The Seoul government is enhancing monitoring of a new strain of deadly bird flu originating from China.Prime Minister Chung Hong-won inspected on Saturday Incheon International Airport’s passenger terminal and customs and ordered a beefing up of quarantine measures.Twenty additional officials as well as quarantine dogs will be placed at the airport to monitor travelers, according to the Prime Minister’s office.The foreign ministry has already issued a travel warning for those living in or travel

A survey showed that around 80 percent of the public believed the alleged sexual assault by former presidential spokesperson Yoon Chang-jung would likely affect President Park Geun-hye’s state management. According to the survey conducted by private poll taker Mono Research last week, 76 percent of 1,191 survey participants agreed “his acts would inevitably affect state management of the current government” for either a short or long period of time. Another 22 percent agreed that “it might not h

The country's largest law firm is preparing to draft legislation aimed at compensating companies that have taken a hit from the suspension of an inter-Korean industrial complex in North Korea, a law firm official said Sunday.The factory complex in the North's border city of Gaeseong has remained idle since early April as Pyongyang pulled all its workers from 123 South Korean companies there, citing South Korea's provocations."A task force of lawyers has started its research on the special compen

SIHEUNG-- A large container of hydrofluoric acid fell off of a cargo truck and spilled onto a road in Siheung near an industrial complex southwest of Seoul, police said Saturday.   Police said the container fell off of the truck while it was making a right turn in a residential area, causing three lanes of the road to be covered with the acid.    It said there were no immediate injuries caused by the accident, but the toxic acid spill encompassed at least 30 square meters of road leading to the

A magnitude 4.9 quake occurred near waters off of Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, marking the eighth time in a week that a tremor was reported in South Korea, the Korea Meteorological Administration said Saturday.   The seismic event took place at 7:02 a.m. with the epicenter located 31 kilometers south of the island that is the northernmost of the West Sea that lie just south of the sea demarcation line that separates the two Koreas.   The KMA said the quake was the sixth largest detected

GWANGJU—Koreans on Saturday honored the 33rd anniversary of a popular uprising in the southern city of Gwangju that acted as the watershed event in the nation's transition into a democracy.   The official event was attended by 2,500 people including President Park Geun-hye, senior government officials, political figures, related organizations and civic groups, and took place at 10 a.m.   The ceremony, held at the May 18 National Cemetery where people killed by troops under Chun Doo-hwan are buri

The country's first trauma center is expected to be built by 2015 to treat patients with severe external injuries, the defense ministry said Friday.Under the plan, the ministry and Seoul National University Bundang Hospital will jointly operate the center to be built inside the Armed Forces Medical Command in Seongnam, just south of Seoul.The center is expected to be equipped with 160 beds and treat both military and civilian patients, the ministry said."Officials from the defense ministry, the

The military recruitment agency has referred nine people suspected of feigning an eye condition to dodge military service to the military prosecution, officials said Thursday.The Military Manpower Administration said they attached “Kimite,” a popular motion sickness patch, below their eyes to have their pupils enlarged temporarily before their physical checkups so that they could pretend to have eye problems.They applied the patch for around six months in 2009 and 2010, and claimed that their ey

The Defense Ministry and Microsoft have signed a pact on bilateral technology cooperation, putting an end to their dispute over the pricing of the firm’s software products used by the ministry, Seoul officials said Thursday.“Microsoft has agreed not to demand the fees for us using its software any more. Resolving the dispute, the two sides have agreed to cooperate on defense information and technology,” a ministry official told reporters, declining to be named.“We anticipate Microsoft’s technolo

The nation's top court ruled Thursday that forced sex with a spouse constitutes rape, recognizing marital rape as a crime for the first time.Upholding a lower court's verdict, the Supreme Court sentenced a 45-year-old man, whose identity has been withheld, to three years and six months in prison for forcing his wife to have sex with him by threatening her with a lethal weapon. Spousal rape has not been seen as a crime in South Korea since the Supreme Court denied such a crime in the 1970s, excep

Hundreds of local non-regular instructors who teach English conversation at primary and secondary schools submitted a petition to the rights watchdog Thursday against massive layoffs, calling on the government to keep its pledge to guarantee their job security.The Association of Non-regular Workers at School said they asked the National Human Rights Commission to step in to prevent the government from terminating the contracts of some 600 irregular English conversation teachers upon their expira

In the wake of continued complaints from local parents about unqualified foreign babysitters, the government plans to push for special training programs for applicants from overseas, Seoul’s civil rights commission said Wednesday.While up to 60,000 foreigners, mostly ethnic Chinese, work as babysitters and housekeepers for Korean households, no job training programs for the role exist, leading to problems caused by cultural differences and misunderstandings.Under the envisioned plan drawn up by

Seoul City won four United Nations Public Service Awards, which are given to public officers or organizations in recognition of their excellence in public services. The city government said Wednesday that the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the organizer of the annual award competition, notified the city of the achievements in three sectors: Preventing and combating corruption in the public service, fostering participation in public policy decision making through innovative mecha