A 19-year-old under investigation for attempting to open an emergency door during flight has admitted that he had taken methamphetamine days before the incident, police said Friday. The unnamed teenager, who tried to open the airplane door in a flight from the Philippines to Incheon, said he took drugs with six Filipinos at a hotel in Cebu two days before the flight. He has since been questioned by the Incheon Airport Police. The suspect was on the Jeju Air flight that departed from Mactan-Cebu

Megastudy and math lecturer Hyun Woo-jin among those targeted, according to local reports

    A 14-month-old girl was killed in a landslide in Yeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, early Friday morning, after torrential rainfall battered a hillside village overnight. According to the local police and fire service, the infant was the last person rescued from a house in Sangmang-dong, Yeongju, where three generations of her family resided. Nine other members of the family escaped or were rescued safely. The landslide occurred at around 4:43 a.m. and the child was found in a sta

A mother arrested for allegedly killing her two newborn babies and storing their bodies in a home refrigerator was referred to the prosecution for possible indictment, police said Friday. The woman in her 30s was apprehended last week for allegedly strangling her two babies to death shortly after their births in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and keeping their bodies in a refrigerator in her apartment in Suwon, 30 kilometers south of Seoul. A court issued an arrest warrant for her on infanticide c

Two-wheeled vehicles, particularly high-noise automobiles like motorcycles, will be clamped to stricter controls on their permissible noise increase with an updated policy effective from July, imposing fines of up to 2 million won ($1520) for excessive noise emissions, the Ministry of Environment announced Thursday. Under the new standard, all two-wheeled vehicles will not be allowed to exceed their noise certification value by 5 decibels. The change aims to put the brakes on vehicle modificatio

South Korea's Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that a permanent ban on a person convicted of possessing a child pornography from being employed as a public servant was unconstitutional. A 6-2 decision Thursday found that the permanent ban from employment violates the anti-overrestriction principle and therefore breaches a person's right to hold public office, the Constitutional Court said in a statement. But it added that a ban from becoming a public official in general service could be impos

A 31-year-old worker at a Costco outlet in Hanam, Gyeonggi Province, died of heatstroke after organizing shopping carts in the sweltering parking lot all-day last week, according to news reports Thursday. The worker, surnamed Kim, was on duty since 11 a.m. last Wednesday. He had to collect some 200 shopping carts every hour and move them towards the store entrance. He reported his unwell condition earlier in the day but was found collapsed at around 7 p.m. He was moved to a hospital but died of

Support for same-sex marriage slowly gains ground in Korea, but homophobia remains strong

First death caused by downpour confirmed

About 150 soldiers and civilian military personnel have died over the past year with suicide being a leading cause of death in the military, data showed Thursday. According to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the number of deaths of soldiers and civilian military personnel reported to the Military Rights Protection Office as of June 20 was 147. The Military Rights Protection Office is a dedicated organization that investigates human rights violations and discriminatory acts in the

Meet Korea’s first gay couple to win court's recognition for equal rights

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Thursday plans to spend 4.32 trillion won ($3.28 billion) by 2040 to improve tap water quality. Under the plans, dubbed Arisu 2.0, South Korea's capital city will employ a cutting-edge tap water purifying system, renew water pipes and increase water treatment capacity and storage, among other measures. Seoul will invest 745.2 billion won to modernize water treatment facilities. Changes will be in place in two stages. Ozone will be employed instead

The South Korean government will expand the annual quota for E-7-4 visas issued to skilled workers to 30,000 by the end of this year, a fifteen-fold increase from last year, the Justice Ministry announced Thursday. "Resolving manpower shortages faced by many industries is an important short-term task. We are making efforts to accept more foreign workers to fill job vacancies as instructed by the president,” Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon said during a Cabinet meeting presided over by

Universities will be given more autonomy in curriculum management and students will be given more leeway in choosing or changing their major from next year at the earliest, the Ministry of Education said, announcing a set of deregulatory measures. A planned revision of the Higher Education Act's enforcement decree disclosed by the ministry on Wednesday calls for allowing universities to operate their school organizations more freely. Local universities will also be allowed to phase out barr

A teacher at an English academy in Seoul is under police investigation for allegedly abusing a 6-year-old child because he was not eating his food. CCTV footage released by YTN shows the child reacting in fright, quickly covering his mouth as the teacher approaches him. The teacher then grabs the child, pulling him out of the classroom. The 6-year-old is dragged on his knees and taken to a different room, where he is ordered to sit in the corner and look at his food while other children are allo