South Korea’s cabinet Tuesday endorsed a bill which sets up a special fund to cover the huge cost of potential reunification with North Korea.The bill calls for dividing the existing Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund into two accounts ― one for promoting cross-border cooperation and the other for covering unification costs, said the unification ministry.The bill, endorsed at a cabinet meeting chaired by President Lee Myung-Bak, needs approval from parliament.The unification account will draw funds f

INCHEON (Yonhap News) ― Police on Tuesday busted the nation’s largest known distribution ring of online pornography, allegedly involving a university professor and another man in his 70s.The arrest comes as police crack down on online distributors of sex videos and other pornography in the wake of a number of brutal sexual offenses against women and children.Three operators of a local file-sharing service were booked without physical detention on charges of recruiting people to upload porn and p

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will deliver a speech about women’s role in world development in Seoul next week at a meeting for young women leaders, officials said.Ban along with many high profile officials are participating in the inaugural World Congress of Global Partnership for Young Women, which is being held at Duksung Women’s University from Aug. 10-13.Under the title “Sharing Together,” the four-day meeting will also bring together more than 1,000 university students from 33 countri

A heat wave has killed more than 341,000 chickens and ducks across South Korea since July, an agriculture official said Monday.Temperatures have hovered above 33 degrees Celsius since July 20 in most parts of the country, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.The scorching temperatures killed 330,500 chickens and 10,700 ducks as well as 96 pigs across the country between July 20 and

The government plans to require tobacco firms to put graphic images illustrating the health hazards of smoking on their packages beginning early next year.The packages will also have to contain detailed information of tobacco ingredients and will not be allowed to feature words deemed to mislead consumers about smoking’s health effects. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Monday it plans to issue a public notification of the revised National Health Promotion Law this month as part of its cam

A majority of foreign workers who applied to be rehired in South Korea have received a reemployment permit thanks to their “exemplary” working records, the Labor Ministry said.Under the current law, foreign manual workers can apply to be rehired by the same employers if they have not left their designated workplaces during a certain period of stay.From July, the government softened the laws by allowing those “exemplary” foreign workers to be re-employed three months after returning home, which i

More than 70 percent of students from multicultural families in South Korea consider themselves as “100 percent Korean,” a survey showed Monday.According to the survey of 1,502 multicultural students in their fourth year of primary school nationwide, 73.4 percent said they are “100 percent Koreans,” followed by 21.5 percent regarding themselves as “half Korean and half foreigner.” Those who identified themselves as “pure foreigner” came to 3 percent, showed the survey conducted by the National Y

The Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the National Policy Agency announced Monday that they had conducted a crackdown on throwing cigarette butts away while driving in July, and found 1,990 illegal cases.The policy agency said it imposed a penalty of 30,000 won on each case and that fines would rise to 50,000 won from Sep 1.The number of reports by citizens reached 836 and the citizens who provided information were given 5,000-10,000 won.A ministry official said the authority wi

A group of aides to United States Congress members will visit South Korea this week as part of the two countries’ efforts to boost exchange and cooperation, trip organizers said Saturday.Eight secretaries of U.S. Congress members including Sen. Richard Lugar, Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Steve King arrived in Seoul on Sunday for a seven-day visit at the invitation of the Korea Foundation, according to foundation officials.During the visit, the delegation plans to meet with government officials here and

Seoul National University will offer scholarships and benefits to foreign students in an effort to foster Korea-friendly human resources, the school said Sunday. Some 332 undergraduate and graduate students have been selected and will study at the university from the second semester starting in September, it said. Of them, 73 are undergraduates, 188 graduates, and 71 doctoral students. They are mostly from developing nations including Vietnam, China and Mongolia, with Chinese taking up the most

The Education Ministry said on Sunday that it would devise a set of guidelines on the political neutrality of textbooks.The ministry’s move comes after controversy arose over literary works by an opposition politician that appear in middle-school textbooks.A team of private experts and education officials will start researching by the end of this month on ways to improve the current textbook-screening system. It aims to formulate guidelines based on which the state-run textbook review board will