Leading German pharmaceutical and chemical firm Merck KGaA said Thursday that it will donate $1.2 million to help relief works in Japan. Most of the amount will be entrusted to Save the Children, while the rest will go to Merck’s Japanese subsidiary which will decide on the use of the money. “We sincerely hope that the situation in Fukushima will be controlled soon … Merck will support Japan in...

South Korea’s conservative ruling party said Tuesday it will set up new policies that actively prepare for reunifying with North Korea, as the communist state suffers from deepening food shortages and political instability. Although it would not openly admit it, the conservative Lee Myung-bak government in Seoul has been increasing measures preparing for sudden collapse of the Kim Jong-il regime...

Four lawmakers have retracted support for a proposed revision bill which would make it harder for law-breaking elected officials to lose their seats ― with others thought likely to follow. Last Friday, Grand National Party Rep. Kim Choong-whan, along with lawmakers from other parties, submitted a revision bill to raise the minimum requirements before elected officials could be stripped of their ...

Four-month program to train 1,000 young people from N. Korea South Korea will open a program aimed at training young North Korean defectors to be resourceful workers after the reunification of the two Koreas, a civic group here said Tuesday. The four-month program, funded by the government, will train 1,000 young North Koreans, who are either college seniors or graduates, on topics such as soci...

The Ministry of Environment on Tuesday designated Seoul, Jeju and Yeonggwang in South Jeolla Province as “leading cities” in promoting the use of electric vehicles across the country. Local authorities will provide residents with 168 electric vehicles and 251 recharging facilities. Korea plans to put more than 1 million electric cars in use by 2020. In Seoul, where electric buses already operat...

Money can’t buy you love but it often makes a relationship go sour. Couple.net, a matchmaking agency, said Tuesday that the number of divorces caused by financial problems has sharply increased in the past decade. In its survey of 4,405 couples divorced between 1990 and 2009, the number of people divorcing because of money problems marked 7.1 percent between 1990 and 1999, but jumped to 12.7 per...

The stalled sale of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. is likely to speed up as creditors of the chip maker are considering selling new shares to resume efforts to unload their stakes, market watchers said Tuesday. Creditors of Hynix plan to resume the process to sell a 15 percent stake in the world’s No. 2 computer memory chip maker following a set of failed attempts to sell it. Investors have been wary ...