South Korea's Cabinet approved a bill Tuesday to reward employees taking up the duties of coworkers who work reduced hours for child care with government subsidies. Effective on July 1, the revision will allow the government to make up for the employers' compensation to employees who handled the tasks of co-workers who, for example, leave the workplace early for child care purposes. Moreover, parents of young children who work two hours fewer than the regular working hours every day in

The "no-someone zone" controversy has flared up in Daegu, where a hotel has become embroiled in debate due to its new fitness center policy, which is to ban those aged 76 or up from signing up as members. Local media outlets on Tuesday reported that the allegedly four-star hotel in Suseong-gu, Daegu has decided to ban those 76 and up from signing up to use the gym, starting July 1. According to the new policy, those 76 or older will only be able to use the gym if they sign two consent

Plan includes attracting 1,000 foreign students in engineering, natural sciences

Govt. threatens to punish doctors who defy its return-to-work order, "dissolve" KMA

A lion that was born and kept in the basement cell of an indoor zoo for its whole life experienced what it feels like to be outside for the first time on Monday. According to Yonhap News Agency and officials at Spavalley, a theme park in Daegu, the male lion appeared bewildered at first and hesitated, but he soon began to explore his new home of around 500 square meters of land -- more than 10 times the size of the previous indoor cell. The lion also met his lifelong female lion companion, whi

Two people died when a man who fell from an apartment building in Busan landed on top of another man, police said Monday. According to Busan Sasang Police Station, a man in his 50s fell from the 15th-floor unit of an apartment complex in Sasang-gu, Busan, at around 7 a.m. on June 15. He landed on another man in his 80s who was walking by. The younger man died instantly. The older man received treatment at a nearby hospital, but died the next day. It is unclear why the man fell, as the initial

As South Korea faces a falling marriage rate, a recent government study showed that the unmarried male population here outnumbers its female counterparts by nearly 20 percent. According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs report released Monday, unmarried South Korean men outnumbered unmarried women by 19.6 percent in 2021, with the imbalance in gender ratio being more pronounced outside of metropolitan areas. The report used Statistics Korea data on those born between 1970, 1

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Tuesday it has appointed Kim Byung-min, a former member of the ruling People Power Party's Supreme Council, as its deputy mayor for political affairs. The 42-year-old will be Seoul's third vice mayor, alongside the first and the second administrative deputy mayors. Kim's main task will be to assist Mayor Oh Se-hoon in overseeing public relations affairs and serving as a mediator between the city administration and media, city council, and nat

Lotte World Adventure, one of South Korea's most visited theme parks, announced Tuesday its plan to reunite two-decade-old frozen memories from time capsules kept under its ice rink with their rightful owners. In June 2004, the theme park in central Seoul invited 50 guests to participate in an event celebrating the 15th anniversary of the ice rink. Guests tucked messages and family photos into 13-centimeter capsules, which were then buried beneath the ice as part of the rink's thawin

Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said Tuesday the government ordered community doctors who joined a one-day walkout to return to work, warning that they would face legal punishment unless they comply with the order. The order came as about 4 percent of the nation's 36,371 community hospitals, excluding dental and Oriental medicine clinics, have been expected to take a day off in protest of the government's medical reform. The one-day walkout took place a day after about 55 percent of medi

According to Statistics Korea, 1 in 10 Korean households purchased lottery tickets in the second quarter of this year, marking the highest proportional increase in the past five years. These households spent an average of 7,321 won ($5.30) per month on lottery purchases. Approximately 2.2 million households bought such tickets, encompassing the scope of Lotto, the pension lottery, horse racing and bicycle racing, in the last quarter. This accounts for 10.1 percent of the surveyed households. T

The Korean custom of paying respect to elders through a particular form of speech took a wrong turn recently when a quarrel over a supposed disrespectful form of speech resulted in a stabbing attack. Ulsan District Court said Monday that it sentenced a man in his 40s to two years in prison for stabbing another man in his 20s after the defendant's use of "banmal" -- an informal way of addressing another person -- caused a dispute. The incident occurred in Ulsan in January when bo

A civic group filed a complaint Monday against the chief of the state anti-corruption watchdog on charges of dereliction of duty after the agency dropped an inquiry into a luxury bag scandal involving first lady Kim Keon Hee. Last week, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission closed its inquiry into the allegations that Kim accepted a luxury handbag as a gift in 2022, citing the absence of rules on punishing a public official's spouse under the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act. T

Some blame entry refusals on K-ETA for hindering Thais' visit to Korea

A police officer who used a stun gun on an armed suspect will not be held responsible for the man's subsequent death after autopsy results pointed to sudden heart failure, according to the Gwangju Police on Monday. According to officials at the Gwangju Bukbu Police Station, the National Forensic Service who conducted the autopsy found that the suspect had suffered sudden cardiac death. SCD refers to natural death from an unidentified cause within a short period of symptom onset, often wi