GIMHAE, South Korea, Sept. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – A Guinean man stranded for nearly five months in a departure holding room at Busan’s Gimhae International Airport has filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission, alleging mistreatment while awaiting a chance to apply for refugee status. The man, identified only as A, was [...]
GOYANG, South Korea, Sept. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — A South Korean court has ruled that members of a virtual idol group are entitled to damages over defamatory online comments, marking a significant precedent in how the law treats avatars in the digital age. On May 17, the Uijeongbu District Court’s Goyang branch ordered an individual, [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed a battery plant construction site in Bryan County, Georgia, earlier this month, hundreds of South Korean workers found themselves in shackles, held in freezing rooms with moldy mattresses and little explanation of what crime they had committed. The episode, now reverberating across [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — When more than 300 South Korean workers were swept up in a U.S. immigration raid at a Georgia battery plant earlier this month, the images and testimonies that followed shocked many in Seoul: men shackled at the waist, ankles and wrists, confined in overcrowded cells, sleeping on mold-covered mattresses in [...]
SUWON, Sept. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — More than six decades after they were arrested and branded as traitors, two former university students have won damages from the South Korean government for their wrongful detention during mass protests against the 1964 South Korea–Japan normalization talks. The Suwon District Court ruled Sunday that the state must compensate [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Naver’s livestreaming platform Chzzk has permanently suspended the channel of a 12-year-old elementary school “Vtuber,” citing a violation of its rule barring anyone under 14 from joining. The decision has reignited debate over child safety and regulation in the fast-growing world of virtual broadcasting. The girl, born in 2013, [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The sun had just dipped behind the skyline of Gwanghwamun when demonstrators began to gather, clutching banners, candles, and hastily printed placards. By nightfall, the streets outside the U.S. Embassy had become a stage for simmering outrage. Hundreds marched through central Seoul on Saturday evening, their chants ricocheting off the [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — When Ji, a 41-year-old technician from South Korea, finally walked into the arrivals hall at Incheon International Airport this week, he was carrying more than a suitcase. He carried a story of humiliation. “The food was like garbage. We couldn’t eat it,” Ji said, recalling the seven days he [...]
BUSAN, Sept. 10 (Korea Bizwire) — On a spring evening in 1964, an 18-year-old farm girl fought back against a man who tried to assault her in a desolate field near her home. She was small, he was strong, and escape seemed impossible. Desperate, she did the only thing she could: when he forced a [...]
PAJU, Aug. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — A 95-year-old former long-term prisoner of war, An Hak-seop, attempted on Wednesday to cross into North Korea through Panmunjom but was stopped by South Korean military authorities at the Tongil Bridge checkpoint. An, who has long identified as a “non-converted” prisoner for refusing to renounce allegiance to the North, traveled [...]