The government is moving to strengthen penalties for any behavior that could jeopardize the safety of a flight, including any type of violence against flightattendants, it said Wednesday.   The move comes after an executive of POSCO Energy Co., an affiliate of the country's top steelmaker POSCO, was denied entry into the United States for allegedly assaulting a female flight attendant on a Korean Air flight from Incheon. The company official offered to step down Tuesday.   Violence against the c

A man has received a suspended prison term for blackmailing figure skater Kim Yu-na demanding that she not appear in a liquor advertisement, court officials said Wednesday.The Seoul Central District Court sentenced the defendant, only identified by his surname Choi, to eight months in prison, suspended for two years.Choi, 39, was found guilty of sending a total of 47 emails to the figure skating star between April and May 2012 threatening her safety if a beer TV commercial that she was in is air

A string of cases involving parents killing their children have recently shocked the nation, ringing the alarm on the dangers of broken families and mental vulnerability.On Sunday, a mother in her 30s stabbed her two children to death in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, after reportedly suffering from depression. Her husband told police that he had found his wife bleeding from self-inflicted wounds on her neck. The 13-month and 3-week-old sons were found on the bed stabbed in the neck multiple times. Th

Police in Daegu are searching for two suspects in an arson attack on a private English institute which the self-proclaimed anti-American activists apparently mistook for a U.S. government facility. Police said the fire appeared to have been started by improvised explosives on Monday morning. A cleaning worker, surnamed Lee, called the police after she heard an explosion and found smoke with fliers scattered in front of the institute on the third floor of a nine-story building in the city. Police

Consensus was reached between ruling and opposition parties on Tuesday to extend the legal retirement age of South Korean workers to 60 beginning in 2016.Under the agreement, the public sector and big businesses with 300 or more employees should mandatorily set the retirement age at 60 from 2016 and other firms from 2017.The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party recommended the public sector and big businesses to gradually adopt the new retirement age. Currently, n

The nation's police chief pledged Monday to investigate claims that high-ranking police officers had tried to affect the outcome of a police probe into allegations that government spy agents intervened in December's presidential election.Wrapping up a four-month-long probe, Seoul's Suseo Police Station announced Thursday that two National Intelligence Service agents had illegally intervened in politics by posting a slew of politically sensitive comments on the Internet ahead of the Dec. 19 presi

The main floors at major hospitals in Korea ― usually filled with visitors, patients and staff throughout the day ― are generally contaminated with airborne bacteria that could cause a secondary infection in people with a weak immune system, a report showed Monday.“The average levels of bacteria, gram-negative bacteria and fungi indicated that all hospital lobbies were generally contaminated,” said the report’s coauthor Park Dong-uk, an environmental health professor at Korea National Open Unive

An executive of a local conglomerate was refused entry to the U.S. after being accused of hitting a female Korean Air flight attendant for “poor services,” airline industry sources said Sunday.The executive allegedly hit the flight attendant’s face with a magazine as she did not service him with well-cooked instant noodles during his business trip on board a plane to Los Angeles.The flight attendant reported the assault to the U.S. police as soon as the plane landed, and the U.S. authorities tol

The prosecution is considering expanding its investigation into former President Lee Myung-bak’s four-river restoration project which has been criticized for causing serious environmental damage and budget waste, sources said Sunday.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office is planning to launch a joint investigation into allegations that local builders had colluded to win the bids and raise massive slush funds.A special investigative team is currently looking into a complaint filed by civi

An investigation into intelligence agents’ alleged interference in politics took a new turn over the weekend upon whistle-blowing by a police chief investigator that sent ripples through political circles and the nation’s intelligence agency. Kwon Eun-hee, a former chief investigator at the Suseo Police Station, confessed Saturday through several media interviews that there was pressure from high-ranking police officers from the National Police Agency during the investigation against agents of t

Two earthquakes struck in the waters off Korea and Japan on Sunday, while China was struggling to find survivors from a powerful quake that hit the country’s inland a day earlier.In Korea, a magnitude-4.9 earthquake hit near the waters off of Sinan, South Jeolla Province, at 8:21 a.m. on Sunday, recording the strongest tremor detected in South Korea this year. According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, the quake’s epicenter was 101 kilometers northwest of Heuksan County, a small town

A magnitude-4.9 earthquake hit near the waters off of Sinan, South Jeolla Province, at 8:21 a.m. on Sunday, recording the strongest tremor detected in South Korea this year. According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, the quake’s epicenter was 101 kilometers northwest of Heuksan County, a small town in Shinan. No damage or causalities were reported, as the quake happened underwater far from the coast, officials said. But many residents in Heuksan county said they felt the shock and saw

The prosecution is considering expanding its investigation into the previous government's highly controversial project to refurbish the country's four major rivers, sources said Sunday.The administration of former President Lee Myung-bak carried out the 22.2 trillion won ($19.8 billion) project to refurbish the rivers to prevent floods and boost tourism. But environmental activists and the opposition party have long accused it of causing irreversible environmental damage.Local large construction