Lee Hee-ho, widow of former President Kim Dae-jung, suffered minor injuries Thursday night after having fallen backward while washing her face, officials at the Severance Hospital said.She needed three stitches in the back of her head.“The result of magnetic resonance imaging shows no anomalies,” a hospital official told media, declining to be named. Lee was discharged from the hospital Friday.Her husband, the 2000 Nobel Peace laureate, passed away in 2009. Since then, Lee, 90, has headed the Ki

The military’s medical treatment system is receiving public criticism following its latest blunder that led an enlisted man to lapse into a coma.Even though experts have called for improved medical services in the army, the Ministry of Defense continues to see accidents and deaths stemming from treatment mishaps occurring every year.Last Monday, Corporal Kim Yoo-seung with the Fifth Corps’ armored brigade was transferred to Asan Medical Center where he has been unconscious after belatedly being

South Korea is pushing to join the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption designed to protect the human rights of children adopted overseas.The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced Friday it would establish systems in order to meet the Convention guidelines.The total number of Korean adoptees sent overseas has been estimated to be around 165,000. Many of them face difficulties including American adoptees deported to Korea for failing to obtain American citizenship.The ministry and the U.S

Seoul National University said Friday that independent presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo did not engage in plagiarism during his time as a graduate student at its medical school. “A preliminary probe found no grounds for us to further investigate allegations of plagiarism against five academic papers authored by Ahn,” a research ethics committee of the state-run university said in a press statement. “The case is therefore closed without a main investigation.” In a unanimous decision, the pane

Police in Gyeonggi Province have sought an arrest warrant for a 24-year-old man who used a stun gun on a teenager in order to sexually abuse her on Friday.The man, who is only identified with his surname Kim, brought the electric shock device from his home in the morning and searched for a target around the Gangnam area in southern Seoul.According to the Suwon Seobu Police Station, Kim was attracted to a woman who had drinks with her boyfriend and stalked them.   As the couple went into a motel

President Lee Myung-bak will visit Cambodia next week for a series of regional summits with the newly mandated U.S. president, Barack Obama, and other leaders about freer trade and other cooperation in the region, his office announced Thursday.The three-day visit to Phnom Penh starting Sunday is part of Lee’s two-nation trip that will also take him to the United Arab Emirates for talks expected to focus on increasing atomic power and other energy cooperation between the two countries.In Phnom Pe

The average Korean woman lives seven years longer than her male counterpart, according to report by the United Nations Population Fund.The State of World Population 2012 survey also showed that Korean women and men live the eighth and 26th longest in the world respectively. The average life span of Korean women is 84 years and that of Korean men is 77.3 years. According to the UNPF report, the world population surpassed 7 billion as of October last year and stands at around 7.1 billion.China ran

Prosecutors on Thursday indicted LIG Group chairman Koo Cha-won and his two sons for inflicting damage on minor shareholders by fraudulently issuing commercial papers.Koo Bon-sang, his first son and the largest shareholder of the group, was arrested last month. He is vice chairman of LIG Nex1, the group’s defense arm.Koo Cha-won and his second son Bon-yeop, former vice president of LIG Construction, were charged without detention. The three issued commercial papers worth some 215 billion won inc

The prosecution sought an arrest warrant Thursday for a senior prosecutor on charges of bribery in a case at the center of a feud with the police over investigative powers.The suspect, Kim Kwang-jun, allegedly received around 240 million won ($220,000) from con man Cho Hee-pal, the operator of a pyramid scheme, and 400 million won from Eugene Group, a construction-based conglomerate.The special investigation team said he faces bribery and other charges. He reportedly denied charges during the in

Voluntary Agency Network of Korea, a nongovernmental cyber diplomatic organization, is organizing a protest movement to pressure Apple and Google to label Dokdo and the East Sea on their maps. Apple Inc. has recently decided to use both Korean, Japanese and Franco-English names for the nation’s easternmost islets in its new English map service running on the iOS 6 mobile operating software. An updated Google Maps has also replaced the name Dokdo with the islets’ Franco-English name ― the Liancou

PYONGTAEK (Yonhap News) ― A 58-year-old man was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for raping his underage niece as well as impregnating her, a Suwon court said Wednesday, amid growing calls for tougher punishments for brutal sex crimes against minors. The Suwon District Court handed down the hefty prison term to the man, only identified by his surname Cheong, convicted of raping his niece on multiple occasions between September 2005 and July this year in his house in Pyongtaek, south of Seoul. T