Foreign students in South Korea find the nation’s hierarchical culture the most difficult to adjust to, a survey showed Thursday. According to the survey by the Institute of Language Research and Education, 32.8 percent of foreign students said that they had trouble adapting to the country’s hierarchical culture while living and studying in Korea. Just over 16 percent of the students had difficulties adjusting due to Koreans’ indifference toward them, followed by gender discrimination at 16 perc

South Korea’s civic groups called on the government Monday not to disband the Sewol Special Committee tasked with investigating the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014, four days after its term legally ended. The public interest lawyers’ group Lawyers for a Democratic Society said its members will go on a hunger strike in protest against the government’s decision to dissolve the Sewol Committee. “Our demand is simple. We want the government to guarantee the Sewol committee’s term by abiding by th

Nearly 40 percent of employees at South Korean conglomerates are irregular workers, the Labor Ministry said Friday, highlighting the level of job insecurity and low quality of jobs in Korea. According to data on the types of employment in 3,454 conglomerates involving 4.73 million workers, 38.7 percent of the Korean workers at large companies were either hired temporarily by the firms or indirectly through outsourcing firms. Of the irregular workers, 19.7 percent of the laborers were recruited t

 To bring attention to the shrinking right to freedom of peaceful assembly in South Korea, Amnesty International organized a holographic Ghost Protest in Gwanghwamun Plaza, downtown Seoul, in February this year. Fortunately, the assembly took place without a hitch. But consider for a moment what would have happened had a participant suddenly become violent. What if in their frustration they had suddenly struck out, kicking a police vehicle parked nearby?The police might intervene to prevent an e

Negotiations among employees, employers and laborers to set next year’s minimum wage fell through without an agreement Wednesday, failing to meet the June 28 legal deadline.  The Minimum Wage Council was not able to reconcile differing views over the growth rate of the minimum wage, with business representatives calling for a freeze and labor counterparts demanding it be raised by 65.8 percent. Extra meetings are scheduled to be held for three consecutive days from July 4, with both sides set to

South Korean police chief on Wednesday addressed the recent suspicion over Busan police’s attempt to cover up the case in which their officers had sex with underage girls, pledging to punish them.Kang Sin-myeong, the National Police Agency chief, admitted that high-ranking police officials were involved in the alleged cover-up of their officers’ irregularities during a parliamentary committee meeting. National Police Agency Commissioner General Kang Sin-myeong answers questions at the parliament

Foreign and local experts from human rights organizations and academia addressed on Tuesday the danger of the use of water cannons by South Korean police at street rallies and called for better protection of human rights in keeping the public order. An association of human rights organizations investigating the use of police force in last year’s antigovernment rallies held a symposium in Seoul, bringing together a former German judge, a British campaigner and Korean activists and scholars.The ev

While South Korea scrambled to assess the impact of Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union over the weekend, little impact will be made on its domestic legal market, experts said Sunday.The “Brexit” decision came amid the U.K. law firms’ ongoing efforts to cement their standing in South Korea, with the final stage of opening the local legal industry to come into effect on July 1 under the Korea-EU free trade deal.Experts and government officials noted that Brexit would not affect B

Foreign ministers of the EU‘s founding member states, gathering in Berlin for crisis talks after Britain’s shock referendum outcome, said London must begin the process of leaving “as soon as possible”. 　France‘s Jean-Marc Ayrault went as far as to call for David Cameron, who has said he would resign by October, to make way more quickly for a new British prime minister to manage the transition out of the union. (Yonhap News)As the EU grappled with the first defection in its six-decade history, Eu

　A South Korean court ruled Thursday in favor of nine Syrian asylum seekers who had been denied entry into the country to apply for the status. They stayed at an airport for the past six months awaiting the decision. 　The Incheon Administrative Court ordered the Justice Ministry to allow the asylum seekers to apply for refugee status in the country, saying depriving applicants of the chance to claim asylum should only be made in exceptional cases. 　A total of 28 Syrian asylum seekers filed a law

On Tuesday afternoon, some 15 part-timers were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the pavement behind a poster reading “Fight for 10,000 won minimum wage” at the entrance of the National Assembly in western Seoul. Among the 20-something workers chattering and giggling were members of the nation’s Part-Time Workers’ Union who have been on a hunger strike since June 16 to demand next year’s minimum wage be raised to 10,000 won ($8.67). This year’s minimum wage per hour stands at 6,030 won, up 8.1 per

GOHEUNG, South Jeolla Province -- The South Korean appeals court visited Sorokdo Island on Monday to hear a case involving people with Hansen disease who were allegedly forced to undergo sterilizations and abortions by the government.In a compensation suit filed against the government by 139 leprosy patients, judges from the Seoul High Court traveled to the island off the southern coast to conduct an on-site inspection and hear the victims and witnesses testify. The courtroom temporarily set up

A Seoul court ordered the South Korean government to release information about the level of pollution on the U.S. military base in Seoul on Thursday, ruling in favor of an association of environmental civic groups. The ruling by the Seoul Administrative Court comes nearly a year after civic groups, including Green Korea United and the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, filed a suit against the Environment Ministry to demand the result of the inspection be revealed to the public.The Environment Mi

The number of South Koreans booked on charges of domestic violence soared dramatically on-year, due in part to the creation of special police teams investigating cases involving women and juveniles, police said Monday. According to the National Police Agency, the number of domestic violence cases caught by police nationwide stood at 40,022 in 2015, a 132 percent increase from 17,258 in 2014.By region, South Gyeongsang Province saw the biggest rise in the number of domestic violence cases, surgin