For the last four years, Park Hye-sang, an emerging South Korean soprano, has lived as a cultural nomad, bouncing between New York, Berlin and Seoul to further her career as an opera singer. The first four months of this year alone were a whirlwind of concerts and long-haul flights for Park. In January, she was in New York to perform Pamina in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” with the Metropolitan Ope...

A Japanese foreign minister arrived in South Korea for the first time in four years on Monday ahead of the presidential inauguration ceremony for Yoon Suk-yeol, raising hopes for possible improvements in relations with the incoming conservative administration. According to Yoon’s office, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi is traveling to Seoul for two days from Monday, and will attend th...

Netflix’s new Korean fantasy series, “The Sound of Magic,” made a successful debut on the platform, soaring to No. 4 on the service’s global top 10 chart. The musical drama ranked seventh on Netflix’s global chart as of Saturday, a day after its release, before climbing up to land at the fourth slot on Sunday, according to data released by streaming analytics firm FlixPatrol. “The Sound of Magi...

Led by Saudi Arabia , the Harmonising Air Travel policy will transform the traveler experience by creating a single, trusted source of information on entry requirements for international travelers The global aviation policy has been developed in cooperation with the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) The Harmonising Air Travel policy seeks to boost the recovery of the globa...

South Korea’s daily COVID-19 cases increased week-on-week for the second consecutive day, government data showed Monday. According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the country added 20,601 new COVID-19 infections during the 24 hours of Sunday. The total caseload rose to 17,564,999. The daily tally reported on Monday was up 517 from 20,084 a week ago, showing a week-on-week in...

Famed poet Kim Ji-ha, who died on Sunday at the age of 81, left behind a legacy of decades-long battles against the military dictatorship, followed by disputes later in life. Kim died at 4 p.m. at his home in Wonju, Gangwon Province, after suffering from an unspecified illness for the past year, the Toji Cultural Foundation said on behalf of the bereaved family. He passed away “peacefully, afte...

SEJONG -- More than 100,000 temporary jobs in the public sector have been converted into regular jobs during the Moon Jae-in administration, whose term expires Monday midnight, state data showed. According to Alio, a system for publicizing management information of 370 public agencies, 101,720 nonregular jobs were converted into regular jobs between May 2017 and May 2022. The outgoing president ...

Daewoo Engineering & Construction has teamed up with its parent company Jungheung Group to accelerate its business expansion in the all-important US market. According to Daewoo E&C on Monday, Jungheung Group Vice Chairman Jung Won-ju and its business delegation signed a memorandum of understanding with the city of Carrollton, Texas last Thursday to carry out development projects in the US city. ...

Ahead of the scheduled South Korea-US summit next week, some lawmakers and experts have been calling for a revival of the bilateral currency swap as a countermeasure to the growing signs of a weakening won, reports said Monday. South Korean market was rattled on Friday when its local currency hit its lowest point in over two years, trading at 1,272.7 won against the US greenback at around 3:30 p...

A board shows diesel retail price surpassing gasoline price at a gas station in Daejeon on Monday amid growing concerns over rising diesel prices due to an inventory shortage and a lower tax cut than for gasoline.

South Korea’s homegrown app marketplace One Store aims to challenge Google and Apple, two US tech giants that enjoy a near-monopoly in the whopping 300 trillion won ($235 billion) app store market globally, with its forthcoming stock market debut here. One Store, the nation’s sole operator of an app store of the same name, is a merged entity of the nation’s four app stores that was previously op...

As he steps down from his five-year term, President Moon Jae-in said in his retirement speech Monday that he “put down his heavy burden” but hoped to see the momentum his administration had created continue. He also called on the incoming Yoon Suk-yeol government to resume dialogue efforts with the North and “move toward national unity” shattered since the election. The Moon Jae-in administrati...

Lee Jae-myung, one of the main figures in today’s South Korean politics, has officially announced his bid to return to the political stage, indicating a step toward the next presidential race slated for 2027. Lee, the former Gyeonggi Province governor and presidential candidate for the Democratic Party of Korea, on Sunday declared he would run in the parliamentary by-election for a constituency ...

The Friday lineup to play from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., includes rock bands Dear Cloud, Lacuna and the Solutions, as well as four-piece indie band Adoy. Fusion gugak act Seodo Band will perform for the first time at the festival and popular indie band Jannabi will perform as a headliner on the same day. Saturday’s concert will kick off at 1:10 p.m. with singer-songwriters Sung Hae-bin’s performance. B...

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol takes office on Tuesday morning, starting a new chapter of South Korea for the next five years. Officials said Monday that Yoon will start his term as the 20th president of South Korea at the underground bunker of his new presidential office in Yongsan-gu, central Seoul. He will receive a briefing from the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the new commander-in-chief for the ...