Most Popular
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Yoon's approval rating plunges to all-time low
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Bae Doo-na shares portraying Korean identity in Hollywood's 'Rebel Moon'
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S. Korea votes in favor of Palestinian bid for UN membership
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[From the Scene] Monks, Buddhists hail return of remains of Buddhas
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Medical schools granted enrollment quota flexibility for next year
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Yoon offers first one-on-one meeting with opposition leader next week
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France rejects opening Paris flight routes to T'way Air, deals blow to Korean Air merger
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Chinese man behind drug scam targeting teens nabbed in Cambodia
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Iran fires air defense batteries in provinces as sound of explosions heard near Isfahan
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Police find more evidence of murder-suicide in Paju hotel death case
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[Editorial] Dispute over regulations
The aftermath of the worst-ever server outage of Kakao Corp. over the weekend is still reverberating throughout the South Korean business and political sectors, with debates heating up over the scope of regulations for private firms. The fire, which broke out Saturday at the data center in Pangyo, south of Seoul, paralyzed a wide range of mobile services run by Kakao, including the country’s biggest mobile messenger KakaoTalk. The service outage, which lasted for more than 10 hours, caused
Oct. 20, 2022
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[Editorial] Trace smuggled money
The prosecution raided the headquarters and several affiliates of Ssangbangwool Group on Monday. The group allegedly handed dollar bills worth tens or thousands of millions of won to each of about 60 employees and made them take flights to China in 2019 with the money. When a Korean takes foreign currency in excess of $10,000 out of the country, he or she must declare it to customs, but the Ssangbangwool employees did not. They are said to have concealed dollar bills inside books, cosmetic cases
Oct. 19, 2022
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[Editorial] Perils of the wired nation
Kakao Corp., which runs the country’s biggest mobile messenger KakaoTalk, suffered its worst-ever server outage over the weekend, which paralyzed messaging and other mobile services, illustrating the immense danger that could hit a tightly interconnected society when things go wrong. KakaoTalk’s text, photo and video message services were disrupted after a fire broke out at the data center in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. The blaze at the Pangyo data center, ope
Oct. 18, 2022
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[Editorial] Time to answer
The results of an inspection by the Board of Audit and Inspection into the incident in which a South Korean was killed by North Korean soldiers in the West Sea are shocking. The government didn't even attempt to rescue Lee Dae-jun, an employee of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, after knowing that he was found in the North Korean naval territory. The Korea Coast Guard received a report 51 minutes past noon on Sept. 21, 2020, that he went missing from a ministry fishery guidance ship.
Oct. 17, 2022
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[Editorial] Impact of higher rates
The Bank of Korea raised its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points to 3 percent on Wednesday. The eighth hike since August last year sent the rate to the 3 percent range for the first time in 10 years. The so-called “big-step” rate increase came as the central bank had few other alternatives in the face of stubbornly high inflation and the local currency’s slide against the US dollar that could put extra upward pressure on import prices. South Korea’s consumer prices
Oct. 14, 2022
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[Editorial] Going against innovation
These days it is common practice to use online property platforms to get easy access to information on a vast amount of available apartments, houses and other property listings. Landlords can lease homes via online platforms accessible by potential tenants no matter where they are. Then a law which will stunt this trendy mode of business is looming on the horizon. Kim Byung-wook, a National Assembly member of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, proposed a bill to revise the Realtors A
Oct. 13, 2022
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[Editorial] Irrelevant dispute
In South Korea, calling something “pro-Japanese” carries a highly negative connotation, as it brings back the image of the treacherous Koreans who had cooperated with imperial Japan, which occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945. Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, stirred up a hornet’s nest Friday by branding the joint drill on the East Sea involving South Korea, the US and Japan as a “pro-Japanese act and pro-Japanese national
Oct. 12, 2022
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[Editorial] Green pandemonium
The previous administration under President Moon Jae-in pushed an unreasonable nuclear phase-out policy and expanded renewable energy hastily. Irregularities suspected of being committed under the pretext of environment-friendliness are now coming into light. According to Yun Chang-hyun, a National Assembly member of the ruling People Power Party, the Office for Government Policy Coordination of Prime Minister’s Secretariat under the Moon administration probed solar and other power generat
Oct. 11, 2022
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[Editorial] Perfect storm
South Korea’s economic indicators keep turning red but policymakers have been slow to come up with a convincing strategy to tackle the mounting problems. Instead, they are repeating the same mantra that the country is outside the approaching storm. Optimists, including government officials, hold the view that the country is not engulfed by a fiery economic crisis -- at least for now -- and is relatively well prepared for possible shocks. But pessimists argue that there are plenty of signs
Oct. 10, 2022
