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Lee Kyung-min

Korea Times AI content 2 team Reporter

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South Korea

Gyeonggi Province expands funding to upgrade migrant worker facilities

Faced with a shrinking domestic workforce and a chronic labor shortage across its industrial heartland, Korea’s most populous province is deploying financial incentives to get small manufacturers to improve conditions for foreign workers. Gyeonggi Province, the sprawling manufacturing belt that encircles Seoul, said Wednesday that it selected 15 small- and medium-sized enterprises for its "Happy Workplaces" initiative. The designated companies will receive corporate grants of up to 10 million won ($7,200) each. The money is explicitly earmarked to upgrade the basic facilities that affect the daily lives of migrant workers: renovating drafty on-site dormitories, upgrading cafeterias and installing safety equipment on hazardous factory floors. The incentive program, co-managed with the Gyeonggi Provincial Job Foundation, arrives amid an intensifying national debate over the treatment of migrant laborers. Korea relies heavily on low-skilled foreign workers to sustain its factory lines and agricultural sectors. Yet grassroots labor advocacy groups have long documented substandard housing

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Gyeonggi Province expands funding to upgrade migrant worker facilities
Korean Heritage

Pavilion that inspired ‘Chunhyang’ named Korean National Treasure

It has stood for four centuries as a monument to Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) architecture, a scenic gathering place for the region’s poets and the literary backdrop to Korea’s most enduring romance. On Wednesday, the Cultural Heritage Administration officially elevated the Gwanghanru Pavilion in the southwestern city of Namwon to the status of National Treasure. Long celebrated as "Honam Jeilru" — the premier pavilion of the Honam, or Jeolla region, in southwestern Korea — the sprawling wooden structure has been recognized for its exceptional architectural innovation and its deep roots in Korean cultural history. While its earliest iteration was built in 1419 by famed chief state councilor Hwang Hui during a period of political exile, the pavilion was burned to the ground in 1597 during the Japanese invasion. The current structure dates to 1626, when it was rebuilt by Namwon’s magistrate, Shin Gam. For the next 400 years, local communities continuously maintained and preserved the site, leaving a remarkably intact record of early 17th-century craftsmanship. To literary scholars,

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Pavilion that inspired ‘Chunhyang’ named Korean National Treasure
Companies

Celltrion secures FDA’s 1st interchangeable status for Rituximab biosimilar

A key cancer treatment developed by Celltrion has become the first rituximab biosimilar to receive interchangeability status from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a designation expected to strengthen its position in one of the world’s most competitive drug markets. Celltrion said Wednesday that its blood cancer treatment Truxima (rituximab) has been granted interchangeability status by the FDA, marking the first time a rituximab biosimilar has received such recognition in the United States. The company said the designation allows Truxima to be substituted for its reference biologic without requiring a new prescription, under conditions permitted by U.S. law, and confirms no clinically meaningful differences in safety or effectiveness. The FDA decision also grants Truxima exclusivity tied to its status as the first interchangeable biosimilar in its class, according to the company. Truxima is approved in the United States for all adult indications held by the reference product, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis and m

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Celltrion secures FDA’s 1st interchangeable status for Rituximab biosimilar
Companies

OB Beer donates drinking water to vulnerable groups as temperatures soar

As early-summer heat intensifies across Korea, OB Beer is expanding its disaster relief efforts, providing more than 31,000 bottles of eco-friendly bottled water to support vulnerable groups facing heightened risk of heat-related illness. OB Beer said Wednesday it has delivered OB Water, a disaster relief bottled water product, in partnership with the Hope Bridge Korea Disaster Relief Association, to help people most exposed to extreme heat. The company said the water distributed this year comes from a prior donation to Hope Bridge and is being used to prevent heat-related illness and support hydration for people with disabilities and individuals experiencing homelessness. On June 11, about 8,600 bottles were delivered to the Daegu branch of the Korea Spinal Cord Injury Association. On June 22, about 23,000 bottles were delivered to the Korea Homeless Facilities Association. The shipment to homeless shelters is being distributed through a hub in Incheon, reaching facilities across Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, Incheon, Gangwon Province and Jeju. OB Water is produced in collaboration with Sansu

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
OB Beer donates drinking water to vulnerable groups as temperatures soar
South Korea

Seoul adds rest stop on Olympic Expressway to prevent drowsy driving

Driving the Olympic Expressway, the concrete artery that hugs the southern bank of the Han River, has long meant enduring some of Korea’s most grueling urban traffic jams. Unlike the country’s expansive cross-country expressways, which are punctuated by massive, food-court-laden service stations, Seoul’s intracity highways have lacked places for exhausted drivers to pull over. But municipal authorities are trying to turn a chronic highway hazard into a scenic destination. The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Facilities Corp. unveiled the city’s first observatory-style rest area Wednesday on the Olympic Expressway. Located near the southern end of Olympic Bridge in eastern Seoul, the facility marks a stark departure from the utilitarian concrete pull-offs that typically characterize highway infrastructure. Instead, the outpost combines mandatory highway safety features with a landscaped viewing platform specifically angled to capture the Han River’s famous sunsets. The project is part of a broader effort to curb driver fatigue on the city’s 27-mile riverside thorough

