Lee Soon-woo, the new chairman of Woori Financial Group, has expressed discontent over the business policies of his predecessor Lee Pal-seung, who was a college classmate of former President Lee Myung-bak. The incumbent chairman, who stepped to the helm last week, was quoted by an online news provider as saying that Woori Financial tackled sale projects for the state-funded group led by financia...

“Nanjung Ilgi,” or “War Diary,” by 16th-century naval hero Yi Sun-shin, and archives of Korea’s Saemaul Movement in the 1960s have been listed to the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, the Cultural Heritage Administration said Wednesday. Their inclusion brings the total number of South Korea’s heritage items on the UNESCO list to 11, the highest for an Asian country. The decision was made d...

South Korea marks the 11th anniversary of an inter-Korean naval skirmish this month to pay homage to six soldiers killed while safeguarding the Northern Limit Line, a de facto maritime border. Triggered by two North Korean patrol ships violating the NLL on June 29, 2002, the second Yeonpyeong Battle, named after a frontline island in the West Sea, left six seamen dead and 19 others wounded. Sou...

Kim Dae-hwan was one of the most credited scholars among unionists and activists in the 1980s when they fought the dictatorial government and exploitive capitalists. Two decades later, the progressive labor economics expert turned into the trade unions’ public enemy No. 1. While serving as labor minister from 2004-06, he pushed for an ambitious social compromise aiming both to boost growth and p...

The election of Hassan Rowhani as Iran’s new president is raising cautious optimism for a diplomatic solution to the disputes over its suspected nuclear programs and improved ties with the U.S. and the West. During the campaign the 64-year-old moderate cleric pledged to seek “constructive interaction with the world.” “A new opportunity has been created ... for those who truly respect democracy,...

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed routine mass collection of communications records by the United States government, has resurfaced for the first time since Monday. Speaking to the South China Morning Post, he insisted that he was not in Hong Kong to avoid justice. “I would rather stay and fight the U.S. government in the courts, because I have faith in HK’s rule of law,” he said. ...

Candid soul-searching by a progressive leader is reverberating around Korea’s political circles more usually criticized for defying public calls for reform. Rep. Sim Sang-jeung, chief of the minor opposition Progressive Justice Party, on Tuesday spoke out about the failings of progressive politics in her address to the parliament. The former union leader dedicated much of her 10-minute address ...

U.S.-based tech giant Apple on Monday revealed its much-anticipated new mobile operating system, hinting that its innovative prowess had not died with its cofounder Steve Jobs. “IOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of iPhone,” the company’s CEO Tim Cook said at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Throughout the presentation, Cook repeatedly stressed ...

The United Nations will undergo large-scale restructuring amid international pressure to cut its spending, according to U.N. sources. The unprecedented move is widely interpreted as a sign of problems with its reforms. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, citing unnamed sources, reported Monday that the organization will eliminate at least 260 jobs. The initial job cut plans only target some 6,600 ...

Gymnast Son Yeon-jae won three gold medals at the Asian Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, becoming the first South Korean to win gold at an international rhythmic gymnastic event. The 19-year-old began her winning streak by clinching the individual all-round final on Friday with 72.066 points in the multi-sport competition combining hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon. She outp...

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who became a target of Republican vitriol over U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, is moving into the post of White House National Security Adviser. President Obama announced a major reshuffling of his national security team on Wednesday, ushering out Tom Donilon, a cautious Washington insider,...

At the heart of the nuclear reactors’ shutdown and subsequent electricity shortage was a quality inspection company that neglected its role for the sake of its own interests. Earlier in the week, the prosecution summoned the head of Saehan TEP for allegedly forging the quality certificate papers on substandard signal cables used in the recently suspended nuclear reactors. A senior employee of J...

It was like deja vu on Monday when President Park Geun-hye turned to her long-time troubleshooter Lee Jung-hyun to fix the public relations mess at Cheong Wa Dae. Lee, 56, chief presidential political secretary, was named as her top public affairs aide, replacing Lee Nam-ki, who resigned last month to take responsibility for the sexual assault case involving then-spokesman Yoon Chang-jung. The ...

Won Sei-hoon, a former spy chief and long-time aide to former President Lee Myung-bak, is likely to face charges for personal corruption as well as his role in intelligence agents’ illegal intervention in politics. Prosecutors are investigating allegations that he received bribes from a private construction firm while he served as chief of the National Intelligence Service. During a raid of the...

Republican Rep. Ed Royce, the head of the U.S. congressional panel on foreign affairs, lodged last week a strong protest against China for its recent repatriation of nine North Korean defectors. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to China’s President Xi Jinping expressing his concern over recent reports of the forced repatriation of North Koreans, some as young as ...