The prosecutors investigating the illegal surveillance scandal summoned Jin Kyung-rak, the former chief of planning for the ethics division in the Prime Minister’s Office.The summons called for Jin to attend questioning at 10 a.m. on Friday. The investigators are reportedly be planning to question Jin on whether he hid a laptop computer containing data from surveillance activities involving civilians. The investigators also hope to find out if Jin ordered Jang Jin-su to destroy the hard drive of

South Korean sex traffickers were detained on charges of luring Japanese tourists at a popular shopping district in Seoul and leading them to brothels, police said Thursday.The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said they apprehended 27 brokers of a sex trafficking group called "Myeongdong Alpine Club"and requested arrest warrants for five of the members, including its 58-year-old ringleader surname

A South Korean woman has been detained for killing her baby who was born while she was playing online games, police said Thursday.They said the 26-year-old gave birth while at an Internet cafe in Seoul on March 25. She allegedly put the infant in a plastic bag, sealed it and dumped it in a nearby parking lot.The woman had visited Internet cafes almost daily, police said."She was playing games unti

An Ohio teen has filed a lawsuit saying his high school principal violated his First Amendment rights by preventing him from wearing an anti-homophobia T-shirt.Maverick Couch, 16, said in the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday Waynesville High School Principal Randy Gebhardt prevented him from wearing a T-shirt that said "Jesus Is Not A Homophobe," the Dayton Daily News reported Wednesday.Gebhardt told

The Supreme Court on Thursday granted refugee status to an Iranian who converted from Islam to Christianity. The top court upheld a lower court’s decision in favor of the 35-year-old Kurdish-Iranian man over the Ministry of Justice, saying his “condition comes under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and is subject to protection by a third country. “Should he return to his country, his religious beliefs could put him in a life-threatening position,” Justice Min Young-il said. “It

A North Korean defector-turned-spy was sentenced to four years in prison for attempting to kill a fellow defector in South Korea at the order of the communist regime, court officials said Thursday.The secret agent, surnamed Ahn, was charged with plotting to kill Park Sang-hak, a defector leading anti-Pyongyang propaganda activities in the South, with a poisoned needle in September.He was also ordered to pay 11.75 million won ($10,399) in fines, the equivalent of his payment from the North.“Sever

Prosecutors demanded Wednesday the death penalty for the captain of an illegal Chinese fishing boat indicted on charges of killing a Korean Coast Guard officer last year.The Incheon District Prosecutors’ Office also asked for two- to three-year prison sentences for nine other Chinese sailors. In addition, prosecutors demanded a 20 million won ($17,700) fine for each.The captain surnamed Chung, 43, is accused of murdering Korean Coast Guard sergeant Lee Cheong-ho and seriously wounding another of

A special prosecutor team raided the National Police Agency on Wednesday, seizing computer files for an investigation into a cyber attack on the state election watchdog’s website during the mayoral by-elections in October.According to the team, the raid on the police was to determine whether officers investigating the distributed denial of service attack on the National Election Commission webpage attempted to cover up the incident.“We conducted the raid to download computer files in order to co

Prosecutors on Wednesday demanded capital punishment for the captain of a Chinese fishing boat accused of killing a South Korean law enforcement officer during a crackdown on illegal fishing last year. The 43-year-old captain, Cheng Dawei, was indicted in January on charges of stabbing Coast Guard Cpl. Lee Cheong-ho to death with a knife and seriously injuring another officer during a Dec. 12 raid

Male-dominated organizational structure under fire as more women join prosecutionWomen’s rights groups in Gwangju are protesting the deployment of a prosecutor accused of sexually harassing female reporters. On Monday morning, an association of women’s groups in the city issued a statement denouncing the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office for deciding to dispatch Choi Jae-ho, a mid-ranking prosecutor from Seoul Western Prosecutors’ Office, to the region, after complaints of repeated sexual harassment w

Placing Muslim workers who do not eat pork at pork processing operations could be an infringement of their human rights, the National Human Rights Commission said Tuesday. The human rights watchdog advised a local sundae (Korean blood sausages) manufacturer in February to move a 36-year-old Indonesian Muslim who does not eat pork for religious reasons from the sausage processing section of the factory to another department. The worker had previously asked the management for reassignment but his

The Korean government is stepping up school education on Dokdo, about a week after the Japanese government approved high school textbooks that claim the easternmost islets as Japanese territory.Seoul’s education ministry said it distributed supplementary textbooks on Dokdo to all elementary, middle and high schools to be used during the designated classes on the islets in the new semester which began in March. “The education on Dokdo is to raise students’ awareness of the necessity for guarding