The state human rights watchdog chief on Thursday sent a letter to some 1,500 North Korean defectors, urging them to report cases of human rights abuse they had suffered or witnessed in the communist state, officials said Thursday.In the letter, Hyun Byung-chul of the National Human Rights Commission also expressed regret over the lack of “systematic” measures to express their agony and frustratio

From as early as next year, people whose spouses give birth will be able to use paid-paternity leave for up to five days.Those who need to look after their sick family members will be also guaranteed 90 days of non-paid leave, the Ministry of Employment and Labor said Thursday.The measure is part of the revision of the Act of Gender Equality Employment and Support, which the ministry seeks to subm

BEIJING (AP) ― Chinese police are holding a South Korean Bible instructor and his wife following a raid on an underground Protestant church, an activist group said Wednesday, as the government pressures Christians worshipping outside the Communist-controlled church.The instructor, whose Chinese name was given as Jin Yongzhe, was detained Tuesday along with dozens of other Christians during a polic

Police are interrogating a high-ranking official of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission for sexually assaulting one of his female staff workers earlier this month.The man was immediately sacked.According to police in Songpa, southern Seoul, 55-year-old Park raped his subordinate at a motel in Gangdong District around 9:40 p.m., after they shared drinks and the woman went drunk. It was

The full enforcement of the time-off system, which is a salary cap for full-time unionists, might hit a wall as Hyundai Motor said Wednesday that it did not pay the salaries of any of its 233 full-time unionists last month.The company is to provide pay to 90 of them. The conflict is also eminent in other units of the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which still defy the system that w

South Korea plans to considerably decelerate the growth in greenhouse gases emitted by the country’s farming sector as part of its broader efforts to help stem global warming, the government said Thursday.The plan also calls for increasing the country’s overall greenhouse gas absorption capabilities by around 6 percent over the next decade, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisherie

Korean Air, the country’s No. 1 air carrier, said Thursday that it will recruit an additional 500 flight attendants this month.The recruitment, which is on the largest scale ever, comes shortly after the company hired a total of 500 employees in February and March, company officials said.The air carrier also said that it will hire another group of 500 in the latter half of this year, which means 1

Recent research has found that more than three in 10 wireless gadget users own an electronic device that runs on Google’s Android mobile operating system, putting strong emphasis on its openness.According to a market research firm Strategy Analytics’ data, the Android OS garnered a 35.9 percent share in the global OS market, followed by Nokia’s Symbian and Apple’s iOS with 26.3 percent and 18.1 pe

Korea’s money supply grew at the weakest pace in nearly seven years in March as payments of corporate tax drained money circulation, the central bank said Thursday. The country’s M2, a narrow measure of its money supply, reached 1,677.5 trillion won ($1.55 billion) in March, marking a 4.3 percent increase from the figure posted a year earlier, according to the Bank of Korea. The March reading was