Heaters are flying off the shelves as temperatures have dropped below zero in recent days.Yonhap News Agency reported that sales of heaters and electric pads at major local retail stores, including E-Mart and Lotte Mart, started to rise in November. Among the products, sales of heaters at E-Mart increased 582 percent on-year in the second week of November.The retail industry attributes the sales boom to the unusually early arrival of cold weather.According to the sales rankings at Danawa.com, a

The prosecution is sinking deeper into trouble, with a series of scandals damaging the public’s confidence in the integrity of law enforcement officials. To make matters worse, an embarrassing mobile text message blunder by a rank-and-file prosecutor has many questioning the sincerity of the prosecution’s self-reform efforts. Prosecutor-General Han Sang-dae is scheduled to announce Friday a set of measures to reform the prosecution, but few expect him to be able to salvage the beleaguered agency

The Youth for Understanding in Korea, nonprofit student-exchange organization, celebrated its 23rd anniversary on Tuesday with representatives from partnering countries and its member schools across the country. Founded in 1951, YFU is an international organization of 65 countries offering exchange programs for young students to learn the cultures and languages of different countries.Since its establishment in 1989, YFU Korea has played an integral role in building mutual understanding between K

A father pleaded guilty Tuesday to setting fire to his sport utility vehicle in downtown Los Angeles to kill his two children, Ashley, 11, and Alexander, 10.Dae Kwon Yun, 61, pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and agreed to serve two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, the Los Angeles Times reported. The deal allowed Yun to avoid the possibility of being executed.The Times said Yun appeared in court handcuffed and chained. He spoke softly through a Korean interprete

The economically active population in Seoul will decrease by more than 1 million in 20 years, according to statistics released by the city government on Tuesday.The data showed that the number of Seoul citizens aged 15 to 64, regarded as the economically active population, came to 7.6 million as of July, accounting for 77 percent of the city’s entire population.That figure, however, is forecast to drop to 6.6 million, or 65 percent of the total, as those aged 14 or younger decrease by 145,000, w

Five candidates officially kicked off their campaign to become Seoul’s education chief on Tuesday in a race shaping up to be yet another conservative vs. liberal battle. The election to pick the superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will be held on Dec. 19, simultaneously with the presidential vote, to fill the post vacated by liberal education reformer Kwak No-hyun. Kwak, a former law professor, was jailed in September, convicted of a charge that he bought a fellow candid

It has been 10 years since Insa-dong was designated a culture district, but criticism is growing that it has lost its unique character due to overcommercialization.The area, famous for its traditional aesthetic, antique shops and art galleries, was the country’s first designated culture district in 2002. Daehangno, Incheon port and Paju Heiri are the other designated cultural districts in Korea.Created in 2000, the culture district designation is part of the Culture and Arts Promotion Act of the