Cho Hee-yeon, superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, was given a 1 1/2-year prison sentence suspended for two years for abusing his power in the teacher hiring process. The conviction will remove Seoul's top education policy decisionmaker from his seat, unless a higher court overturns the decision. In the ruling, Cho's aide was given a 10-month prison term, suspended for two years. Cho's actions "undermined the transparency in the teacher employment process," whi

Social Affairs Jan. 27, 2023

South Korea's public pension reserve is set to run out from 2055, two years earlier than the previous projection, in the face of rapidly changing demographics coupled with slowing economic growth, according to officials on Friday. A Health Ministry committee on the financial projection of the National Pension Service announced that the reserves will be depleted by 2055 as the fund is expected to fall from 2041 onward. A depletion will force the working population to provide more than 26 per

Social Affairs Jan. 27, 2023

South Korean prosecutors said Thursday they have indicted 17 people on charges of distributing cannabis in the nation, where owning and using the substance are strictly prohibited. Among them were six scions of Korean chaebol families, a son of a high-ranking official, entrepreneurs, a musician and an entertainment agency chief, according to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, ending a monthslong probe since September 2022. According to local reports, the chaebol scions includ

Social Affairs Jan. 26, 2023

The Korea Herald is running a series of feature stories and interviews on the evolution and rise of drug crimes, insufficient support systems and young addicts’ stories in South Korea. This is the fourth installment. -- Ed. Former South Korean prosecutor Kim Hee-jun led a joint operation with the nation's spy agency for years in the late 2000s to capture a South Korean-Surinamese drug kingpin, serving as the basis for the popular Netflix series "Narco-Saints." Similar to t

Social Affairs Jan. 25, 2023

Na Kyung-won, a former four-term conservative lawmaker, said Wednesday that she would not run for the party leadership for the sake of unity in the ruling party, ending weeks of friction with President Yoon Suk Yeol's office that put pressure on her to withdraw. "I won't take part in the race for the People Power Party leadership at the upcoming national convention (in March)," Na told reporters at the headquarters of People Power Party in western Seoul. The judge-turned-seas

Politics Jan. 25, 2023

Fourteen crew members from a capsized cargo ship off southeastern Jeju Island were rescued in a joint search operation involving multiple coast guards as of early afternoon on Wednesday. Of the rescued people, nine remained unconscious as of 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Korea Coast Guard Region-Jeju, or the Jeju Coast Guard. Those rescued there were sent to Japan to get hospitalized, and Japanese authorities will take charge of investigating the cause of the accident, according to South

Social Affairs Jan. 25, 2023

A Siberian cold wave hit South Korea on Tuesday, causing temperatures to plunge across the country to the lowest points this winter, grounding flights and stranding traffic in some parts on the last day of the four-day Lunar New Year weekend. The most affected region was Jeju Island, where all 476 flights to and from the nation's southern island were axed, leaving some 43,000 passengers stranded, according to Jeju Regional Office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. "

Social Affairs Jan. 24, 2023

A South Korean court sided with the police agency's decision to punish a veteran police officer for verbally abusing a subordinate and having her run his personal errands, showed a court ruling Monday. Judges in the Seoul Administrative Court in December dismissed an officer's suit against the nation's chief of police to nullify a reprimand warning -- the lightest punishment on a six-tier scale -- handed down by the national police agency in March 2021. The court ruling indicated

Social Affairs Jan. 23, 2023

Prosecutors in South Korea demanded an arrest warrant on Thursday at around 12:40 a.m. for Kim Seong-tae, the former chairman of underwear maker Ssangbangwool who was returned home after fleeing for eight months, to look into links between Kim and President Yook Suk Yeol's political opponent. Kim went through 13 hours of interrogation by prosecutors in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, beginning Tuesday afternoon. The interrogation resumed at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. The crime ring member-turned-entre

Social Affairs Jan. 19, 2023

A man rammed his car into a convenience store in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, after his request to buy a plastic bag a few months before was rejected by the store owner, police said Monday. The unnamed driver was arrested by police at the scene in the southern region of South Korea. Police are seeking charges of special destruction of private property and retaliatory crime. At around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, the driver slammed the car into the store, damaging some items there. With the lights p

Social Affairs Jan. 16, 2023

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Sunday it has confirmed that two Korean passengers were on board an aircraft that had crashed near an airport in central Nepal. "We have confirmed that two Korean nationals were on the list of passengers in a passenger aircraft that crashed in Nepal," said a Foreign Ministry official. "We are working to check whether the passengers were on board and the damage caused by the crash." The ministry added it has dispatched an official of th

Foreign Affairs Jan. 15, 2023

An arrest warrant was issued for a 47-year-old woman in Incheon on Friday for failing to register her mother's death for over two years, keeping her body in the house where they had lived together to collect her social security benefits. Police are seeking charges of concealing and possessing a corpse, a crime in South Korea that can be punished by imprisonment of up to seven years. The warrant was issued by the Incheon District Court on Friday. This comes as the welfare authorities grew su

Social Affairs Jan. 15, 2023

An appellate court on Thursday found the South Korean state partially guilty of secondary victimization of Sewol ferry victims' bereaved families. The Seoul High Court ordered the government and now-defunct Sewol ferry operator Chonghaejin Marine to pay over a combined 88 billion won ($70.6 million) to people who lost their loved ones in the 2014 ferry sinking. The size of the compensation went up by 15.7 billion won compared with the previous ruling. This includes 1.06 billion won in the s

Social Affairs Jan. 12, 2023

SEJONG -- China said Korean and Japanese nationals will be required to have transit visas when transiting through a Chinese airport as of Wednesday, extending its apparent retaliation against Seoul's quarantine mandate on travelers from China that requires them to submit a PCR test upon arrival. Citing "discriminatory entry restrictions" by Korea and Japan, China also said travelers from two countries will not be allowed to get visas at points of entry in China. The announcement w

Social Affairs Jan. 11, 2023

SEONGNAM, Gyeonggi Province -- Main opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung appeared at a prosecutors office for questioning Tuesday, denying the bribery charges against him and accused authorities for pushing ahead with "a politically motivated investigation." "Prosecutors have already made a conclusion to indict me whatever the circumstances might be," Lee told the media as he was entering the district public prosecutors' office in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. Calling th

Politics Jan. 10, 2023