A 25-year-old man currently serving a prison term for patricide will be released next Tuesday on parole, a Daegu-based civic group said Thursday. In a highly publicized case in 2021, the man was convicted after he stopped providing food and medication for his terminally ill father due to financial difficulties. The victim had been bedridden since suffering a brain hemorrhage in September 2020, not being able to eat or relieve himself on his own. But his son, who had been on his mandatory mili

A Seoul court recently sentenced a former hagwon teacher to a three-year jail term for selling TOEIC test answers to multiple test-takers for money. The Seoul Eastern District Court found the defendant surnamed Hong guilty of obstruction of business as stipulated in Article 314 of the Criminal Act. In addition to the jail term, the court also ordered the seizure of 76.6 million won ($55,000) in assets. Investigators found that the 27-year-old defendant had committed the crimes to fund internet

Roughly 4 out of 10 students who were victims of school violence said they had felt the urge to either inflict injury on oneself or commit suicide, a survey by an NGO showed Wednesday. The Blue Tree Foundation, a group dedicated to preventing school violence and help victims, said in a press conference that 3.5 percent of the respondents in their recent survey said they had been subject to violence at school, of which 39.9 percent said they felt the urge to hurt or kill themselves. The foundat

An analysis of 81 conglomerates categorized as "middle market enterprises" showed Wednesday that the second generation of owner families owns a total of 33.5 percent of company shares. Corporate tracker CEO Score analyzed the shareholding structure of companies with 2 trillion won ($1.44 billion) or more in assets, and found that the combined value of shares held by owner families' second generations came to 13.39 trillion won as of July 15. The second generation in the report r

A local police station recently shut down an open message board on its website after a barrage of complaints concerning allegations of an officer's coercive investigation into a wrongly accused man. As of Wednesday, the page that had previously functioned as a general forum accessible to anyone has disappeared from the website of the Hwaseong Dongtan Police Station that serves the city of Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. Users are referred to a government-run website for placing police complain

A rape case that could have remained unresolved due to a lack of evidence has instead led to the indictment of the suspect, after investigators found that the sexual attack had been reflected in the lid of a washing machine. The Supreme Prosecutors' Office recently commended five cases for their outstanding use of forensic investigation in the second quarter of this year. Among the five were a Gangneung prosecutor's indictment of a rape suspect accused of six sexual attacks on his fo

Local education authorities said Tuesday that a group of students at an elementary school in North Gyeongsang Province has been refusing classes for days in support of their teacher who has been feuding with a parent. The 23 students in the provincial city of Chilgok refused to attend class from July 16 to the commencement of summer break on July 19, according to the Gyeongbuk Office of Education. The parents of the students said they will not attend second-semester classes until the children&

Same-sex couples in South Korea are expressing hope for the improvement of LGBTQ+ rights here, on the coattails of last week's Supreme Court ruling that recognized the legal rights of a same-sex couple for the first time ever. In the landmark ruling, the country's top court ruled that the plaintiff, So Sung-wook, should be eligible for spousal coverage under the National Health Insurance Service subscription of his male partner, Kim Yong-min. The court stated in its ruling that same-se

YouTuber Darcie on Tuesday apologized for her actions on what she had initially described as "housing fraud incident," which many people perceived as her trying to shift her own losses from a scam onto another victim. "I'm ashamed to admit that I failed to recognize the severity of the housing fraud issue, and made the mistake of referring to my personal experience as one. I apologize for the inaccurate depiction of my experience," she said in an apology posted via her

The bodies of two men were found at a beach in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province, the Boryeong Coast Guard said Tuesday. The two men, both identified to be 49-year-old residents of Boryeong, were found dead at around 10:57 p.m. Monday at Doksan Beach in the small coastal city. Officials suspect that they died due to an accident that occurred while they were doing "haerujil," or traditional barehanded fishing. Haerujil refers to shining a light at nighttime and catching the fish that

Government data showed Monday that the number of visitors at major theme parks in South Korea has rebounded, approaching pre-COVID-19 figures. The annual headcount for those who visited Everland, the largest theme park and zoo here, marked 5.88 million in 2023. In the same year, 5.19 million people visited Lotte World and 1.33 million went to Seoul Land, according to the Tourism Knowledge and Information System operated by the state-run Korea Culture and Tourism Institute. Both Everland in Yon

An online community dealing with information about administrative actions related to drunk driving has sparked debate, with many decrying the forum members for sharing know-how to obtain leniency after being caught in the crime. The webpage on Naver, South Korea's largest search engine, has well over 80,000 members as of Monday. People in the group are sharing personal experiences related to drunk driving, hit-and-run incidents and other violations of the Road Traffic Act. Categories of t

Popular South Korean actor Jung Woo-sung told a local media outlet that he recently resigned as a goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency due to a barrage of politically charged attacks against him. Speaking with local Hankyoreh newspaper, the 51-year-old said he had been accused of using the post for political reasons. He was named UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador for South Korea in 2015. "There had been unrelenting political attacks against both the organization and myself, implying that

An overwhelming majority of the child victims in sex crimes perpetrated by a family member were aged 13 or younger when they were first victimized, a parliamentary report showed Sunday. The National Assembly Research Service compiled a report based on its survey of the four juvenile protective facilities for the victims of sex crimes by family members, which were established in 2010. Of the 316 children and teens currently under protection, 115 -- or 36.4 percent -- were first subject to the c

The primary victim in an infamous 2004 gang rape case by high school boys discussed the case in a rare interview with a local media outlet that aired Saturday, explaining to the public the pains she had to endure due to the horrid incident and secondary damages that followed. The victim, referred to as Kim, not her real name, in a recent episode of "Unanswered Questions" on SBS said she had been living in fear of retribution from the 44 alleged perpetrators of the incident in Miryang

The number of South Koreans without a job or seeking a job marked an all-time high in the first half of this year, government data showed Sunday. According to Statistics Korea, there were 4.058 million people in the country with a college degree who were considered an "economically inactive population," which refers to those aged 15 or over who are unable to or unwilling to work. This includes students, homemakers, those preparing for state exams for government official posts and peo

The parent of an elementary school student recently filed a child abuse claim against her child's former teacher, a Seoul teachers' union said Thursday, after sending a threatening letter to the teacher regarding the teacher's daughter. The parent in question filed the complaint over alleged child abuse Wednesday, two days after being questioned by police for the threat letter sent last year, according to the Seoul branch of the Korean Federation of Teachers Unions. She claimed

A young woman under the delusion that the world and her father were fake was sentenced to 15 years in prison for murdering her father, a local court said Thursday. Ulsan District Court found the defendant in her 20s guilty of killing an ascendant, for which the Criminal Act stipulates a harsher punishment than for murder. She was also ordered to wear an electronic tracking anklet for 10 years after release. The court pointed out that killing one's parent is an extreme act against humanity

Recent government data showed Thursday that the number of involuntarily unemployed people in South Korea reached 1.24 million in June, marking a 16.9 percent increase from the same month last year. According to a report by Rep. Hwang Jung-a of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, the figure for June actually marked a substantial decrease compared to 1.89 million in January, and a slight increase from 1.23 million in May. But this year's monthly figures have risen considerably

A 28-year-old firefighter is being hailed a hero after a video of him saving a woman who was hanging from the balcony of a high-rise building went viral. Firefighter Shin Gang-min saved a woman in her 30s who was hanging from the railing of a 13th-floor apartment unit in Wansan-gu, Jeonju, North Jeolla Province on Tuesday. The woman had climbed over in an attempt to take her own life, which the Jeonbuk Fire Headquarters learned of after receiving a report at around 5:46 p.m. After the police s