Army, Navy, Air Force to have two vice chiefs each under reform planThe Ministry of National Defense has decided not to introduce a system to rotate the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff among four-star generals of the Army, Navy and Air Force, officials said Tuesday.The decision has triggered concerns among military experts who said that the military’s reform drive aimed at enhancing inte

SELANGOR - An angry husband, who was awakened from his morning slumber, beat up and stabbed his wife, Harian Metro reported. The woman is now in a coma and fighting for her life at a hospital, the paper said.A police source told the daily that the couple in their 30s had quarrelled at their home after the wife woke him up at about 6am on Sunday and asked him to perform his dawn prayers.After repea

South Korean college students spend less time on study and are passive in class, research showed Tuesday. A report released by the Korea Educational Development Institute indicated that full-time college students don’t devote much time to studying. The institute surveyed 2,019 full-time students attending four-year universities nationwide on their study habits from June 14-July 2. The report showe

A fire broke out at SK Energy’s oil storage facility in Incheon Tuesday afternoon.No casualties were reported. Fire fighters have been struggling to put out the fire.

HANOI (Yonhap) -- A growing number of Vietnamese students are studying the Korean language at university, mainly to work at Korean firms operating in their country, local sources said Tuesday.More than 2,000 students are studying Korean at 10 universities nationwide, including Vietnam National University (VNU) in Hanoi and another national college in Ho Chi Minh, the sources said.About 150 profess

A woman in Gwangju requested a police investigation after she received a can of butane gas from an online seller instead of the iPod she had paid for. Kim ordered an iPod from an online second-hand vendor who offered it at half the market price.After a phone call with the seller, the woman sent half of the money to the vendor’s account. But what Kim received was a can of butane gas. Kim tried to r

The ratification bill for South Korea's free trade agreement with the European Union is expected to pass the parliament's standing committee later this week, as the South Korean government has responded positively to rival parties' demand to offer transfer tax cuts to small livestock farms, removing the last remaining hurdle to the long-stalled free trade deal, officials and lawmakers said Monday.

South Korea is extending its travel restriction to all parts of Syria amid escalating violence between the country's protesters and government forces, the foreign ministry said Monday.Earlier this month, Seoul restricted its people from traveling to Syria's western governorates of Daraa and Latakia after dozens of people were reported killed there in violent government crackdowns.The Level 3 trave

A group of North Korean defectors and civic activists on Monday urged South Korea's parliament to pass a bill aimed at improving the human rights situation in the reclusive communist state.In an opening ceremony for "North Korea Freedom Week," some 100 Seoul-based defectors, human rights advocates and lawmakers gathered in the National Assembly to discuss ways to abolish gulags in the North and pa

President Lee Myung-bak named Yu Bong-ha, chief of the Korean traditional medicine division at Kyung Hee Medical Center, as his second family doctor, Lee’s spokesperson Kim Hee-jung said Monday, upon lobbying by local practitioners of oriental medicine.Yu will be officially appointed to the vice ministerial position early next month.The president is allowed to appoint a physician and an oriental m

When South Korea’s first-ever female Supreme Court justice retired from the bench in August, she was surprised to learn how much she could earn in her first year if she practices law.“I heard that I could make up to 10 billion won ($9.2 million) in my first year as a lawyer, which is nearly 1 billion won a month,” said Kim Young-ran, 55, who now heads the government’s Anti-Corruption and Civil Rig