South Korea - The Korea Times

Tokyo hotel sued for denying stay to Korean resident of Japan over refusal to use Japanese name

A Tokyo hotel is facing legal action after refusing accommodation to a Korean-Japanese woman who declined to use a Japanese name instead of her Korean name. According to a report Friday by The Mainichi, the hotel also unlawfully demanded to see the guest's passport, despite her being a legal resident of Japan. The woman, identified as a third-generation Korean resident in Japan and university professor living in Kobe, filed a lawsuit at the Kobe District Court. She is seeking 2.2 million yen ($1,530) in damages against the operator of the hotel, located in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward. According to the report, the incident occurred in September last year when the woman booked a room online at Hotel B in Shinjuku using her Korean name and home address in Kobe. Upon checking in, hotel staff requested her passport. Under Japan’s Inns and Hotels Act, only foreign nationals without a registered address in Japan are required to present their passports. Since the woman is a resident of Japan, the request was both unnecessary and in violation of the law. She explained that she was born and raised i

May 23, 2025By Hankookilbo

Tokyo hotel sued for denying stay to Korean resident of Japan over refusal to use Japanese name

Teacher found dead at Jeju middle school after repeated complaints from student's family

A middle school teacher in Jeju Island was found dead on the school campus early Thursday after allegedly facing sustained pressure and complaints from the family of a student, prompting investigations by both the police and education authorities. According to Jeju police and the Jeju Provincial Office of Education, the body of a teacher in his 40s was discovered at around 12:46 a.m. inside a school building. The teacher had worked at the school for more than 20 years. The search began after his wife found a suicide note in the school’s faculty office and reported him missing. Police officers located his body during a search of the school grounds. Authorities believe the teacher had been under significant stress due to ongoing complaints from the family of a student in his homeroom class. He had provided guidance to the student, who was frequently absent from school, but the student’s family filed multiple grievances with the school and the provincial education office. The family also directly contacted the teacher on his personal phone, repeatedly questioning his conduct and accusing

May 23, 2025By Hankookilbo

Teacher found dead at Jeju middle school after repeated complaints from student's family

State agency to remove anti-LGBTQ+ bias in Korean Sign Language

The National Institute of Korean Language is set to expand its upcoming Korean Sign Language (KSL) dictionary by incorporating LGBTQ+-related expressions. The government-affiliated institution also plans to review existing KSL terms to identify and address any content that may be discriminatory or hateful toward sexual minorities. The decision follows years of criticism that KSL — which has held equal legal status to spoken Korean since 2016 — contains overly sexualized and degrading portrayals of sexual minorities. “The institute will conduct a study on hateful and discriminatory KSL expressions and enlist expressions related to the LGBTQ+ community in the KSL dictionary in 2027,” the institute said Thursday. Launched in February, the KSL dictionary was designed to reflect the visual and linguistic characteristics of the sign language as actually used by deaf Koreans and to improve its accessibility. The online dictionary includes videos and explanations for over 1,000 terms. However, it faced criticism for omitting terms related to the LGBTQ+ community, such as “gay” and

May 23, 2025By Lee Hae-rin

State agency to remove anti-LGBTQ+ bias in Korean Sign Language

Working 3 jobs a week: More Koreans forced into multiple gigs

Working six nights a week from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. at a Coupang logistics center, Park Min-seung (alias), 54, returns home at 4:50 a.m., naps for about two hours, and heads out again by 7 a.m. to work at a grocery store until 10:30 a.m. From 11 a.m., he starts his third job delivering packages door-to-door in a nearby apartment complex. His grueling schedule ends around 1 p.m. — when most people are just finishing lunch — and he snatches another few hours of rest before repeating the cycle. Park, a father of two, works approximately 73 hours a week, a figure that doesn’t reflect the added burden of late-night shifts, which labor law calculates at 1.3 times normal hours for health risk purposes. “It was exhausting at first,” he said, “but now my body has adjusted.” Despite his heavy workload, Park’s pay barely keeps up with inflation. His main job at Coupang is technically stable under a fixed-term contract, but the hourly wage increased by only 100 won (7 cents) this year, now just 40 won above the minimum wage. "The price of bread and instant noodles has jumped, but wages b

May 22, 2025By Hankookilbo

Working 3 jobs a week: More Koreans forced into multiple gigs

Seoul subway trains to begin running from 5 a.m. starting August

Subway trains in Seoul will begin running from 5 a.m. starting August, bringing forward their starting time by 30 minutes to help facilitate commutes for early workers, the Seoul metropolitan government said Wednesday. Previously, early commuters were required to take intracity buses to get to work, but the new schedule will help them easily transfer from buses to subways in the early hours of the day, city officials said. The new timetable only applies to subway routes in Seoul, they added. Under the plan, the final subway train will also arrive 30 minutes earlier to secure time for the train's maintenance work. The city plans to discuss with the Korea Railroad Corp. (KORAIL) and the Airport Railroad (AREX) to apply the earlier schedule to subway trains in the greater Seoul area. The operation of late-night self-driving buses will also be expanded to 10 busiest stops in the city during early hours, according to city officials.

