An appellate court on Friday ordered Ssangyong Motor to reinstate 153 fired workers, overturning a lower court ruling which backed the carmaker’s mass layoff in 2009. The Seoul High Court said that the company’s decision should be invalidated citing its failure to make every effort to avoid the dismissal. The court also said it was based on an incorrect audit report. The nation’s smallest carmaker was also ordered to pay 1 million won in compensation to each of the former employees. The firm con

A Seoul court on Friday meted out a two-year jail term to YoungNam Flour Mill Co. CEO Ryu Won-ki on charges of embezzlement and collusion in a high-profile contract killing case implicating his wife.The Seoul Western District Court also sentenced Park Byung-woo, a doctor at Severance Hospital in Seoul, to eight months in prison for concocting three medical statements to help Ryu’s wife Yun Gil-ja receive treatment in a posh hospital room away from her prison.Yun was convicted of hiring a hit man

A Seoul appeals court on Friday annulled the dismissal of 153 former employees of Ssangyong Motor Co. who were part of the company's mass layoff plan in 2009.Overturning a lower court's decision to rule in favor of the country's smallest carmaker, the Seoul High Court declared invalid the management's decision and ordered the reinstatement of the former employees."The court deems that the (management) did not make enough efforts to avoid the layoffs," judge Cho Hae-hyeon said in his ruling.The p

   SEJONG (Yonhap) -- South Korea's nuclear safety commission on Thursday resumed the operation of a nuclear reactor in the southeastern region that was shut down eight days ago due to what has been identified as damaged parts.   "It has been confirmed that the reactor had been shut down as two of the 73 control cards that operate control rods were damaged," the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said in a released statement.   The Reactor Unit 5 at the Hanul Nuclear Power Plant in Uljin, 33

Two former chiefs of large local builders on Thursday received suspended jail sentences for collusion in the former Lee Myung-bak administration’s highly controversial project to refurbish the country’s four major rivers.The Seoul Central District Court sentenced Kim Jung-gyeom, former chief of Hyundai Construction & Engineering Co., to eight months in jail with a one-year stay of execution. Seo Jong-wuk, the ex-president of Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co., was given a jail term of one and

A man serving a prison term for a drug offense is to be prosecuted again for using an encrypted message to manipulate a witness in his trial, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said on Thursday.According to the prosecution, the man sent an encrypted message to a fellow inmate -- who is serving a sentence for an unrelated drug offense -- with directions for giving false testimony. The man who gave the false testimony was also indicted, the prosecution said. According to the officials, the man who se

63 cases of cab firms violating wage rules reported

A Seoul court on Thursday acquitted a former head of the Seoul police agency of hampering a police investigation into allegations that the nation's intelligence agency meddled in the 2012 presidential election.The Seoul Central District Court delivered a not-guilty verdict to Kim Yong-pan, the former chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA), citing a lack of evidence and credibility of a key witness testimony.Kim was indicted on charges of abusing his authority to cover up the case b

A Seoul appellate court on Thursday commuted a former top tax official's prison term to three and a half years for taking bribes from CJ Group, a food and entertainment conglomerate, in 2006.Jeon Goon-pyo, 60, had received a four-year sentence from a lower court after he was found guilty of accepting $300,000 in U.S.bills from CJ Group officials in exchange for favors during a tax audit into the conglomerate in July 2006, shortly after he was named commissioner of the National Tax Service (NTS).

Four leaders of the state rail company's union have been indicted on charges of spearheading an illegal strike and inflicting financial losses to the firm, prosecutors said Thursday.The leaders of the union of state-run Korea Railroad Corp.(KORAIL), including its head Kim Myung-hwan, are under suspicion of playing leading roles in the strike that disrupted the national rail system for more than three weeks, the longest such strike ever. "It was a political strike that was launched against the go

Over half of private elementary schools in the capital were found to be violating English curriculum rules despite a warning last year, officials said Wednesday. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, 30 out of 40 private elementary schools were found to have organized English curricula for lower grade students. Teaching English to first- and second-grade students is currently banned. Some extended the English class hours for the upper grades or introduced foreign textbooks ins