The omicron caseload in Seoul has more than doubled to 456 on Monday from last week's 183 cases, the city government said. Omicron marks 0.2 percent of the total COVID-19 cases confirmed in Seoul so far. Omicron is highly likely to become the most prevalent COVID-19 variant in the city by late this month or February, Park Yoo-mi, a disease control official of the city government said. The city...

A trio of England-based veterans, including the high-scoring midfielder Ji So-yun, will try to lead South Korea to their first continental women's football title this month in India. The Korea Football Association (KFA) finalized the 23-player squad for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women's Asian Cup on Monday. Ji, South Korean football's all-time leading scorer with 59 goals in 131 ma...

KT Corp., a major South Korean mobile carrier, said Monday its internet protocol television (IPTV) services were disrupted for nearly an hour, just three months after the company suffered a major network outage. The company's Olleh TV services were interrupted from 10:42 p.m. to 11:40 p.m. on Sunday due to a technical glitch in the power supply device of the signal distributor, according to KT a...

South Korea's unification ministry said Monday it's closely watching a possible change in North Korea's anti-coronavirus policy, such as the lifting of its strict border closure, after Pyongyang's main newspaper said the country will shift to more "advanced" antivirus measures from the current control-focused approach. "We need to move to a better advanced, people-oriented epidemic work from one...

Bigman dropped by our studio and shared his story with us! Check it out! By Team Konnect Kim Min-jung ( minjung.kim@heraldcorp.com ) Jung Ji-eun ( jungje@heraldcorp.com ) Choi Jeong-yoon ( jychoi@heraldcorp.com ) Kim Jeong-ryul ( ryul@heraldcorp.com )

LG Electronics said Monday it has joined the IBM Quantum Network as a member to further explore its applications for quantum computing required in the field of artificial intelligence, connected cars, internet of things and robotics. LG Electronics, an electronics arm of South Korea‘s fourth-largest conglomerate, was the latest to take part in the alliance of over 170 entities. Those taking part...

Over 1,900 police detectives lost their qualification this year to lead investigations after refusing field assignments too long, the National Police Agency said Monday. Detectives are reviewed yearly for renewal of their qualifications under a system introduced in 2005. This year’s number of investigators losing their status is the highest since the system was introduced, the NPA said. The tot...

Samsung Display, the display panel maker arm of Samsung Electronics, said Monday its latest quantum-dot organic light emitting diode display technology was certified by evaluation services provider SGS. The QD-OLED, touted as the technology to support next-generation TV picture quality, had received three certifications for True Color Tones, Pure RGB Luminance and Ultrawide Viewing Angle upon pe...

Main opposition presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol said Monday that computer programming should be dealt with as a school subject that's more important than mathematics, English and Korean in order to meet a need for digital-savvy human resources. "I think it will only be possible to supply ample digital-savvy human capital to the market by allotting a greater weight to coding than those to th...

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co. (KSOE) said Monday it has received 1.33 trillion won ($1.1 billion) worth of ship orders. Korea Shipbuilding obtained three separate orders from shippers in Europe and Latin America to build four 16,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) container carriers, four 2,500-TEU container ships and one liquefied natural gas carrier, the company said in a sta...

SK Geocentric Co., a chemical materials unit of South Korean conglomerate SK Group, said Monday it will build a plastic waste recycling factory in South Korea jointly with a U.S. startup as part of efforts to advance its green business. SK Geocentric said it signed an initial terms agreement with Purecycle Technologies Inc., a Florida-based plastic recycling company, to construct a polypropylene...

Sales of short-term corporate bonds in South Korea jumped more than 20 percent in 2021 from a year earlier amid the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Monday. Local companies issued 1,243.7 trillion won ($1.04 trillion) worth of short-term bonds, up 20.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the data from the Korea Securities Depository (KSD). Short-term bonds refer to those that come due wi...

Fine dust plagued most parts of South Korea on Monday due to air stagnation caused by the high atmospheric pressure in the west, weather authorities said. As of 8 a.m., the density of ultrafine dust, called PM 2.5, had hit the "very bad" level for the greater Seoul area, North Chuncheong Province and the central city of Sejong, and the southeastern city of Daegu, according to the Comprehensive A...

Oh Young-soo of “Squid Game” won the best supporting actor in television category at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, held Monday, Korean time. Referred to as Player 001, Oh played an ordinary old man Oh Il-nam, who wished to have fun before his death, in the global sensation “Squid Game.” The 79-year-old actor was nominated for the best supporting actor prize along with Brett Goldstein of Apple T...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) pledges made to South Korea surged 42.3 percent in 2021 from a year earlier to reach an all-time high, data showed Monday. Foreigners pledged to invest $29.51 billion in South Korea in 2021, compared with $20.7 billion a year earlier, according to the data by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. The 2021 figure hit an all-time high, beating the previous re...