With one box checked, Paulo Bento has quickly shifted his focus to the next goal to achieve. Under his tutelage, South Korea have already booked a ticket to Qatar for this year's FIFA World Cup with two qualifying matches left. Few would have batted an eye if Bento had chosen to take his foot off the pedal for the rest of the current qualifying campaign. Instead, Bento on Monday called up most ...

The 8, a member of K-pop boy group Seventeen, will release his fourth individual single sung in Chinese this week, his agency said Monday. The single, "Hai Cheng," will hit online music services across the world at 11 a.m. Friday, Pledis Entertainment said. It marks the first individual song from the member in about 11 months, after he dropped "Side By Side" in April last year. The title "Hai ...

K-pop supergroup BTS' three live concerts in Seoul have attracted 2.46 million fans both on and offline, the group's agency said Monday. The "BTS Permission To Dance On Stage - Seoul" shows were held at Seoul Olympic Stadium on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday nights, with the first and third-night shows streamed live online and the second-night concert available for "live-viewing" at movie theater...

South Korea's exports of information and communication technology (ICT) products soared 24 percent in February on the back of strong global demand for chips and displays, data showed Monday. Outbound shipments of ICT products reached $18.88 billion last month, up 23.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. The figure represents the largest ever ...

Even with a World Cup spot secured, South Korea will not mess around in their next two qualifying matches, with many of their biggest stars named to the national team Monday. Head coach Paulo Bento unveiled his 25-man roster for South Korea's final two World Cup qualifiers scheduled for this month. Captain Son Heung-min, leading goal scorer for Tottenham Hotspur is back in the mix, as is Wolver...

HMM Co., South Korea's leading container shipper, said Monday it has decided to temporarily suspend two Far East shipping routes in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The decision affects HMM's shipping routes between South Korea's southeastern port of Busan and Russia's Far East ports of Vostochny and Vladivostok. "The temporary suspension of bookings for the routes is inevitable as the...

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's transition committee aims to hold a signboard hanging ceremony as early as this week to mark its official launch, Yoon's spokesperson said Monday. Past transition committees have hung their signboards within seven to 10 days of the election and in the final stages of their composition, the spokesperson, Rep. Kim Eun-hye of the main opposition People Power Party, s...

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is expected to appoint a special inspector charged with preventing corruption involving top officials and presidential relatives after the position was left vacant in the current Moon Jae-in administration. The position was first introduced in 2014 under the Park Geun-hye administration, but it has been vacant since May 2015. The main opposition People Power Party (...

The South Korean baseball league announced Monday its 10 clubs will jointly organize a farewell tour for the retiring star Lee Dae-ho this season. The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) said it wanted to celebrate Lee's accomplishments over the past two decades in the top league and in international competitions for the national team. Lee, who will turn 40 in June, will become the second player ...

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol will visit a traditional market Monday to meet with pandemic-hit small merchants in his first public outreach since his election, his spokesperson said. Yoon will return to the market he visited last November during the presidential campaign to keep his promise to the merchants there to visit them again after his election, the spokesperson, Rep. Kim Eun-hye of the m...

South Korea and the United States have detected signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system test as early as this week, informed sources here said Monday. Such indications emerged after Seoul and Washington accused Pyongyang on Friday of having tested a new ICBM system on Feb. 27 and March 5 ahead of a full-range ICBM test. The North h...

WASHINGTON -- US special envoy for North Korea Sung Kim has called on China to condemn North Korea's continued missile launches, the state department said Sunday. Kim also called on China to help bring North Korea back to dialogue in a phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart, Liu Xiaoming, according to department spokesperson Ned Price. The call was made Thursday, the same day the Unite...

More than half of South Koreans expect President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol to do well on state affairs, a survey showed Monday. According to the survey of 1,018 adults conducted by Realmeter last Thursday and Friday, 52.7 percent of respondents expect Yoon to do a good job on state affairs. In contrast, 41.2 percent say they do not expect Yoon to do well on state affairs, the survey showed. The remai...

South Korea’s total fertility rate hit a record low last year as the number of childbirths continued to fall, data showed, underlining the country’s bleak demographic situation. The country’s total fertility rate - the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime - came to 0.81 last year, down from 0.84 the previous year, according to Statistics Korea. It marked the lowest since ...

South Korea reported more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases for a third consecutive day Monday as the virus wave, fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant, continued to grip the nation. The country added 309,790 new COVID-19 infections, the majority of which coming from local transmissions, putting the total caseload at 6,866,222, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said....