Police on Thursday referred former Vice Justice Minister Kim Hak-ui and other key figures in a sex-for-favor scandal to the prosecution on multiple charges, including rape and drug use. The National Police Agency announced the result of its four-month investigation, recommending that prosecutors indict the 18 people involved. They were booked without physical detention.Investigators confirmed that Yoon Joong-cheon, a 52-year-old local construction contractor, provided some high-profile figures w

A Korean professor captured on video berating two Indonesian exchange students and calling one a “low animal” and “not human” has been reprimanded by his university.The disciplinary committee of Gyeongsang National University ruled on June 26 that Bae Myung-whan, a mechanical engineering professor at the university in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, had “undermined GNU’s reputation and demeaned himself as a professor” in his confrontation with Elvira Fidelia Tanjung and Merisha Hastarina. Lee

Rescue workers have retrieved the bodies of all six workers who went missing at a flooded underground waterworks construction site in Seoul, firefighting authorities said Thursday.The authorities said they found bodies of one of the six missing workers early Wednesday and the remaining five late Wednesday night. Half of the six were South Koreans with the remainder Chinese.On Monday night, water from the swollen Han River swamped the construction site, killing one worker and leaving six others u

The United Nations has decided to provide North Korea with $6 million in emergency aid by the end of this year, a report said Thursday, in a bid to relieve fund shortages at U.N. agencies operating in the isolated country.The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the Washington-based Voice of America that U.N. bodies operating in the North will receive this aid through a pool of reserve funding known as the Central Emergency Response Fund.The CERF was established in 2006

A disgraced former vice justice minister has been booked without physical detention on charges of raping several women during a lavish party organized by a local construction contractor, police said Thursday.Wrapping up a four-month investigation into a massive illegal lobbying scandal, the National Police Agency (NPA) also referred the 52-year-old contractor named Yoon Jung-cheon and 16 others to the prosecution, recommending that they be indicted on multiple charges including rape and drug use

Rescue workers have retrieved the bodies of all six workers who went missing at a flooded underground waterworks construction site in Seoul, firefighting authorities said Thursday.The authorities said they found bodies of one of the six missing workers early Wednesday and the remaining five late Wednesday night. Half of the six were South Koreans with the remainder Chinese.On Monday night, water from the swollen Han River swamped the construction site, killing one worker and leaving six others u

South Korea's government team sent to investigate the Asiana jet crash returned home on Wednesday and vowed continued efforts to reveal the cause of the deadly accident.Six officials from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport have been in San Francisco since July 7 participating in a joint investigation with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Asiana Flight 214. Three Chinese teens died and over 180 people were injured after the passenger jet crash landed at San

A strike by Canadian foreign service workers is delaying visa processing, worrying students scheduled to go to the country for the fall semester. The Canadian Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, which represents some 1,350 non-executive employees of the Foreign Ministry, has been on strike over salary issues since last month. Employees at 12 Canadian embassies and consulates, including those in Seoul, London and Manila, have indefinitely vacated their jobs, disrupting some serv

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon apologized Wednesday for a deadly accident at a water supply reservoir and vowed to carry out a thorough investigation into alleged violation of safety protocol.“I feel responsible and offer my apology for failing to protect citizens’ lives and safety,” he said during a visit to the construction site where seven workers were swept away in a flood Monday. Two were confirmed dead as of Wednesday afternoon.He said the city government would thoroughly investigate the incide

President Park Geun-hye’s ambitious drive to expand welfare benefits to the elderly was forced to retreat on Wednesday in the face of budgetary pressure. An advisory panel assigned to seek consensus on the new plan said it had agreed to cut the scale of the pension scheme substantially from the campaign pledges Park made late last year. Wrapping up its four-month discussion, the panel said it would exclude the richest 20 to 30 percent of elderly citizens, scrapping Park’s original plan to offer

The prosecution on Tuesday indicted nine officials from a popular international middle school in Seoul on charges of fabricating grades to grant admission to certain students in return for receiving bribes from their parents.The Seoul Northern District Prosecutors’ Office said it has indicted Kim Ha-joo, chairman of the board of Younghoon International Middle School, and the chief administrator identified only by his surname Yim. The two were indicted with physical detention, prosecutors said.Th