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Society
Park gets enormous outpouring of fan support
Koreans showed tremendous support for swimmer Park Tae-hwan, who captured silver in the 400-meter freestyle in the London Olympics Saturday after a disqualification ruling was overturned. Despite having fallen short of his goal to earn a second straight gold in the 400m race following the first at the 2008 Beijing…
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Politics
N. Korean school wants professors from South
An elite university in North Korea funded by outside groups hopes South Korean professors will be allowed to join its staff despite thorny cross-border ties, its chancellor said recently. Park Chan-mo, the Korean-American chancellor of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), said the North would welcome the professors, as…
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Child pornography poorly monitored
The government has come under fire for its lax monitoring of child pornography, considered one of the root causes for surging crimes against minors. Public calls are growing for a stricter crackdown on child porn especially after it was found that a man who confessed to the murder of a…
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Society
Chin up, Marine Boy!
Olympic champ tears up after emotional roller coaster on Day 1 in London It was a rollercoaster ride for Korean swimmer Park Tae-hwan, nicknamed, “Marine Boy” after an old television cartoon. The 22-year-old Olympic champion was disqualified for some unclear reason in the 400-meter freestyle heat, then reinstated about four…
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Politics
Radio show sends pop songs to N. Korea
A South Korean radio music show has a mission of using English pop songs to deliver the message of freedom to North Koreans. “Our target audience is people inside North Korea,” Ohh Soon-wha, producer of “Pops Freedom” on the state broadcaster KBS, told The Korea Times, Tuesday. “We’re trying to…
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Hackers leak personal details of 9 million wireless users
Millions of mobile phone users face a potential security breach after hackers gained access to their personal data from telecommunications giant KT, police said Sunday. This provided a damning reminder that the country’s computer security defense is as porous as Swiss cheese. Investigators at the National Police Agency’s cyber terror…
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Society
Korean short stories for foreigners
A local publisher has released the first batch of renowned Korean short stories in both Korean and English in a bilingual series. Asia Publishers released the first 15 books in the local market Wednesday. Readers will soon be able to buy them on Amazon.com as well. The first set includes…
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Column
Korea at crossroads: back to Confucianism or further Westernization
Korean culture has typically been characterized as a unique hybrid of traditional Confucian values coupled with a modern, pragmatic and dynamic approach to the economy. Since the mid-1990s this balance has been shifting more clearly toward Westernization: workers’ productivity is slowly shifting to Western levels, car worker strikes are not…
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Politics
Is China-style reform afoot in NK?
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a splash this month by attending a concert featuring the American classic “My Way” in a surprising embrace of Western culture. Indeed, the twenty-something’s recent moves suggest he is following his own path. He raised eyebrows again this week when state media revealed the…
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Politics
‘China tortured activist with electric shocks’
Rep. Ha Tae-kyung of the ruling Saenuri Party disclosed Friday that Kim Young-hwan, freed last week after 114 days in a detention center in China, was tortured with electric shocks during his internment, citing Kim as his source. The reported human rights abuses of Kim and three other Korean activists…
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