N. probe that parts of his well-known story on the reclusive nation’s prison camps are inaccurate.Shin Dong-hyuk admitted last month that some of his testimony of torture and other tragic experiences at the North’s political prison camps, revealed in the book “Escape from Camp 14,” is incorrect. He said he spent most of his time in the North at a different