A total of 21 people, including TV personalities and a former K-pop singer, have been indicted on charges of betting on illegal sports gambling websites, state prosecutors said Thursday.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office probing the case said the suspects allegedly wagered up to hundreds of millions of won (hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars) on football teams in the English Premier League through private gambling websites, which are illegal venues.In South Korea, the only legal f

The Seoul Administrative Court on Wednesday temporarily invalidated the government’s decision to deregister the country’s largest teachers’ union last month.The Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union on Oct 24 filed a lawsuit and preliminary injunction against the Education Ministry’s recent move to deprive it of legal status as a union for refusing a government order to exclude dismissed teachers from its membership.The court accepted the injunction request, allowing the progressive union

The second son of the head of major family-run conglomerate Hyosung Group has undergone questioning by prosecutors over suspicions of tax evasion and accounting fraud, prosecutors said Wednesday.The country's 26th-largest business group has been probed by the prosecution on charges of evading a massive amount of taxes, embezzlement through accounting fraud and amassing slush funds overseas.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office investigating the case called in Cho Hyun-moon, the second s

More than 70,000 South Koreans studied at U.S. universities and colleges last year, representing the third-largest number of international students here, according to a formal report issued Monday.The total number of foreign students in U.S. higher education increased 7 percent to a record high of 819,644 in the 2012/13 academic year from the previous season, said the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the U.S. Department of State's annual "Open Doors" report."Students from the top t

Park Tong-jin, a former foreign minister, died of natural causes Monday at the age of 91, his family said.The longest serving South Korean foreign minister between 1975 and 1980 under the Park Chung-hee administration, Park Tong-jin also worked as a unification minister, an ambassador to the United States and a two-term lawmaker.He dealt with Seoul's relations with Washington during the turbulent period of the late 1970s. Then President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by his intelligence chief a

Seoul’s chief prosecutor offered to resign Monday in the wake of internal feuds over a probe into National Intelligence Service agents’ alleged election interference. Cho Young-kon issued a statement expressing his intention to quit as chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office hours after an inspection team recommended the punishment of two of his subordinates, who were at odds with him, for violation of investigation protocol.The inspection committee at the Supreme Public Prosecut

Kim Hak-ui, a former vice justice minister, was cleared on Monday of charges of receiving sexual services in return for business favors from a local developer. Kim is one of a number of high-profile figures who attended a series of banquets hosted by construction businessman Yoon Jung-cheon between 2008 and 2011.Kim stepped down in March because of the scandal. The prosecution indicted Yoon in July on 10 charges including rape, bribery and narcotics use. (christory@heraldcorp.com)

A former lead prosecution investigator in the high-profile election-meddling case involving the state spy agency is facing a discipline for failing to follow his superiors' instructions, the top prosecution office said Monday.Wrapping up an internal inspection, the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office (SPPO) said it has asked the Ministry of Justice to suspend Yoon Seok-youl for failing to report to his bosses before pressing additional charges in the case and detaining some intelligence service a

South Korea is ranked near the middle of a composite index on health and welfare among a group of 34 mostly rich nations, a state-run think tank said Monday.South Korea placed 20th in the index that analyzed data on more than 26 areas, including employment rate, suicide rate and economic growth rate, in 2010, according to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.In 2008, South Korea was ranked 26th among the 34 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (

The defense quality control agency said Monday that 34 local providers of military equipment parts forged or doctored their quality test documents on 125 occasions over the past three years.The announcement sparked criticism that quality checks were inadequate and concerns that crucial military equipment with flawed parts could fail when tensions with North Korea still remain high.In an inspection of 136,844 products procured over the past three years, the Defense Agency for Technology and Quali