President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday the industry ministry should actively exercise its oversight of nuclear power plant operators to prevent corruption amid a widening probe into suspicions that plant operators used a number of substandard reactor parts in exchange for money.“We should make this case an opportunity to root out nuclear power plant corruption,” Park said during a Cabinet meeting. “First of all, we should strictly conduct the prosecution investigation and the inspection by the Boa

The government is considering granting local resident registration cards to Korean holders of foreign permanent residency status as early as next year to address their inconveniences in domestic activities, Seoul officials said Tuesday.Under the current law, they have to abandon their foreign residency status if they are to retain resident registration cards, without which they face limits in banking, Internet use and other various fields. “Although details have yet to be worked out, the Ministr

Prosecutors said Tuesday that they will extend the imprisonment period for the head of the food and entertainment conglomerate CJ Group to further investigate him over alleged tax evasion and embezzlement.Chairman Lee Jay-hyun was locked up at the Seoul Detention Center on the southern outskirts of Seoul on July 1, shortly after a district court approved the prosecution's request for an arrest warrant for the country's 10th richest man.As Lee's first 10-day imprisonment period expires on Wednesd

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was flying at an airspeed of just 106 knots when it crashed at San Francisco airport, well below the recommended landing speed of 137 knots for the Boeing 777, the head of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Monday.Two Chinese schoolgirls were killed on Saturday and more than 180 other people were injured when the flight from Seoul clipped a seawall short of the runway and went skidding out of control on its belly, shredding the tail end of the plan

President Park Geun-hye will take a summer vacation late this month, her spokeswoman said Monday.Park will be away from the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae from July 29 to Aug. 2, spokeswoman Kim Haing said.She declined to disclose where Park plans to go, citing security reasons.As a lawmaker, Park used to spend her vacations at her home rather than going away on overseas trips. (Yonhap News)

The prosecution said Monday that it has set forth tougher guidelines for dealing with suspects in domestic violence in line with the government’s efforts to eradicate the country’s four major “social ills.” President Park Geun-hye defines the four ills as sexual violence, school violence, domestic violence and substandard food.The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said that suspects booked for battering their spouses more than two times over the past three years, in principle, will be detained for que

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― Police officers threw utility knives up to crew members inside the burning wreckage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 so they could cut away passengers’ seat belts. Passengers jumped down emergency slides, escaping the smoke. One walked through a hole where a rear bathroom had been. Amid the chaos, some urged fellow passengers to keep calm, even as flames tore through the Boeing 777’s fuselage.As investigators try to determine what caused the crash of Flight 214 that killed two

The former head of South Korea's main spy agency accused of meddling in last year's presidential election denied all charges against him through his attorney in a Seoul court on Monday.Won Sei-hoon served as the National Intelligence Service (NIS) chief under former President Lee Myung-bak until early this year.He was indicted on charges of ordering an online smear campaign against opposition candidates in an aim to sway public opinion in favor of the ruling party prior to the Dec. 19 election.T

Nearly 91 percent of citizens in Seoul are exposed to second-hand smoking everyday with their daily exposure time averaging 13 minutes, a poll showed Monday.According to the survey of 1,000 citizens aged 19 years or older, 90.8 percent experienced passive smoking every day at the end of last year, down by 1.6 percentage points from four years earlier. They were exposed to second-hand smoking 1.4 times per day for 13 minutes on average.While their involuntary exposure came more frequently in outd

Kim Jong-shin, former chief of the state-run Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co., was put behind bars Sunday on charges of taking 100 million won in bribes from one of the company’s contractors.Busan District Court on the day issued an arrest warrant for Kim.While Kim resigned a year ago before his term expired amid simmering criticism over power outages, the prosecution recently expanded its investigation into irregularities involving a parts supplier to KHNP’s nuclear plants.Operations had been