A fresh bribery scandal is tarnishing the image of Miss Korea, the nation’s top beauty pageant.“Sisa Magazine 2580,” an MBC investigative journalism program, reported Sunday that a mother of one participant in last year’s contest offered money to an employee of The Hankook Ilbo, the daily that hosts the event, to put her daughter at an advantage.The program also showed that contestants offered judges expensive gifts such as pearl rings and other bribes prior to the event.“One of the senior staff

The Labor Ministry plans to look into allegations that Samsung Group instructed its subsidiaries to foil any attempt by their workers to organize labor unions, a ministry source said Monday.The move comes after an opposition lawmaker unveiled the conglomerate’s 2012 document on labor-management affairs strategy.The document carries an instruction that companies should lead employees to disorganize a trade union if one is established, according to Rep. Sim Sang-jung of the minor opposition United

The education ministry said Monday that it has recommended publishers of all eight government-approved Korean history textbooks revise hundreds of factual errors and imbalanced descriptions they were found to contain.The ministry has reviewed the textbooks endorsed for use at high schools around the country from the 2014 school year after one of them, published by Kyohak Publishing Co., sparked the ire of opposition lawmakers, liberal historians and civic activists for containing a conservative

Bank suspected of looking into accounts of opposition lawmakers

The government will boost next year’s spending on gender-responsive policies by 68 percent as part of its efforts to promote public awareness of gender equality and boost women’s status and economic participation, officials said Monday.According to a budget draft submitted by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance to the parliament, the government plans to spend 22.4 trillion won on a range of policies related to gender equality, a 68 percent increase from 13.3 trillion won set aside this year.The

South Korea’s biggest teachers’ group is facing the loss of its rights of 14 years as a fully authorized labor union, after it voted against the government’s order to strip membership from dismissed teachers.The labor ministry has given the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, or KTU, an ultimatum that it will deregister the union, thus making it unlawful, unless it amends its constitution by Oct. 23 to ban dismissed and retired teachers from being members.The progressive union, however,

Seoul City will host an international energy conference on Nov. 13 as part of efforts to discuss the city’s responsibility for climate change and energy conservation, city officials said Sunday. Themed “Energy Transition towards a Sustainable City ― Challenges and Opportunities for Seoul,” the event will hold three sessions to discuss strategies for energy change, financing tools for policies and share case studies with 10 experts from around the world. Keynote speeches will be delivered by Amor

DNA testing will be conducted to identify of some of the 39 bodies that were recovered after a Lao Airlines plane crashed into the Mekong River last week, officials said Sunday.The French-made ATR-72 jet crashed in bad weather Wednesday, killing all 49 passengers and crewmembers on board, including three South Korean businessmen. Rescue workers have so far pulled 39 bodies from the water, including one in Sunday morning.Some of the bodies, however, were unidentifiable due to decay and damage inc

The number of South Korea's overseas tourists topped 11 million in the first nine months of the year, data showed Sunday.Some 11.25 million South Korean residents traveled overseas in the January-September period, up 9.3 percent from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute.The think tank explained that a growing leisure boom among locals has contributed to the rapid increase in overseas departures.The number of South Koreans traveling overseas re