South Korea's new coronavirus cases fell below 5,000 for the first time in three days Monday as the country reimposed toughened social distancing rules amid concerns over the spread of the omicron variant. The country added 4,325 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total caseload to 477,358, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). Daily infections soared to a record high of 5,352 cases on Saturday before falling to 5,127 on Sunday. On Monday, the government began

　Amid liquidity-driven booms in the real estate and stock markets during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people with assets of more than 1 billion won ($838,000) increased by over 10 percent last year from a year earlier, a report showed.  　The number of Koreans with financial assets worth over 1 billion won stood at 390,000 last year, taking up 0.76 percent of the total population, according to the Korea Wealth Report 2021 released by KB Financial Group Research Institute. 　The lat

As a former stolen base king himself, new Kia Tigers manager Kim Jong-kook would like to see more thieveries from his players going forward. Kim, having been a coach with the Tigers for a decade before being named skipper on Sunday, knows as well as anyone that the Tigers aren't going to slug their way to prominence. But it could be a different story when it comes to stealing bags, Kim said. "Objectively speaking, we're not much of a power-hitting club, but we can be competitive with our

South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to address sticky issues in customs procedures for better implementation of their free trade agreement (FTA), the finance ministry said Monday. Under the agreement, South Korean firms will be able to receive tariff benefits if they submit a copy of certificates of origin when they export goods to the 10 member states of ASEAN, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Korean exporters have had difficulties a

South Korean stocks opened steeply lower Monday, tracking losses on Wall Street that stemmed from worries about the omicron variant of the coronavirus. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (Kospi) fell 30.26 points, or 1.02 percent, to 2,938.07 points in the first 15 minutes of trading. Stocks came off to a weak start, led by foreign and institutional sell-offs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 0.17 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite declined 1.92 percent amid r

South Korean small merchants' business confidence worsened for December in the wake of a surge in coronavirus infections, a poll showed Monday. The Small Enterprise and Market Service said its business survey index (BSI) for small merchants came to 85.4 for this month, down 2.2 points from the previous month. It marks the first time in four months that the small merchants' BSI has gone down from the previous month. A reading below 100 means pessimists outnumber optimists. The survey of 2,400

South Korean insurance companies saw their lending grow at a slower pace in the third quarter from three months earlier due to tougher rules on household loans, data showed Monday. Insurers' outstanding loans totaled 262.4 trillion won ($222 billion) as of the end of September, up 2.1 trillion won from the prior quarter, according to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS). Yet the figure was down from the on-quarter increase of 5.2 trillion won in the previous quarter. From a ye

Having recently ended a scoring drought, Son Heung-min has now found the back of the net in the second straight match for Tottenham Hotspur. The South Korean forward had a goal and an assist in Tottenham's 3-0 win over Norwich City at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Sunday (local time). For the season, Son has six goals in 13 Premier League matches and seven goals in 19 games across all competitions. He has scored once in the UEFA Europa Conference League. Son had also scored against B

South Korean tour star Choi Hye-jin has made the initial cut at the LPGA Tour's qualifying tournament in Alabama. Choi, a three-time Korea LPGA (KLPGA) Tour Player of the Year, was one of five South Koreans to finish inside the top 70 and ties after the first phase of the LPGA Q-Series concluded in Mobile, Alabama, on Sunday (local time). After the first 72 holes, Choi is in second place at 17-under 269, two strokes back of Pauline Roussin-Bouchard of France. Another KLPGA player, An Narin, i

South Korea will focus on containing the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus till the end of this year as the country started to enforce tightened social distancing measures amid rising daily infections, Prime Minster Kim Boo-kyum said Monday. "The threat of the omicron variant is becoming apparent," Kim said during a COVID-19 response meeting in Seoul. "Although we do not have a clear grasp of the omicron variant, what looks certain is that it is highly contagious."

Three members of the K-pop superband BTS returned home Monday from Los Angeles where it secured a top music honor and had four sold-out live concerts. Jimin, Jin and Jungkook arrived amid a flurry of camera flashes from their fans and journalists at Incheon International Airport at about 5 a.m. and returned home after undergoing a quarantine procedure. BTS took home the artist of the year, considered the top honor, at this year's American Music Awards, one of the three major music awards in

This long, strange season of the pandemic has made so many things impossible that it’s easy to forget the many things it’s made newly possible. For me, one of its unexpected gifts has been a round-the-clock immersion -- and instruction -- in the vast gap between the two continents I call home and the radical differences that still cut up our seemingly connected global neighborhood. Ten times during the age of COVID-19 I’ve flown across the Pacific between my longtime apartmen

Coming back from a trip to Europe suggested to me that the US-China rivalry was not headline news within Europe. Europe appeared more concerned with the urgent job of economic recovery amidst the omicron threat that is leading to more lockdowns. Protests in Rotterdam and elsewhere showed that the public, especially the young, are rebelling against further restrictions to their rights to socialize. Back in Asia, the news is incessantly in the face on US-China conflicts, including threatened boy