16 people hospitalized in river cruise boat accident in Seoul

SEOUL -- 16 people were injured and received medical treatment after a river cruise boat carrying 146 crashed into a bridge pier in Seoul. River cruise boats on Seoul's Han River, the river that flows from the eastern part of the city out to the West Sea, are a popular tourist attraction. The boats are especially popular after sunset as the cruise experience offers sightseeing tourists beautiful scenery of Seoul's nightscapes. According to Seoul's emergency headquarters

September 21, 2023

[INTERVIEW] ​Elderly people soothe loneliness with AI companion robots

SEOUL -- An 84-year-old woman rocks her body from side to side while listening to a South Korean song "A Girl from Casba," sung by a robot caretaker. "What kind of a grandchild would entertain me like this one," the South Korean woman living in New York said with a huge smile on her face after singing along to the old Korean pop music. The doll-like robot spoke to Kang Deung-ja as a granddaughter would do to her grandmother. "Hyodol," the

September 21, 2023

S. Korean retail giants attract consumers with pre-cooked menus for autumn harvest festival ritual

SEOUL -- South Korean retail giants including Shinsegae have set out to attract busy city dwellers and housewives with pre-cooked or heat-and-eat menus that are used for a Confucian rite that is carried during the traditional Korean autumn harvest festival called "Chuseok." The three-day festival holidays are celebrated on August 15 of the lunar calendar. On Seollal, the Lunar New Year Day in Korean language, and Chuseok, non-Christian families normally prepare a table full o

September 21, 2023

Lecture platform Sebasi adopts Upstage's AI-based recommendation solution

SEOUL -- Sebasi, an education content brand that provides various types of lectures in South Korea, has adopted an artificial intelligence-based recommendation solution created by South Korea's AI technology developer Upstage. Users can discover popular lectures and information about speakers using the natural language conversation-based AI service. The South Korean lecture brand provides lectures by experts in different fields including art, technology, sociology, and health scien

September 20, 2023

[OPINION] The G20 Gathers Again

KENOSHA -- The Group of Twenty (G20), a forum of nineteen industrialized nations plus the European Union, has met this month at the Bahrat Mandapam conference center in New Delhi

September 20, 2023

S. Korea to set up new governance for systemization of immigration policies

SEOUL -- South Korea will set up new governance including structures and processes to systemize the country's fragmented immigration policies, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said during a conference in Seoul. In 2022, South Korea with a population of some 52 million had 2.13 million foreign residents and 9.9 percent (210,880) had acquired South Korean citizenship. The number of foreign residents has increased by about fourfold compared to 536,627 people in 2006. However, despite

September 20, 2023

Girl band NiziU completes two-month Japan tour

SEOUL -- NiziU, a nine-member Japanese girl band, has completed its Japan tour that started in July. The group attracted about 185,000 audience through 17 concerts in eight cities including Tokyo, Osaka, and Hokkaido. The band, which debuted in December 2020, was formed through the first season of "Nizi Project," an audition show launched by South Korea's entertainment powerhouse JYP Entertainment and Sony Music, a global music label based in Tokyo. The girls who we

September 20, 2023

Hyundai Mobis develops autonomous car parking system

SEOUL -- South Korea's car parts maker Hyundai Mobis has developed an upgraded version of the company's autonomous car parking system that allows vehicles to study its parking environment and place themselves in the right parking spot through a one-touch operation. The original version of Hyundai Mobis Parking System (MPS) was first introduced in 2021 to offer easy-to-use parking services for drivers who find it hard to park in tight parking spaces or compact parking lots. The

September 19, 2023

S. Korea to kick-start annual free influenza vaccination program

SEOUL -- In a bid to prevent the widespread of highly infectious and deadly seasonal influenza, South Korea will kick-start its annual national vaccination program designed to offer flu shots to young children and the elderly for free. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said that the national influenza (flu) vaccination program will begin from September 20 until April 30 next year. The target groups for this year's flu vaccination program are children aged 6 mon

September 19, 2023

Broken EV chargers take average of 3 days to be repaired in S. Korea: data

SEOUL -- According to data released by the environment ministry, it took an average of about three days to fix a broken electric vehicle charger. South Korea has a rapidly growing number of EVs but charging infrastructure is not growing as fast as the clean energy vehicle market. As of 2022, there were some 400,000 clean energy vehicles registered in South Korea where some 5.5 million vehicles roam the roads. The number of registered clean energy vehicles, mostly EVs, increased by 68

September 19, 2023