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Seoul adds rest stop on Olympic Expressway to prevent drowsy driving
South Korea

Local clinics, walking clubs: Korea’s new blueprint for grassroots health care

When Ulsan’s industrial shipyards bring in hundreds of foreign laborers, or when Jeju Island’s isolated rural villages see obesity rates climb, the national health care system can feel a world away. But a quiet transformation is taking place at the municipal level in Korea. Faced with sharp regional disparities and an aging demographic, local health clinics are shifting away from top-down medical directives. Instead, they are evolving into localized community hubs designed to integrate wellness into everyday neighborhood routines. In Ulsan's industrial Dong District, municipal authorities discovered that foreign laborers, subcontracted shipyard workers and small-scale vendors were entirely falling through the cracks of traditional hospital networks. In response, the local clinic launched a mobile health initiative that partnered with migrant centers, local merchant associations and university clinics. By bringing checkups directly to factory dormitories, worker shelters and night-shift workers, the city successfully brought preventative chronic disease monitoring to traditionally un

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Local clinics, walking clubs: Korea’s new blueprint for grassroots health care
Travel & Food

Cracking down on hidden fees, Korea overhauls hotel rating system

Korea’s hospitality sector is facing its most significant regulatory shake-up in years, as the government moves to fundamentally reshape how the nation’s hotels earn their stars. The sweeping changes blend bureaucratic streamlining for hotel operators with aggressive new penalties designed to protect consumers from price gouging. Starting Wednesday, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will implement a comprehensive overhaul of its hospitality rating criteria, according to an official decree. The initiative replaces a convoluted, multitiered framework with a single, unified evaluation standard — a long-awaited response to an industry that hoteliers argued had grown out of step with a modern global tourism market. Under the new guidelines, the criteria used to judge everything from a modest budget property to a sprawling five-star luxury resort will be integrated into a standardized points system. The move is engineered to alleviate the substantial administrative and financial hurdles faced by operators, who previously had to navigate vastly different compliance rules depen

Jul 1, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Cracking down on hidden fees, Korea overhauls hotel rating system
Society

Gyeonggi Province scraps waiting period for migrant child care subsidies

For immigrant families navigating the grueling early months of relocation, economic survival often hinges on a simple question: Who will watch the children? In Korea, where a shifting demographic landscape has forced a dramatic rethink of immigration policy, Gyeonggi Province said Tuesday that it will immediately eliminate a contentious 90-day residency requirement that had blocked newly arrived foreign workers and residents from accessing child care subsidies. The sweeping policy shift, set to take effect in July, represents a calculated attempt by provincial authorities to close a glaring regulatory gap that had left children of migrant families vulnerable during their critical initial transition period. Previously, local ordinances in Gyeonggi Province — a massive economic engine enveloping Seoul that houses the country’s largest concentration of foreign workers — forced immigrant parents to pay for daycare entirely out of pocket until they reached the three-month mark, regardless of their legal registration status. Under the newly amended Gyeonggi Foreign Resident Support Ordi

Jun 30, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Gyeonggi Province scraps waiting period for migrant child care subsidies
Companies

SK Chemicals boosts decorative film flexibility with new SKYPEL material

SK Chemicals has introduced a highly durable, flexible decorative sheet for furniture and architectural finishes, part of a strategic push to deepen its presence in the home interior market. The company said Tuesday it developed a flexible decorative film using its elastic material SKYPEL in collaboration with Toray Advanced Materials. Hansol Homedeco applied the material to its existing Story Film product, improving processability and installation performance. The upgraded sheet retains the high gloss, transparency and color clarity of GAG PET films, which are widely used in premium furniture and interior finishing. GAG PET is a composite sheet material based on glycol-modified amorphous polyester that is valued for its visual clarity and surface quality. SK Chemicals said the key improvement comes from integrating SKYPEL, a thermoplastic polyester elastomer that combines rubber-like flexibility with the strength of engineering plastics. The material is known for heat resistance, mechanical strength, impact resistance and chemical stability. By adding SKYPEL to the existing structure, t

Jun 30, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
SK Chemicals boosts decorative film flexibility with new SKYPEL material
South Korea

Safety warning issued over toxic chemicals in imported kids' footwear

Safety tests on children's products sold through overseas online shopping platforms found dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals in some sandals and other items, prompting Seoul city officials to request the sale of the items be stopped. The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Tuesday that five of 21 children's products purchased from AliExpress, Temu and Shein failed to meet Korea's safety standards after inspections of summer footwear, toys and hats. The city said two pairs of children's sandals contained phthalate plasticizers at levels up to 284.6 times above the legal limit of 0.1 percent. Phthalates are chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and have been linked to endocrine disruption and reproductive health problems. The city said di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, one of the substances detected, is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a Group 2B possible human carcinogen. Another pair of children's shoes failed the inspection because it contained eight small detachable parts prohibited in products intended for children younger than 36 month

Jun 30, 2026By Lee Kyung-min
Safety warning issued over toxic chemicals in imported kids' footwear
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