Seoul City saw a rapid decrease in the number of fined cigarette droppers last year after starting a no-litter campaign in 2007, officials said Monday. The city collected about 6.2 billion won ($5.7 million) in fines from 176,069 litterbugs in 2010, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.The figure was the smallest since 2007 when the city launched a campaign against flicking cigarette but

The number of foreign residents in S.Korea rose 1.5-fold in five years to top 590,000 in 2010, a nationwide census showed Monday.   The census, which is carried out by Statistics Korea every five years, also showed that there were 90 countries that had more than 30 nationals living in South Korea as of last year.   Of the total, 50.8 percent, or 299,000, were from China, including people of Korean

Prosecutors again summoned the chairman of Kumho Petrochemical Co. for questioning on Saturday over allegations that he created big slush funds and made unfair profits by using internal information.Park Chan-koo, a younger brother of Park Sam-koo, chairman of the Asiana Group which owns South Korea's second largest carrier Asiana Airlines, is suspected of having raised tens of billions of won in s

Prosecutors on Saturday are going all out to reject lawmakers' plans to abolish a key investigation unit of the state prosecution as part of their judicial reform efforts.A subpanel of the special legislative committee on judicial reform announced on Friday that it agreed to press ahead with its legislation plan to scrap the central investigation unit of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office despite str

A ballooning illegal lobbying scandal involving failed savings banks has implicated politicians as well as senior financial officials. Prosecutors investigating Samhwa Mutual Savings Bank have secured statements from Sin Sam-gil, its arrested chairman, that he gave tens of millions of won in slush funds to a current and a former lawmaker, officials said Friday. They are now trying to determine whe

Senior public officials banned from private-sector jobs upon retirementThe government announced Friday new measures aimed at rooting out the deep-rooted practice of government and judicial officials placing their former colleagues in senior positions at private firms.The so-called “jeon-gwan-ye-u” practice, which means giving “honorable treatment to retired colleagues,” is widespread in Korea, esp

   A disgraced South Korean television celebrity was slapped Friday with a court arrest to be jailed for eight months for repeatedly gambling abroad and refusing to return home in an attempt to elude investigation.   Shin Jung-hwan, 36, rattled the South Korean entertainment industry when media reports said last August that he had gambled away hundreds of millions of won at a hotel casino in the P

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency arrested a 29-year-old man for swindling by posing as a woman in order to lure prostitute seekers.The convict, identified by his surname Yoon, allegedly approached some 340 men via online dating websites for false sex trafficking. The tempted victims sent him a total amount of $60,000.Yoon had posted photos of random women from the Internet, and then suggested “she

An Army private shot himself dead with his assault rifle early this week while on duty at a frontline unit, the latest in a recent string of deaths of conscripts, officials said Thursday. The private, identified only by his surname Choi, was found dead with a bullet in his head in the pre-dawn hours of Monday outside a military post near Hwacheon, 118 kilometers northeast of Seoul, according to th