Samsung Life Insurance Co., South Korea's top life insurer, said Thursday that its earnings more than doubled in fiscal 2010 from a year earlier thanks to investment gains from its securities holding...urities holdings due to accounting reasons, the company said. As of the end of March, Samsung Life's total assets amounted to 146.34 trillion won, up from 133.05 trillion won a year earlier, it added...

...ms, Cyworld ranked most popular with 74.9 percent of respondents using it, followed by Twitter (31.9 percent) and Facebook (31.8 percent). Domestic providers marked a relatively low percentage: Naver’s me2day had 17.0 percent, Nate Connecting, 6.6 percent , and Cyworld C Log, 4.4 percent. In the survey, 76 percent of respondents said that “communication and interaction with friends” are the main ...

Indonesia has signed an agreement to join South Korea’s project to develop a new fighter jet, officials at Seoul’s weapons acquisition agency said Wednesday. Under the agreement, Indonesia’s state-run defense research institute, “Balitbang,” will participate in the technology development process for the KF-X project, also known as the “Boramae” project. According to the deal, Balitbang will pay...

...Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon hinted at his bid for the presidency next year on an official visit to the U.S. this week. “Korea is facing a very critical moment now. Considering the flexible political envir... expressed his opinions on North Korean issues during a conversation with Joseph Nye, a prominent U.S. political analyst and professor at Harvard University on Tuesday. “The current government’s aid-...

A long convoy of lorries believed to be carrying gifts for North Korea’s elite was seen entering the communist state on the eve of a major holiday, according to a South Korean Internet newspaper. The Daily NK, staffed by anti-Pyongyang activists, said Tuesday it had received video footage of more than 200 trucks crossing the Yalu River nose-to-tail from China on April 14. The North celebrates t...

...economic zone last month, but it later released one man, a news report said Wednesday. The three Japanese employees of a machine maintenance firm in Tokyo visited the city of Rason, near North Korea’s border with Russia, in March to check machines at a food manufacturing factory, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper said, citing unidentified sources. They were detained on charges that they hid drugs in canned goods to be exported to China, though the North later allowed one of them to r...

A South Korean man received a suspended jail term Tuesday for retweeting messages from North Korea’s official website in the first such case since the communist state launched a cyber propaganda camp...entified only as Cho a two-year jail sentence, suspended for three years, for violating South Korea’s security law. The man was convicted of retweeting material from the North’s Twitter feed (http://...

...taekwondo performers will visit the United States from late next month through early June to present the Korean traditional martial art to an American audience, according to the Voice of America, a U.S.-funded radio broadcaster. It will be their second performance in the U.S. following one in 2007. According to the Taekwondo Times, an online media outlet, the U.S. Department of State has already notified the North Korean group that their visas have been issued, the VOA...