May 21, 2025By Yonhap

Seoul subway trains to begin running from 5 a.m. starting August

Why so hot, so soon? Sudden summer heat leaves residents, visitors seeking shelter

Wednesday wasn’t the best day to visit Seoul for Park Seo-kyung, a high school sophomore visiting from Goheung, South Jeolla Province, on a school trip. “We arrived in Seoul yesterday, and it’s so much more humid and hot compared to where I'm from,” she told The Korea Times. “I wanted to spend more time outdoors since we came all the way here, but the heat makes it tough.” Even long-time Seoul residents found it to be a sweltering day. Morning temperatures on Wednesday hit 23 degrees Celsius, the highest May morning low ever recorded in the capital since modern weather observations began in 1907. At around 11 a.m. near Gwanghwamun, a public square located in Jongno District, temperatures hovered at 26.6 degrees Celsius, six degrees higher than the previous day. Cheonggye Stream, usually bustling with residents and tourists enjoying a morning stroll, was nearly empty. One of the few braving the heat was Kim Si-yoo, a 21-year-old student who had just arrived from Boston, wearing long sleeves and pants, unprepared for Korea's sudden summer-like weather. “I just got here yesterda

May 21, 2025By Park Ung

Why so hot, so soon? Sudden summer heat leaves residents, visitors seeking shelter

Korea posts slowest wage job growth in Q4 on construction slump, youth employment decline

Korea added the smallest number of wage jobs in the fourth quarter of 2024, mainly due to a slump in the construction sector and a continued decline in youth employment, government data showed Wednesday. The number of paid employee positions stood at 20.9 million as of November 2024, up 153,000 from the same period a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea. The figure represents a sharp slowdown from the 246,000 jobs added in the previous quarter. It also marks the smallest quarterly gain since Statistics Korea began compiling such data in 2018. "Job losses were pronounced in the construction sector due to the sluggish market," an agency official said on condition of anonymity. "For workers in their 20s and 40s, both demographic and economic factors contributed to the decline in employment." The modest increase was mainly driven by employment growth in the health and social welfare sectors, as well as in associations, repairs and personal services. A significant share of new positions was taken by older workers, reflecting the country's aging population. By age group, the

May 21, 2025By Yonhap

Korea posts slowest wage job growth in Q4 on construction slump, youth employment decline

Cheonan to hold culture expo in June

The city of Cheonan will host a culture exhibition utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) technology next month. The South Chungcheong provincial city officials said Tuesday that Cheonan will host and organize the 2025 Cheonan K-Culture Expo with the Independence Hall of Korea and the Cheonan Foundation for Arts and Culture starting June 4. The five-day event is the third of its kind to showcase the country’s pop culture through exhibitions, performances and digital content. For this year’s event, the city has decided to expand its previous five exhibition halls to seven. All the exhibition halls are expected to feature AI, AR, interactive content and extended reality (XR) to strengthen visitors’ experience in immersion. Last year, it showcased digital content related to food, webtoons, beauty and hangeul (the Korean alphabet), and this year, it has added visual and game content. In the beauty content exhibition hall, visitors can experience personalized cosmetic products tailored to their skin type using AI technology. In the hall for visual content, visi

May 21, 2025By Jhoo Dong-chan

Walk 4 Paws: Ex-marine’s Seoul-Busan trek pays tribute to military dogs

For most, the journey from Seoul to Busan takes only a few hours by train. But for Lee Seong-won, it took 11 days and tens of thousands of steps — each one a tribute to the nation’s four-legged heroes: military dogs. Lee, who serves as the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs’ spokesperson for foreign media, launched the “Walk4Paws Korea” campaign as a personal initiative. From May 2 to 12, the 37-year-old walked from Seoul National Cemetery to the U.N. Memorial Cemetery in the southern port city of Busan, aiming to take one million steps and raise one million won in honor of military dogs. After completing the 560-kilometer journey, he donated the funds on May 13 to the Republic of Korea Army military working dog training center in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, the nation’s official institution for military dogs. "This project was something I took on as an individual citizen, not in any official capacity," Lee told The Korea Times. "I wanted to extend our nation’s gratitude to a group that is too often forgotten — the silent, four-pawed heroes who served alongside us

May 21, 2025By Lee Hyo-jin

Walk 4 Paws: Ex-marine’s Seoul-Busan trek pays tribute to military dogs

InterviewSookmyung Women's University embraces K-culture, diversity for global growth

Sookmyung Women’s University, the nation’s first private educational institution for women established with royal patronage, is ramping up its efforts to become a global center for education, specializing in Hallyu and dedicated to nurturing the next generation of K-culture experts. “We are trying to differentiate ourselves as a Hallyu-specialized university,” Sookmyung Women’s University President Moon Si-yeun said during an interview May 12 with The Korea Times. Hallyu, or the Korean wave, refers to the global popularity of South Korean culture that has dramatically risen since the 1990s. “We need to think about why more foreign students are coming to study in Korea. There are over 200,000 exchange students from overseas in the country and most of them cite their love for Korean culture,” Moon said. However, the country lacks infrastructure and academic background dedicated to the evolving K-culture boom, she explained. “Korea needs to properly promote Hallyu content to students who came here because of their interests in the Korean culture, and that should be the reaso

May 21, 2025By Lee Hae-rin

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