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[Editorial] Substantial response
The South Korean military and United States Forces Korea each fired two ground-to-ground missiles into the eastern sea of South Korea on Wednesday, a day after North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Army Tactical Missile System missiles hit mock targets precisely and the drill demonstrated the two allies’ combined deterrence capability, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. On Tuesday, about 10 hours after the North fired the IRBM, the air forces of Sou
Oct. 7, 2022
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[Editorial] Too many political footballs
The Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s first parliamentary audit is quickly sinking into an abrasive political battlefield where unproductive wrangling between rival parties obscures the real issues that matter to the public and the country. Although people tend to pin little hope on the parliamentary inspection, which started Tuesday and is scheduled to run through Oct. 24, what played out on the first day at the National Assembly was still disappointing. In fact, South Korean lawmakers are n
Oct. 6, 2022
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[Editorial] No sanctuary in probe
Former President Moon Jae-in reportedly refused to receive the Board of Audit and Inspection's written investigation late last month in connection with the incident of North Korean soldiers shooting dead a South Korean government employee in the western sea. Then the board requested a written inquiry in an email to the office of Moon's secretary, which is said to have returned it Friday. Lee Dae-jun, an official of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, went missing on duty from a monit
Oct. 5, 2022
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[Editorial] Collateral damage
Twitch, a popular game streaming platform, dropped its maximum video quality in South Korea on Friday from 1080p to 720p, intensifying disputes over the country’s network usage fee. In a related move, other global platforms such as YouTube and Netflix are expected to stage a tough fight over the fee with local internet service providers. Twitch, a unit of Amazon, said in an update announcement Thursday that its operating cost in South Korea has been on the rise and the trend appears to be
Oct. 4, 2022
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[Editorial] Dispute on price controls
The South Korean government is now running a pilot program of the delivery unit price indexation system -- an interlocking price adjustment system for the cost of goods delivered, chiefly designed to help protect small businesses when they handle orders from big companies. But there is a dispute over whether it undermines free market principles, especially concerning artificial price control by the government. Under the system when there is, for instance, a big change in the price of raw materia
Sept. 30, 2022
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[Editorial] Abide by principles
In response to the controversy that broke out over the use of foul language during his recent visit to New York, President Yoon Suk-yeol said that untrue news reports undermining the US alliance are endangering South Koreans. He maintains that the news reports on his remarks are not true, so a probe is needed to uncover the truth. MBC is the only media outlet to have recorded the video of Yoon speaking to his entourage while exiting the Global Fund conference in New York on Sept. 22. At that tim
Sept. 29, 2022
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[Editorial] Meaning of family
A fresh round of disputes is erupting over the legal definition of family in South Korea, as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has suddenly ditched its plan to allow for more diverse forms of families. The ministry recently decided to withdraw its support for revising the Framework Act on Healthy Families aimed at expanding the legal definition of the family to include cohabiting couples, Rep. Chung Kyung-hee from the ruling People Power Party said Friday. It is regrettable that the min
Sept. 28, 2022
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[Editorial] Populism again
The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea is pushing a bill to return half of bus and subway fares that the people will pay for five months from Aug. 1 to Dec. 31 this year. In a bid to ease the economic burden on the working class, the government and ruling People Power Party are considering increasing income tax deductions for public transportation expenses. Then the Democratic Party upped the ante by coming up with the cash handout bill Proposed by Kim Sung-whan, chief policymaker of the
Sept. 27, 2022
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[Editorial] Foul language
President Yoon Suk-yeol returned home Saturday, wrapping up his three-nation trip that covered two important events. One was the state funeral of the Queen Elizabeth II in London, and the second was holding summits with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Both events turned out to be less than desirable. And something unexpected also took place, taking Seoul's political scene by storm. In a bad start to his trip, Yoon failed to visit the queen while she was lyi
Sept. 26, 2022
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[Editorial] Green nuclear energy
The government has worked to officially classify nuclear power generation as an environment-friendly economic activity. The Ministry of Environment on Tuesday disclosed a draft revision to the national green taxonomy, called K-taxonomy, that includes atomic power generation on the list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. It is a reasonable decision. Carbon dioxide emissions from using atomic energy to generate 1 kilowatt hour of power amounts to 12 grams, the same amount of emiss
Sept. 23, 2022
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[Editorial] Chronic problems
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Monday pointed out a set of key issues confronting South Korea at large in its latest report, offering suggestions that deserve full attention from policymakers of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. In the 2022 OECD Economic Survey of Korea, the organization laid out its predictions about the country’s economic conditions going forward. It forecast Korea’s gross domestic product growth would stay in the low 2 percent range n
Sept. 22, 2022