The police on Tuesday raided a church that allegedly forced its followers to take part in repulsive acts such as eating their own feces. The Seoul Dongdaemun Police Station said it has started searching the office and living quarters of the Light & Truth Church in the northeastern distric. A member of the church filed a complaint with the prosecution against church officials for negligence resulting in injuries, coercion and fraud, saying she became disabled after suffering a brain hemorr

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sought to strengthen ties with China by sending a message to Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulating him on gaining control over the COVID-19 situation. In the message Kim congratulated Xi, “highly appreciating that he has seized a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency said Friday. “Kim Jong-un wished Xi Jinping good health, expressing conviction that the Chinese part

Following the universal payout of COVID-19 disaster relief money, the ruling party and government began talks about expanding employment insurance coverage to all workers, including the self-employed. The topic was raised by the presidential office a week ago. “It is a post-coronavirus task to insure everyone against unemployment, like the national health insurance,” Kang Gi-jung, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, said at a seminar on May 1 in response to a ques

Unidentified forces attacked two fishing vessels near the Gabonese capital of Libreville on Sunday and abducted six crewmen, including a South Korean, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Agence France-Presse reported earlier, citing a source close to the Gabonese government, that pirates had kidnapped three Indonesians, two Senegalese and a Korean. According to the Foreign Ministry, the attackers placed all 18 crewmen from the two fishing vessels on one of them and moved north to w

The operator of the world’s largest child porn site said he would rather be punished in South Korea than extradited to the US, where he is likely to face heavier punishment. The father of 24-year-old Son Jong-woo, who ran the Welcome to Video site on the dark web, appealed to the court and the Justice Ministry, arguing that it would be “too harsh” to extradite Son and that he would be sentenced to at least 50 years in jail in the US. The US Department of Justice requested hi

Korea on Friday reported eight new imported cases of the novel coronavirus and a single locally transmitted case. This brings the total number of COVID-19 cases to 10,774 as of midnight, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Four of the imported cases were confirmed at the airport upon arrival, and the rest were tested positive after they returned to their local communities in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province. The locally transmitted case was reported in North Gyeong

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he hopes many countries follow the example of South Korea, which has been “extremely successful” in addressing COVID-19, and plans to fight climate change in its post-coronavirus economic recovery. The country shows how “the two things can be put together,” Guterres said in a virtual news conference on Thursday. Mentioning that South Korea reported zero locally transmitted cases on Thursday, Guterres said it has b

Three out of 10 Koreans said raising a happy family with a good spouse was the most important condition for happiness, a survey showed. According to a report on “Koreans’ happiness and quality of life” by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 31 percent of the 5,020 adults polled between May 8 and June 13 last year chose “raising a happy family with a good spouse” as the key condition to being happy. Twenty-six percent chose “being healthy,&rdq

The National Assembly on Thursday passed a 12.2-trillion-won extra budget bill to offer disaster relief money to all Koreans to help them tackle the economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak. The second supplementary budget to be approved this year was increased from the government’s earlier proposal of 7.6 trillion won as the scope of recipients was expanded from the bottom 70 percent of the income bracket to all households. The government will provide 1 million won in emergency disa

Korea on Thursday reported four new confirmed cases of COVID-19, all of which were imported from overseas, marking the first time in 75 days that zero local community infections were reported. The total number of confirmed cases in Korea stood at 10,765 as of midnight, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The daily number of confirmed cases has ranged between six and 14 since it dropped to 18 on April 18. All of the four new cases were confirmed at the airport. One pat

Mostly clear and warm early summer weather is expected over the long weekend from Buddha’s Birthday on Thursday through Children’s Day on Tuesday, with sporadic rain in some areas. 　 Temperatures will go down slightly from Sunday through Tuesday, but will be warmer than average.　 According to the Korea Meteorological Administration on Wednesday, Thursday, a public holiday marking the birth of Buddhism’s founder, will see morning lows of between 5 and 15 degrees, and afternoo

As many students and parents struggle with online school, Seoul Foreign School shared how it has gone about virtual learning through close communication with students, parents and other international schools around the world. SFS already used a blended learning model that involves both online and in-person teaching and learning, and this helped when making the shift to a 100 percent virtual learning model, said David Beaty, the school’s director of technology. When COVID-19 hit South Ko

The government is taking steps to offer free masks to Korean adoptees or seniors living alone overseas, as the domestic supply of masks has improved. “We are considering free distribution of masks to those who are vulnerable such as adoptees or seniors living alone abroad,” a Foreign Ministry official said. Exports of Korean-made masks are still prohibited, and since March 24, Koreans have been allowed to send up to eight masks to their families abroad. The government has made ar

US President Donald Trump said Thursday the CNN report that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was in grave danger after a surgery was “incorrect,” but declined to say if he heard anything from Pyongyang. “I think the report was incorrect, let me just put it that way,” Trump told reporters in a daily briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic at the White House. “I think the report was done by a network that was incorrect. I’m hearing they used old documents. Well I ho

The ruling party and the government said Thursday they agreed on legislation to punish those who possess, advertise or purchase sex abuse materials involving children or youth as part of measures to root out digital sex crimes. The Democratic Party and the government also plan to raise the age at which statutory rape applies from the current “under the age of 13” to “under the age of 16.” Rep. Baek Hye-ryun, head of the DP’s task force on eradication of digital