Christmas is just around the corner, but the festive season is more low-key than many hoped for due to rising COVID-19 concerns around the world. To help soothe the COVID-19 blues, American singer-songwriter Norah Jones has released an unexpected gift -- a full-length Christmas album titled “I Dream of Christmas”. “This album did come out of the very long first year of the pandemic. I needed something to look forward to and a way to be creative that had a little joy baked into

Polestar, the former Volvo company that spun off to become its own brand, announced its launch in South Korea on Tuesday. Aiming to become the game changer of the local EV market that is seeing a growing demand for the green vehicles, the EV company will introduce its first model Polestar 2 on Jan. 18. Polestar 2 is a five-door fastback equipped with a 78 kWh battery and two electric motors that can produce 408 horsepower. “We will be introducing Polestar 2 to our Korean customers at

NIH, International Vaccine Institute cooperate in testing vaccine efficacy in 3rd trial

Families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War in South Korea have produced more than 24,000 video messages for their long-lost relatives in the North, but almost all of them have yet to be delivered, Seoul's unification ministry said Tuesday. Of the 24,077 video letters produced since 2005, including 1,004 created this year, only 20 of them were sent to North Korea in 2008 following inter-Korean Red Cross talks the previous year, according to the ministry. South Korea has been pushing to hold r

South Korea's chief financial regulator said Tuesday that his agency will take "necessary" action if the spread between interest rates on loans and deposits widens beyond "reasonable" levels. Jeong Eun-bo, chief of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), made the remarks during an online press conference amid criticism that banks and other financial firms are quicker to increase their loan rates than raise rates on deposits. The rate hikes are in line with the central bank

Samsung Electronics Co. began a two-day companywide global strategy meeting, industry sources said Tuesday, the first since it appointed new CEOs in its first major reshuffle in three years and streamlined its structure after 10 years earlier this month. The biannual meeting used to take place in-person with attendance of hundreds of senior executives from at-home and abroad to discuss the company's global strategy and other core business issues. But it has moved online since last year amid the

LG Electronics announced Tuesday it plans to release its wireless StanbyME televisions in the Asian market starting this month and heightened its production capacity by threefold to meet demand overseas. Hong Kong will be the first Asian market for LG to set its sights on, according to the electronics arm of South Korea’s fourth-largest conglomerate. Sales of the movable 27-inch TVs, powered by built-in batteries that last for three hours on a single charge, will begin within December

Opposition parties urge Moon to apologize for continued scandals of his aides

More than half of South Koreans aged between 40 and 64 held debt last year as more people took out loans to buy homes amid skyrocketing housing prices, data showed Tuesday. The data by Statistics Korea showed that 56.5 percent of people in the age group borrowed money from banks or other financial institutes last year, up 0.2 percentage point from the previous year. The amount of their median debt reached 52 million won ($43,600) last year, up 7.1 percent from a year earlier. Median debt is a

Protracted global supply disruptions could send expected inflation higher and add larger-than-expected upward pressure on inflation in South Korea, a central bank report said Tuesday. The report by the Bank of Korea also said that the global "carbon neutral" initiative could rather exert pressure on inflation by causing imbalances in the supply of and demand for materials needed to produce clean energy. "The global supply bottlenecks have been impacting upward inflationary pres

NCT 127 successfully ends their three-day concert in Seoul, anticipates world tour in 2022

The number of South Korean workers who took time off to take care of their children rose 3.7 percent in 2020 from a year earlier amid more government support for parental leave, government data showed Tuesday. A total of 169,345 workers took parental leave to take care of their children last year, up 6,089 from the previous year, according to the preliminary data from Statistics Korea. Last year's figure was approximately 2.3 times the number 10 years earlier. Women accounted for 77.3 percent

The Sunfull Foundation has held a ceremony to present an award in collaboration with the National Assembly to 61 lawmakers who make positive remarks, the organization said Thursday. The Sunfull Foundation is a non-governmental organization founded by English educator Min Byung-chul in 2007 to counter cyberbullying, hate speech, and human rights violations on the internet. The recipients were chosen by 300 high school and college students, the organization said. The students selected 30

GREAT VICTORY DAY – Bangladesh Ambassador Md. Delwar Hossain hoists Bangladeshi flag and delivers welcome remarks at the Bangladesh Embassy in Seoul on Thursday, paying a rich tribute to Bangladesh’s first president, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is known as the “father of the nation and the valiant freedom fighters and violated women, whose supreme sacrifices ushered in the independence through a nine-month historic war of independence.“ (Embassy of Bangladesh i