South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Seoul police assigned 137 officers to manage a crowd of Halloween revelers anticipated to number over 100,000 over the weekend — a decision that has come under intense criticism following the deaths of more than 150 people when the group surged.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean police investigated on Monday what caused a crowd surge that killed more than 150 people including 26 foreigners during Halloween festivities in Seoul in the country’s worst disaster in years, as President Yoon Suk Yeol and tens of thousands of others paid respects to the dead at special mourning sites.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Concerned relatives raced to hospitals in search of their loved ones Sunday as South Korea mourned the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who got trapped and crushed after a huge Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district in Seoul.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — At least 59 people were killed and 150 more were injured after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in the capital of Seoul, South Korean officials said.

SEOUL, Oct 21 (NNN-YONHAP) – South Korea reported 24,751 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight, compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 25,244,255, the health authorities said today.

The daily caseload was down from 25,431 the previous day, but it was higher than 23,574 tallied a week earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

For the past week, the daily average number of confirmed cases was 24,031.

Among the new cases, 60 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 69,123.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired about 100 more artillery shells toward the sea Wednesday in response to South Korean live-firing drills at border areas as the rivals accuse each other of dialing up tensions on the Korean Peninsula with weapons tests.

The drills conducted by both sides come amid heightened animosities over recent North Korean missile tests that it calls simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. targets.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An Iranian competitive climber left South Korea on Tuesday after competing at an event in which she climbed without her nation’s mandatory headscarf covering, authorities said. Farsi-language media outside of Iran warned she may have been forced to leave early by Iranian officials and could face arrest back home, which Tehran quickly denied.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea early Friday fired a ballistic missile and 170 rounds of artillery shells toward the sea and flew warplanes near the tense border with South Korea, further raising animosities triggered by the North’s recent barrage of weapons tests.

The North Korean moves suggest it is reviving an old playbook of stoking fears of war with provocative weapons tests before it seeks to win greater concessions from its rivals.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea early Friday launched a short-range ballistic missile toward its eastern waters and flew warplanes near the border with South Korea, the South’s military said, further raising animosities triggered by the North’s recent barrage of weapons tests.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement the missile lifted off from the North’s capital region at 1:49 a.m. (12:49 p.m. EDT Thursday).

It said South Korea boosted its surveillance posture and maintains military readiness in close coordination with the United States.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military said Tuesday it’s capable of detecting and intercepting the variety of missiles North Korea launched in a barrage of recent simulated nuclear attacks on its rivals, though it maintains the North’s advancing nuclear program poses a grave security threat.