With the government lifting nearly all social distancing measures, retailers in South Korea are now pinning high hopes on a business recovery after enduring two years of strict pandemic restrictions that limited operating hours, private gatherings and even food tasting at the grocery store. Supermarkets, which have been hit hard due to pandemic restrictions, are in talks with the government to r...

The main opposition People Power Party and minor opposition People’s Party on Monday completed their merger, 47 days after President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol and the presidential transition committee head Ahn Cheol-soo merged their campaigns during the election. The center-right People Party, which was created in February 2020 by Ahn after he left the Bareunmirae Party, was in effect absorbed by the ...

South Korean researchers have developed the country’s first robotic catheter system that can be inserted into human organs to perform interventional therapies, the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials said Monday. A catheter is a thin tube-like medical device that can be inserted in the body to treat diseases or perform surgical procedures. Interventional therapies, which refer to treating...

Busan is currently in the process of building a mega 140,000-square-meter financial town, while Incheon is trying to attract more clients to its Songdo International Business District. “Major economies have only one city that works as a financial hub -- it’s New York City for the US and London for the UK. To make Korea flourish in the global society, the issue needs to move beyond a local rivalr...

The Democratic Party of Korea ratcheted up its attack on President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s Cabinet nominations, raising allegations against a second nominee. Kim In-chul, the nominee for deputy prime minister and education minister, has been accused of improperly holding an additional position while he was president of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. According to Rep. Park Chan-dae from...

A victim of police brutality, who was wrongfully convicted and served jail time in place of a serial killer, said taking the prosecution’s investigation powers away could lead more people to suffer in the same way. As a result of a false confession given in response to a coercive police interrogation, Yun Sung-yeo, 55, spent 20 years in jail on a wrongful conviction before he was released on par...

South Korea and the US on Monday kicked off their annual combined military exercise, while North Korea has begun its preparation for a massive military parade likely to be held during the training period “in earnest,” South Korean military officials said. Seoul and Washington decided to conduct the nine-day, springtime Combined Command Post Training in light of the overall circumstances, includi...

Local data replication solution provider ArkData said Monday that it has successfully completed the development of a disaster recovery system for Kyungpook National University in the southeastern city of Daegu. The project aims to protect the school’s student database and prevent business disruptions caused by data center failures or natural disasters. ArkData, specialized in data replication a...

It’s time for a new policy approach to North Korea from the incumbent Moon Jae-in administration’s Korean Peninsula Peace Process, Rep. Park Jin, the nominee for foreign minister, said Monday. Making his first trip to the preparation office for the parliamentary confirmation hearing, Park of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s People Power Party also denounced Pyongyang’s recent missile launches, ca...

Not only were fans at Coachella stunned by the K-pop icon’s reunion, but the wave of excitement spread around the globe. Fans took to social media, gushing about the event: “2NE1’s iconic Bam Ratata with Dara’s iconic hair 10 years later. Legends.” Hashtags like “2NE1,” “2NE1 at Coachella,” “2NE1chella” and “2NEChella” were also trending on social media as well as of Monday. Some fans took the ...

This year’s performance named, “Embracing King Sejong’s Spring,” will be held indoors at Jipgyeongdang, the Joseon queen’s royal chamber at Gyeongbok Palace. Three musicians will be playing traditional instruments -- geomungo, a six-stringed zither, daegeum, a large bamboo flute, and danso, a smaller flute -- and a song master of gasa, Korean traditional narrative song. From solo performances t...

The leaders of six high prosecutors’ offices gathered on Monday morning to discuss response measures on the Democratic Party of Korea’s legislative push to strip investigative power from the prosecution, continuing the law enforcement agency’s vocal opposition to the controversial move. At 9:30 a.m. at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seocho-gu, southern Seoul, the six senior prosecutors enter...

The series is scheduled to air every Sunday at 5 p.m. on MBC and will be available on local streaming platform Wavve. By Lee Si-jin ( sj_lee@heraldcorp.com )

Some 624,000 people joined K-pop supergroup BTS’ latest live concert series both online and offline, according to data compiled by the band’s agency Big Hit Music. During the four “Permission to Dance on Stage - Las Vegas” shows on April 8-9 and Friday and Saturday at Allegiant Stadium, nearly 200,000 fans -- 50,000 attendees per session -- showed up to the sold-out concerts. It was also estima...

SK Telecom’s artificial intelligence-powered digital remastering technology Supernova is going global in a new partnership with France’s Verimatrix, a leading provider of content security solutions, the Korean telecom giant said Monday. Supernova aims to recreate digital content by using AI-powered colorization tool, called DeOldify. The technology has already been widely used in remastering cla...