Kia Corp., South Korea’s second-largest automaker, said Monday its August sales fell 1.7 percent from a year earlier amid weakened demand both at home and overseas. Kia, the smaller affiliate of Hyundai Motor Co., sold 251,638 vehicles in August, down from 256,038 units a year ago, the company said in a statement. The company said domestic sales fell 4.1 percent

Police have launched a preliminary investigation into the instant messaging service platform Telegram on suspicions of abetting deepfake sex crimes, the chief police investigator said Monday. The move comes as South Korea scrambles to combat deepfake pornography targeting young women, including teenagers, which has been circulated online. “As France has done, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency launched an internal investigation

The military’s intelligence unit currently under scrutiny over a major military secrets leak did not undergo an external security audit for seven years, the defense ministry said Monday. Last week, military prosecutors indicted a civilian official at the Korea Defense Intelligence Command (KDIC) for allegedly leaking secrets in return for money. The official confessed to being recruited by a suspected

Sophomore Ryu Hae-ran has found the LPGA winner’s circle for the second time in her career with a playoff victory. Ryu captured the inaugural FM Championship at TPC Boston in Norton, Massachusetts, on Sunday (local time), after beating fellow South Korean Ko Jin-young on the first hole of the sudden-death playoff with a par. Ryu took home US$570,000, the biggest

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea’s leading carmaker, said Monday its August sales slipped 5.3 percent from last year as exports declined. Hyundai Motor sold 332,963 vehicles in last month, down from 333,264 units a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Domestic sales gained 4.6 percent to 68,087 units from 55,555 units during the cited period, while overseas sales

The unification ministry said Monday that it will host an inaugural forum in Seoul this week in a bid to explore ways to muster international support for the two Koreas’ unification. The Global Korea Forum (GKF) will take place at the Lotte Hotel Seoul on Tuesday, under the theme of “Unified Korean Peninsula for Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity.” This event

About 7,500 crimes have been committed by military personnel against civilians over the past five years, but indictments have been reported in only three out of 10 such cases, data from the defense ministry showed Monday. The number of detected crimes against civilians by soldiers and civilian military employees reached 1,595 in 2020, 1,503 in 2021, 2,084 in 2022, 1,627

Sophomore Ryu Hae-ran has found the LPGA winner’s circle for the second time in her career with a playoff victory. Ryu captured the inaugural FM Championship at TPC Boston in Norton, Massachusetts, on Sunday (local time), after beating fellow South Korean Ko Jin-young on the first hole of the sudden-death playoff with a par. Ryu, the 2023 LPGA Rookie of