The capital city of South Korea has experienced the most consecutive "tropical nights" since 2000, the state weather agency said Saturday.The so-called tropical night phenomenon is defined by nighttime lows staying above 25 degrees Celsius, with nighttime being from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. It often happens when monsoon season ends, which falls in July in general for the country. The overnight low in Seou

Seoul police on Friday arrested an obstetrician-gynecologist on charges that he killed a patient and disposed of her body.The suspect, a 45-year-old man identified by his surname Kim, is accused of accidentally killing a 30-year-old female patient Lee on Tuesday while trying to anesthetize her, telling her it was a "nutritional supplement." He said he had injected her with midazolam, a drug that induces sedation.Police said Kim then discarded the corpse at a parking lot near the Han River. His w

The prosecution on Friday cleared Nexon, an online game company, of responsibility for the leak of private information of its 13.2 million members last November.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said it has decided not to indict company chief executive Seo Min and security officials for allegedly mishandling user data due to the lack of evidence.“It is hard to find any loose management of personal information, and Nexon had taken security measures when the incident occurred,” the pr

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday said it has started an internal investigation into allegations that its commissioner Hyun Byung-chul has the abused rights of disabled people. The probe is expected to influence President Lee Myung-bak’s plan to reappoint him for a second term despite fierce opposition from political and civic circles as well as some commission officials. A committee under the NHRC on Thursday decided to investigate him following a petition filed by Rep. Chung Ha-na

Concerns rise over side effects of bimaxillary operation With the rising populary of bimaxillary operations in Korea, side effects of the double jaw surgery, including parasthesia and asymmetry, are increasingly reported.According to Korea Consumer Agency, the agency received 121 damage cases from 2010 to June this year. The numbers are quickly increasing as the agency took 44 cases this year until June, almost as many as the 48 in all of 2011.The reason for such phenomena is that many celebriti

Seoul’s Gangnam Station on Line 2 is the most heavily used subway station in the capital city, data showed Thursday.An average of 130,745 people per day used the station in southern Seoul during the first half of this year. The next most popular was Seoul Station on Line 1, at the center of the capital, with 105,000 users, followed by Jamsil Station on Line 2 in southeastern Seoul, with 97,000 users, according to the data compiled by the Seoul Metro and Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corp., wh

Police said Thursday they have arrested 20 people and booked 10 others without physical detention on charges of selling and using illegal narcotics. The suspects, including a 51-year-old habitual user, identified only by his surname Ye, allegedly circulated, sold, and used a total of 12 grams of methamphetamines worth 40 million won ($35,000) between December and June, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.In order to avoid the police crackdown, the suspects concealed the methampheta

The Korea Immigration Service said Thursday that the number of inbound and outbound air passengers through Incheon International Airport hit a record high of 3.2 million in July.The figure shows an eight percent increase from the year earlier when 2.9 million people passed through the airport.The immigration office cited the vacation season as the reason behind. Around 60,000 passengers departed between July 23 and 29 to their destinations from the airport, up from 47,000 during the same days la

NEW YORK (Yonhap News) ― The two Koreas have informally teamed up against Japan in a war of diplomacy in the United Nations on the naming of the waters near them, sources said Wednesday. The 10th United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names open earlier this week at the U.N. headquarters here, setting the stage for experts from around the world to discuss key issues relating to the handling of place names.International organizations formally call the waters between the