• Society

    ‘Medical tourism is next big thing’

    Korea Tourism Organization (KTO)’s chief Lee Charm sees medical tourism as the next big thing for the nation’s tourism industry. “The prospect for medical tourism is fantastic. The area of medical service has unlimited growth potential.” Lee said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “Korea’s medical services are…

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  • Business

    English divide deepens further

    The massive gulf between the rich and poor contributes to a dramatic disparity in English skills, government researchers said Monday. With the economy in decay, low-income earners are unable to pay for private language courses while the quality of public education just isn’t cutting it. This marginalizes them in society…

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  • Smuggler arrested for helping N. Korea launch cyber attack

    Police have arrested a smuggler for allegedly helping North Korean intelligence attempt cyber terrorism on government computer networks through online game software. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Sunday that the 39-year-old man, surnamed Cho, is under investigation for purchasing 10 versions of gambling software with malicious code from North…

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  • High TOEIC scorers not fluent in English

    Park Jai-sang, a 27-year-old college graduate in Seoul, is nicknamed a “TOEIC genius” among his peers because every time he takes the English proficiency test, he scores higher than 900. Considering his score, his level of proficiency should be excellent. When he applied to work at a major trading company,…

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  • Society

    Calls mount to tackle favoritism for athletes

    Baseball players from Kyungki and Paichai high schools compete during a national tournament held in Seoul. The recent controversy over academic privileges enjoyed by award winning athletes is touching off a debate about reform of their admission, attendance and graduation from top universities. The nation’s figure skating heroine Kim Yu-na…

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  • Society

    Prolonged Syrian crisis widens gap among people

    DAMASCUS, June 3 (Xinhua) — The longer the current crisis in Syria lingers, the wider the gap goes among the Syrian people, as the topic of who is with and who is against the government has become the main talk of the country. The 15-month bloody unrest continues with no…

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  • Society

    Turkish pianist accused of insulting Islam

    Fazıl Say, a Turkish pianist and composer with an international career who is facing a court case in Turkey for insulting Islam on account of reposting a message written by someone else on Twitter, has said, “It is unbelievable that it was made into a court case.” In Say’s much-debated…

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  • Society

    Are privileges for elite athletes necessary evil?

    This is the first in a series of articles aimed at helping determine whether the current system of rewarding outstanding athletes with privileges is still relevant or needs changing. — ED. Does Korea need to keep the current “old” system of awarding outstanding athletes with exemptions from mandatory military services…

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  • Mubarak given life sentence for killing protesters

    The Cairo criminal court has sentenced former president Hosni Mubarak to life imprisonment on Saturday (June 2) as he was declared guilty for deaths of protesters during an uprising in January 2011. Mubarak has been under arrest at the International Medical Center near Cairo. Mubarak, his two sons, former Interior…

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  • Society

    More grownup children live with parents

    Koreans once held that when children became adults, they supported their parents. However, this is no longer the general trend, with more aging parents having to support adult sons and daughters, according to a Seoul City report Friday. The number of people in their 30s or 40s still living at…

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