GANGNEUNG -- Gangneung, one of South Korea's most popular destinations for summer vacationers, mulls over the nighttime closure of beaches and other unprecedented quarantine measures against COVID-19, officials said Monday, following an earlier decision to lift its social distancing rules to the toughest restrictions of Level 4. Gangneung, an east coast city 240 kilometers from Seoul, has said that Level 4, the highest in the nation's four-tier social distancing system, will be enforced for sev

South Korea has continued to report a rising number of the highly transmissible delta variant cases, adding 719 of such cases over the past week, health authorities said Monday. The number of new delta cases accounted for 71.8 percent of 1,001 new cases of four major contagious variants of the new coronavirus reported over the cited period, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The number of new delta variants came to only 17 during the third week of June but sur

Police said Monday they have booked on suspicion of graft the former special counsel responsible for investigating a corruption scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye. Park Young-soo, who investigated the scandal surrounding the now-imprisoned former president for over four years, resigned earlier this month following allegations that he accepted a Porsche rental car and seafood from a man who claimed to be a fisheries businessman last December. An official with the Seoul Metropolita

A heat wave warning was issued for Seoul and many other parts of the country Monday, the state weather agency said, forecasting daytime highs of up to 36 C for the rest of the week. The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said it has issued the heat wave warning for all of Seoul and many areas in the central provinces of Gyeonggi, Gangwon and Chungcheong, as well as the southwestern provinces of Jeolla, as of 10 a.m. Such a warning is issued when sensible temperatures are expected to exc

Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl maintained his lead among prospective contenders for next year's presidential race, while Lee Nak-yon, a former chairman of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), gained ground against his bigger rivals, according to a poll released Monday. According to the poll of 1,013 voters nationwide conducted by the Korea Society Opinion Institute (KSOI) on Friday-Saturday, Yoon, the leading candidate from the opposition bloc, managed to stay on top with 30.3 percent su

The South Korean baseball club KT Wiz announced Monday one of their coaches tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The coach began exhibiting symptoms on Friday and didn't attend the club's practices on Saturday and Sunday. The coach was tested Sunday and got his positive result back Monday, the Wiz added. The club said it immediately informed the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) of the result. All KT players and front office staff will be tested and remain isolated until further notice.

South Koreans' transactions of foreign stocks reached a new high in the first half of the year on an overseas investment boom, data showed Monday. Local investors' trading of overseas shares was valued at $207.74 billion in the January-June period, up 63 percent from six months earlier, according to the data from the Korea Securities Depository (KSD). It also represents the largest half-year amount since data tracking began in 2011 and hovers above the $198.32 billion for the entirety of 2020.

Police said Monday they have booked 23 members of a major umbrella labor group for holding a massive rally in downtown Seoul in defiance of antivirus rules, which has sparked concerns over further infections amid rising new cases. The Seoul Metropolitan Police said a special investigation team has launched a probe into 25 members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) over their role in holding the rally on July 3 and booked 23 of them for allegedly violating quarantine regulations.

South Korea's low-cost carriers are planning to raise funds through a capital increase to ride out the prolonged coronavirus pandemic and put them in a better financial position, industry sources said Monday. Budget carriers have suffered the most since early last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and have been struggling to raise their capital bases as business performance does not show signs of improvement in the face of the prolonged pandemic. Jeju Air Co., the country's biggest budget carr

All 13 members of K-pop boy band Seventeen have agreed to renew contracts with their agency before expiry, the group's agency said Monday. "While the existing contract is yet to expire, all 13 members of Seventeen and the company held in-depth discussions on the group's future plans and reached a consensus to renew the contract in advance," Pledis Entertainment said in a statement. Seventeen was quoted as saying that its 13 members all agreed to "stay together (based on) faith f

A fingerless South Korean mountaineer has climbed all of the world's 14 highest mountains in the Himalayas, a local alpine club said Monday, becoming the world's first person with a disability to accomplish such a feat. Kim Hong-bin reached the summit of the 8,047-meter-high Broad Peak, located in Pakistan's Karakoram Range, at 4:58 p.m. Sunday (local time), conquering all of the world's tallest Himalayan peaks, according to the Gwangju Alpine Federation in the southwestern city. With the feat

Marvel Studios' latest movie, "Black Widow," sat atop South Korea's weekend box office for the second consecutive week, data showed Monday. The superhero blockbuster attracted over 445,000 people over the Friday-Sunday period, bringing its combined total to nearly 2.14 million in less than two weeks since its release on July 7, according to data from the Korean Film Council. It became the fourth title released in 2021 to surpass the 2 million threshold, following the action film &quo

The military on Monday began administering the second doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine to troops aged 30 and over, the defense ministry said. About 116,900 troops, or 88 percent of the age group, who have received their first shots are subject to the inoculation, according to the ministry. The military provided AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine for their first shots in April and May but the second doses will be Pfizer's after health authorities decided earlier this month to administer AstraZ

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) and the government on Monday agreed to sharply expand the scale of relief funds for struggling small business owners in the wake of the recent upsurge in COVID-19 infections. The consensus was reached during a high-level consultative meeting between the two sides earlier in the morning, Rep. Koh Yong-jin, a DP spokesman, said in a briefing. "(The two sides) agreed to provide ample support to small merchants by increasing the size of assistance to the maxim

Samsung Heavy Industries Co. said Monday that it has obtained approval in principle (AIP) for its independently developed offshore floater for wind power turbines from DNV, a Norwegian ship quality assurance and risk management company. Approval in principle (AIP) for the floater means a certification agency has reviewed its basic design and confirmed that it meets the agency's technical requirements and standards for safety. The 9.5-megawatt floater will help reduce the construction period of

President Moon Jae-in and the ruling Democratic Party (DP) both saw their approval ratings climb for the second straight week, according to a new poll released Monday. In the survey conducted by Realmeter on 2,519 people over the age of 18 from July 12-16, Moon's job approval rating was recorded at 45.5 percent, up 4.4 percentage points from the previous week. The result marked Moon's highest performance in public polls since the 45.6 percent figure in the third week of October last year, acco

Seven additional people from South Korean football club Seongnam FC have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, bringing the total caseload on the team to 22. Seongnam announced Monday that five players and two staffers have been diagnosed with COVID-19. After the first case from the K League 1 club was reported on July 11, the rest of the team received tests. The team now has 14 players and eight staffers on the COVID-19 list. Those who initially tested negative have since exhibited sympt

The Ministry of Justice on Monday gave advance notice of a revision to the civil law that would grant animals legal status as individuals with lives that deserve to be protected. The ministry said it has added the new clause, "animals are not objects," to article 82 of the Civil Code. Under the existing law, animals are identified as "an object that takes up space" and are not separated from inanimate things, so animal abusers have been punished only for damaging property i

LG Electronics Inc. said Monday its new compact sound bar will be available in the market as the South Korean tech giant eyes to beef up its presence in the home audio market. LG Eclair will be launched in North America later this month and will hit the shelves in major European and Asian countries. In South Korea, the premium sound bar comes with a price tag of 899,000 won ($790). The latest product, which was honored at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, is about one-third the size of a

North Korea's official newspaper on Monday called for continued efforts to realize a self-reliant economy even if the situation improves, saying the country would end up subservient to others unless it is able to stand on its own. North Korea's emphasis on "self-reliance" appears intended to tighten internal discipline amid bleak economic conditions caused by prolonged global sanctions and border controls to ward off a coronavirus outbreak. "Even if the room for exchanges and co