Most global investment banks forecast South Korea's central bank to raise its key interest rate this month in a bid to rein in rising consumer prices, a report showed Monday. According to the report by the Korea Center for International Finance, the investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, predict the Bank of Korea (BOK) will hike the benchmark seven-day repo rate at a rate-setting session sch...

When the U.S. intelligence caught Osama bin Laden, the first words that came out from the officer in command was “Geronimo EKIA.” Geronimo referred to the legendary Apache Indian who became a hero to Native Americans, and EKIA meant “Enemy killed in Action.” The U.S. has, historically, used codes that tended to summarize the character of the person, often reflecting how the government viewed the...

BERLIN (Yonhap News) -- President Lee Myung-bak said Sunday that Korea should seek unification with North Korea at any cost, stressing the need to end Pyongyang's nuclear programs that he said are an obstacle to unification. Lee made the remark in Berlin, the symbolic city of German unification, on the first leg of a three-nation European tour, saying that unification with the North could come a...

Apple Inc., maker of the iPhone, iPad and iMac, overtook search-engine giant Google Inc. to become the world’s most valuable brand, WPP Plc said in a report. Apple’s brand value climbed 84 percent in the past year to $153.3 billion, WPP’s Millward Brown unit said. Google’s brand lost 2 percent to $111.5 billion, ending four years atop the rankings, while International Business Machines Corp. cli...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Osama bin Laden benefitted from ``some sort of support network'' inside Pakistan, President Barack Obama said in a Sunday broadcast interview, but he added it is not clear whether government officials knew the terrorist leader was living inside their country when U.S. commandos killed him in a raid last weekend. ``We don't know whether there might have been some people inside ...

Prices of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels bounced back for the first time in 20 months earlier this month, industry data showed Sunday, signaling that the flat-screen panel industry is set to buck a downturn. The price of 40- to 42-inch LCD panels for TVs stood at US$235 in early May, up $3 from late last month, according to market research firm DisplaySearch. Since peaking at $360 in Septem...

Prosecutors plan to call in around 30 employees of the country's financial watchdog this week to determine whether they intentionally relaxed their inspections of savings banks in return for bribes, sources said Sunday. South Korea's top prosecutor has been widening its probe after the chief and other major shareholders at a suspended savings bank were found to have taken out illegal loans to lo...

The Prime Minister’s Office is set to unveil a road map to reforming the nation’s financial regulatory body, which has been tarnished by a series of corruption scandals involving its staff and distressed savings banks. The reform plan, to be unveiled this week, will aims to reestablish public confidence in the embattled Financial Supervisory Service, which has been harshly criticized for failing...

The number of North Koreans who have illegally migrated to Thailand has jumped 50-fold in the past six years and the Thai government is not happy about the sudden influx, a Thai newspaper reported last week. According to the Bangkok Post, an English newspaper in Thailand, the number of North Korean defectors to Thailand marked 2,482 in 2010, compared to 46 in 2004. From October until April, 899 ...

The nuclear materials found in Libya in 2004 were highly likely to have been produced by North Korea, U.S.-funded broadcaster Voice of America said Saturday, citing an interview with a former senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog. In the interview, Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said uranium hexafluoride, or UF6 ― used in urani...

Korean and U.S. ministers of education and science will hold talks to discuss ways to boost personnel and research exchanges, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said Sunday. The talks will be the first of their kind in 30 years. Education and Science Minister Lee Ju-ho will visit Washington Tuesday for the talks with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan from May 11-13. The two...

Retired provincial public service employees and politicians dominate management posts of local public firms, even though many have no corporate management experience, reports said. Chief executives or board chairmen in 95 of the 127 provincial public firms are former local civil servants or politicians, Yonhap news agency reported Sunday, citing the Ministry of Public Administration and Security...

More and more high schools are selecting Chinese and Japanese as their second foreign languages, elbowing out French and German, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said Sunday. Experts say practicality was the main drive, which may hurt the diversity of language education in the society. According to the education office, 196 out of 222 high schools in Seoul established Japanese classes...