South Korea and the United States formally signed a defense cost-sharing agreement Monday, as Seoul seeks to speed up its domestic ratification procedure to ensure the stable stationing of American troops here ahead of the US elections. The signing came a month after the allies reached a new five-year deal on determining Seoul's share of its cost for the upkeep of the 28,500-strong US Forces Korea. Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul and US Ambassador to South Korea Philip Goldberg signed the deal

GWANGJU -- Prosecutors on Monday demanded prison terms of up to 10 years for company officials accused of involvement in the deadly collapse of an apartment building in Gwangju in 2022. The collapse of the 39-story apartment building under construction left six workers dead and one injured in January 2022. An investigation found that deck plates and concrete supports affecting the building's bearing capacity had been installed without a structural review. During the final hearing at Gwang

Zambia celebrated its 60th Independence Day in Seoul on Oct. 23. The day commemorates a historic occasion when the country gained independence from British colonial rule on Oct. 24, 1964, and is remembered as the moment when Zambia's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, raised the new Zambian flag and declared the nation’s sovereignty. Delivering remarks at the event, Zambian Ambassador to Korea Andrew Bwezani Banda highlighted the immense potential for increased trade and investment betw

Boy band TXT celebrated the grand finale of its third world tour with three days of concerts in Seoul and returned with a new album. The quintet held the final performance of “Act: Promise,” the encore concert of its third world tour, which began in May, at KSPO Dome in Seoul on Sunday. Including the encore concerts, TXT completed a total of 31 performances across 17 cities, including major venues like Tokyo Dome, Kyocera Dome Osaka, Vantelin Dome Nagoya in Japan, and Madison Square

Irene of Red Velvet will bring out her first solo album “Like A Flower” on Nov. 26, said label SM Entertainment Monday. Together with the title track, the EP comprises eight tracks based on the pop genre. It will be her first solo endeavor since debuting as the leader of Red Velvet 10 years ago. The group celebrated its decadelong music career with EP “Cosmic” and a fan concert tour in Asia. The EP topped iTunes' Top Albums chart in 50 regions and debuted on Billboar

Local festivals in Korea on the theme of bunsik, Korean light meals and snacks, are enjoying unprecedented success, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors in recent weeks. Although the festivals were held in cities 2-3 hours by car from the Seoul metropolitan area, where half of the Korean population lives, some cities saw visitor numbers similar to their whole populations as the events went viral online. The 1st Gimcheon Gimbap Festival, held at Samyeongdaesa Park in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsa

SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung unveiled the company’s plan to start mass production of the industry's most up-to-date high-bandwidth memory chips early next year. “We anticipated that the market for the 16-layer product will begin to open (the sixth-generation) HBM4,” he said in a keynote speech at SK AI Summit 2024 in Seoul on Monday. "We are developing the new product to ensure technical stability.” The 16-layer, 48-gigabyte, fifth-generation HBM3E chip boasts the

A man in his 20s was booked without detention for allegedly abandoning hundreds of pet reptiles, resulting in many of them starving to death, according to police on Monday. Heungdeok Police Station in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province said it is investigating the man on suspicion of breaking the Animal Protection Act. The police said they received a report on October 11 from the landlord of an apartment in the city’s Bokdae-dong neighborhood. The landlord said he had been unable to cont

In director Jo Sun-ho’s coming-of-age romance flick “Hear Me: Our Summer,” a majority of the three protagonists’ scenes rely less on speech and more on sign language, body language and written text. For Roh Yoon-seo, being part of the project was an experience that has improved not only her sign language skills but also expanded her acting spectrum. “At first, there was the pressure to learn a new language, but I started out by learning lines from the scenario in

A teacher who was accused on charges of child abuse for scolding and pulling a student’s arm has been ruled not guilty, the court announced Monday. South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling that had imposed a fine of 1 million won ($730) on the teacher, identified only by the surname Choi, for child abuse charges and sent the case back to the Uijeongbu District Court for review. The incident occurred on March 14, 2019, when the teacher allegedly shouted at a