Ten days after the Sewol ferry carrying nearly 500 passengers sank on April 16, Prime Minister Chung Hong-won offered to resign, holding himself responsible for the government’s poor initial response to the tragic accident.Chung, the Park Geun-hye administration’s first prime minister, said on that day that he did not want to be a burden to the government by keeping his job. Shortly afterward, Park accepted his resignation, but asked him to stay in office until a successor was found. For the las

Dongbu Group, the nation’s 17th-largest conglomerate in terms of assets, is in grave jeopardy. After the sale of key units of its flagship affiliate Dongbu Steel fell through, the group will now have to ask the steelmaker’s creditors to step in ― this means there is no hope of the steelmaker staying in one piece. On Tuesday, POSCO, the nation’s biggest steelmaker, gave up its bid for Dongbu Steel’s Incheon plant and Dongbu Power Dangjin Corp., citing low profit margins and excessive financial bu

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan ― Full of vigor yet penniless, Faisal Safi appeared doomed to live a life without a future when he joined a Korean vocational training center in his home province of Parwan in 2010 at age 20. One year of electrician training there “completely changed” his life, he said, enabling him to not only support his family but also open up opportunities. Now at 24, the soft-spoken man nurtures pupils at the academy located in the largest U.S. military base Afghanistan. “I real

Saturday’s deadly shooting incident has prompted calls for the military to enhance its management of “draftees requiring special observation.”The 22-year-old sergeant, who killed five soldiers and wounded seven in a shooting spree, turned out to have once been rated as a Grade-A soldier ― the class of draftees most in need of special observation.Although the sergeant, identified only by his surname Lim, was later rated as a Grade-B soldier who still needed extra care but was able to carry out fr

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union on Sunday said it will fight the court’s recent decision to renounce its legal status, as a years-long feud between the left-leaning union and government deepened.On Thursday, a Seoul court ruled that the controversial union is not a legitimate labor group because it violated the labor law that bans dismissed education workers from joining unions. Later in the day, the Education Ministry announced a series of follow-up measures which include withd

Amid the worsening relationship between Cheong Wa Dae and parties over a controversial prime minister nominee, President Park Geun-hye’s new top political aide is drawing keen interest from both in and out of the political arena. Cho Yoon-sun, former gender equality minister, was appointed the new senior presidential secretary for political affairs last week. She was the first woman ever named to the top aide post. The 47-year-old was in the spotlight also because she was given the crucial task

In the six years since Korea started fitting electronic tags on convicted sex offenders, the rate at which criminals reoffend has dropped, the Justice Ministry says.According to the ministry, around 15 percent of sex offenders committed similar crimes again between 2006 and 2008, but the rate sharply dropped to below 2 percent after the use of tracking devices was adopted in September 2008.Child kidnappers and murderers were added to the list of criminals subject to the measure in 2009 and 2010,

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Barack Obama returned to Washington on Monday after a brief family break in California to find himself confronted once again by the nightmare from which America thought it had escaped: Iraq.Obama ran for the White House as a young leader who opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion, and then won re-election as the steady hand who had finally withdrawn American troops eight years later.But now his generals have brought out the old map once again and the 44th president ― like the 41st, 42

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister-nominee Choi Kyung-hwan stands at a crossroads as he will soon have to make tough decisions and policy recommendations for President Park Geun-hye to revitalize the economy, which has become sluggish following the ferry disaster in April.A slew of economic tasks await the incoming deputy prime minister after his parliamentary confirmation hearing, and among sensitive issues he will have to address are taxes and loan-related regulations for the housing m

Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Lee Ju-young, whose ministry was directly responsible for handling the Sewol ferry disaster, has managed to hang onto his post. The news came as a shock to many, as speculation was rife that he would be the first to be replaced in the government’s recent personnel shake-up aimed at repairing its image. It was more surprising because the seven ministers that President Park Geun-hye said would be replaced included two ― the education minister and security minister

Park’s close aide set to take economic helmChoi Kyung-hwan, a third-term lawmaker from the ruling Saenuri Party, was nominated on Friday as South Korea’s new deputy prime minister and finance minister, a key post for the nation’s economic policy direction. The appointment of Choi, the floor leader of the ruling party who is considered a close aide of President Park Geun-hye, is seen as signaling a continuation in the administration’s economic reform efforts.Choi, 59, who served as minister of kn

FOZ DO IGUACU, Brazil (Yonhap) ― Players on the South Korean national football team have put their recent big loss to Ghana behind them as they get ready for a more crucial task ahead.On Wednesday, head coach Hong Myung-bo and his 23-man team arrived in Foz do Iguacu, their base camp during the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, after wrapping up an earlier camp in Miami.South Korea has struggled mightily in its preparation for the tournament. It lost to Tunisia 1-0 in Seoul on May 28 and fell to Ghana 4

Prime Minister-nominee Moon Chang-keuk took a single path as a newspaper journalist for 38 years. The 66-year-old former political correspondent never strayed from his job or attempted to cross over into politics or elsewhere. Even after his retirement in 2012, he stood in front of college students, offering lectures on the principles of journalism and its role of pursuing truth without favor.Moon was not a popular figure but was a journalist who wrote a series of columns highly critical of high

LONDON (AFP) ― A Russian supercomputer posing as a 13-year-old boy has convinced judges that it is human, becoming the first to pass the “Turing Test” in a historic moment in artificial intelligence, British scientists said.The computer became the first in the world to be mistaken for a real person more than 30 percent of the time, during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations with humans conducted at the Royal Society in London.The test was established in 1950 by Alan Turing, a World Wa

CAIRO (AFP) ― Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who was sworn in Sunday as Egypt’s president, may have donned civilian clothes but his crackdown on opponents has raised fears he could herald a return to autocracy. Sissi was chosen as president in a May 26-28 election with 96.91 percent of the vote, nearly a year after toppling the country’s first freely elected leader, Islamist Mohamed Morsi.Taking the oath on Sunday, Sissi vowed “to respect the constitution and the law and to care for the in