hankyoreh

Seoul police said Wednesday that they have booked an ethnic Korean woman from China for allegedly smuggling North Korean paintings into South Korea, selling them to local consumers and sending some of the profits to the North.

The 46-year-old woman, surnamed Kim, was accused of bringing in about 1,300 paintings by some well-known North Korean artists in violation of a law regulating the flow of goods between the two Koreas, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said.

Police also booked three others for allegedly helping Kim peddle the smuggled artworks.

Kim is suspected of smuggling in 1,308 artworks, mostly landscape paintings created by North Korean artists, between May last year and July this year, and pocketing 30 million won ($27,943) after selling 1,139 of them to local galleries and over the Internet, police said.

Police said the North Korean artists include some famous names who were authorized by the Pyongyang regime and affiliated with the communist country’s top-notch Mansudae art community widely known to be peddling artwork overseas as a means of earning foreign currency.

(Yonhap News)

South Korean law firm Miraelaw representing 26,691 iPhone users on Wednesday filed a class-action suit against Apple Inc., demanding compensation for privacy violations and consequent psychological distress inflicted by the smartphone’s user location tracking.

The class-action suit filed at the Changwon District Court, South Gyeongsang Province, asks Apple to give 1 million won ($934.80) in compensation to each complainant.