English-teaching charity Giving Back is running its annual fund-raiser in Itaewon next week.The Jan. 31 event will feature live bands and a raffle, and the money raised will help fund classes for underprivileged children run by the group’s Korean and expat volunteers.Barry Smith, who volunteers for the charity and is married to Giving Back founder Yvette Jeong-hwa Park, said that the group had grown over the years and now has five classes in Seoul and one in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province. The Yangju

NEW YORK (AP) ― Novelist Marilynne Robinson, economist Thomas Piketty and cartoonist Roz Chast are among the finalists for National Book Critics Circle prizes.Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will receive a lifetime achievement award, while National Book Award winner Phil Klay has won the John Leonard Prize for the best debut release of 2014, the short story collection “Redeployment.”Leonard, who died in 2008, was a reviewer for the New York Times and other publications and a founder of the book cri

The ice-fishing festival under way here has drawn more than 800,000 visitors in just nine days since its opening last week, organizers said Monday.According to local officials who organized the annual event, the number of visitors to the 2015 Hwancheon Sancheoneo Festival surpassed 185,000 on Saturday alone, hitting a new daily record. On Sunday, the number was estimated at 155,000.Of the total visitors so far, the number of foreigners was estimated at 15,000, including 1,400 on Sunday, accordin

An annual winter festival came to an end amid fanfare in this eastern county of Hongcheon on Sunday, organizers said. More than 500,000 people visited the "Hongcheon River Kkong Kkong Festival," which was held for 17 days from Jan. 2 under the slogan "Catch trout grown with ginseng," according to a provisional tally of the festival's organizing committee.The number is the largest since the festival first began in 2012. Last year, 410,000 people visited the festival that was held for 24 days, a w

Korean beer exports to Iraq are gaining traction, helping local breweries that are moving to diversify their target markets to bolster growth, data showed Sunday.Exports of Korean beer to the country reached 6,384 tons, or $4.48 million, last year, putting South Korea as the country's third-largest beer supplier. The biggest exporter was Hong Kong with 55,484 tons, followed by China with 20,112 tons, according to the data by the Korea Customs Service.The latest data compared with four years ago,