An investigation of a spy agent suspected of conducting an online smear campaign against an opposition presidential candidate during the December election took a new turn as new evidence emerged that another person was involved.Suseo Police Station said Sunday that five IDs made by the spy agent surnamed Kim were also used by a different person, whose name was withheld, in writing posts supporting President-elect Park Geun-hye and favoring other posts amiable to the president-elect.The new suspe

Korea’s human right agency recommended Monday that Asiana Airlines allow its female flight attendants wear trousers while on duty, calling its skirt-only policy potentially discriminatory. The announcement came after the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions filed a claim against Korea’s No. 2 airline dress code in June last year.The union noted that the company has regulations on hairstyle and length of skirts to wear, also on wearing glasses for its female crew.The company recently changed its

An ex-con previously convicted of a narcotics felony was arrested Monday on charges of drugging and raping a 15-year-old girl, prosecutors said. According to Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, the 34-year-old suspect injected the girl with 0.03 grams of Methamphetamine (Philopon) and raped her after she started hallucinating. The unnamed suspect allegedly met the girl on an online chatting site, lured her by offering to pay her 250,000 won ($230) and took her to a motel he was staying i

A teenage boy was taken into custody after he got drunk and brandished a knife while having dinner with his family, police said Monday.Gyeonggi provincial police detained a 17-year-old high-school student Sunday on charges of threatening police officers with a knife. According to police, the student got drunk during a family dinner at a restaurant, and started arguing with his father. The verbal fight escalated, leading police to step in. The student allegedly swung a 35-centimeter long knife he

Heavy snow pounded central South Korea, including the capital city of Seoul, on Monday, disrupting air and ground traffic and delaying the start of schools.According to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Seoul had received a total of 16.5 centimeters of snow as of 7 a.m., the highest amount so far this winter and also the highest for February since 2001. Incheon, west of Seoul, had 14.6 cm of snow; Munsan, a city close to the truce village of Panmunjom, got 14.5 cm; and Chuncheon, Ga

An Army officer was found dead on Sunday after he had been missing for more than a month, officials said. Park Jin-woong, a 25-year-old second lieutenant, was found to have apparently hanged himself from a tree while still in his uniform on a hill about 1 kilometer from his unit in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province. The border town is about 90 kilometers northeast of Seoul.Park, who had been a platoon leader, disappeared at around 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 29 before he was scheduled to begin search and ambush

A blaze on Sunday swept through containers used as dormitories at a factory in Gyeonggi Province, killing two Vietnamese workers residing in one of them. The fire, which occurred at a metal processing factory in Hwaseong at 12:08 a.m., destroyed four container-dorms before being put out an hour later. The other nine workers who stayed in the dorms were evacuated from the scene unharmed. “When firefighters arrived at the site, the containers had already been engulfed in flames. The blaze spread q

President-elect Park Geun-hye’s transition team has received tens of thousands of policy suggestions from ordinary people on issues ranging from university tuition fees, real estate policies and measures to help small business owners, an official said Sunday.Yoon Chang-jung, the spokesman for the transition team, told reporters at a briefing that a total of 23,734 policy suggestions have been submitted through Saturday for a daily average of nearly 1,000.Yoon said most of the ideas were closely

Three U.S. soldiers have been caught for alleged sexual harassment of a South Korean woman on a subway train and three others are being sought for their involvement, police said Sunday. The half-dozen American soldiers, whose identities have been withheld, are accused of harassing a 20-year-old South Korean woman around 9:16 p.m. on Saturday on a train on the subway line No. 1.Police said the soldiers danced to loud music on the train, and the woman asked them to be quiet. The soldiers then star

Korean children’s physical fitness level deteriorates as they grow older, as they spend more time studying and less on outdoor activities, a survey showed. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education released Sunday the result of its physical ability tests with 840,000 students in 2012. The data showed that just eight percent of fifth and sixth grade elementary school students belonged in the lowest fourth and fifth levels in the five-level scale, while 13.9 percent of middle school students and

NEW DELHI (AFP) ― A South Korean student holidaying on her own in India was allegedly drugged and raped by the son of a hotel owner as she visited a tiger reserve in central India, police said on Friday.The 23-year-old college student has filed a police case saying she was raped on January 14 after returning to the hotel from a safari at the Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh state.“The incident happened last month but she said she did not have the courage to report it right away. She a

A South Korean man received life imprisonment from a Filipino local court for selling drugs in Manila, foreign ministry officials here said Friday.The 52-year-old Korean, surnamed Kim, was found guilty in December 2012 by the Regional Trial Court in Manila for violating a law on drugs after he allegedly tried to sell 10 capsules of ecstasy at a restaurant in the city in 2009, according to the ministry. Along with the life imprisonment, the court also levied a fine of 500,000 pesos ($12,293) on h

More than 1,100 foreigners sought refuge in Korea last year but a majority of them were still awaiting a decision on their status, data showed on Friday.According to the Ministry of Justice, a total of 1,143 people applied for asylum in the country in 2012, up nearly 13 percent from 1,010 a year agoThe number of asylum seekers stood at 148 in 2004, but jumped nearly sevenfold in the past six years, passing the 1,000 mark in 2011. The ministry said that since 1993 when Korea joined the United Nat