The chief of the world’s only legally binding convention combating desertification urged leaders to accelerate efforts to fight degradation and regenerate soil to prevent massive food shortages. “People take soil for granted. We may survive oil peak but we will never survive soil peak,” Luc Gnacadja, chief of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification told The Korea Herald. The Bro...

Korea will lead international efforts to combat desertification in Asia based on its experience of forestation, Lee Don-koo, head of Korea Forest Service said. “Korea is ahead of others in turning wasteful land into productive land. We have an important role to play in the world’s fight against desertification at conferences and partnership arrangements,” Lee told The Korea Herald. The forestat...

Korea is to play host to the world’s biggest gathering to combat desertification for the first time in Asia in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province. Slated for Oct. 10-21, prominent desertification experts and government officials from 194 member nations of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification will visit the southern city of South Korea to promote reforestation projects in Asia...

A 67-year-old former South Korean prosecutor has passed a bar exam in Washington D.C., giving hope to those dreaming of becoming a lawyer in the United States. Chu Kwang-il, who formerly headed the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office and the state civil rights agency, was the oldest among those who passed the highly competitive exam. He took the exam in February, and has recently been notified of hi...

CJ Group’s construction arm CJ Engineering and Construction Corp. named Kim Chun-hak as its new chief executive and vice president on Tuesday. Before taking the post, Kim had been working for Samsung Heavy Industries Co. since 1983 and most recently served as the executive vice president in charge of Samsung Heavy’s construction business. “As the new chief executive is an expert who has worked ...

Sohn Kyung-shik, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industries, has been named as new head of the Presidential Council on National Competitiveness, a government official said Thursday. President Lee Myung-bak, currently on vacation, plans to appoint him next week, the sources said. The appointment would mark the first professional manager to control the advisory body, which the Lee adm...

WASHINGTON ― We are living in what New York Times called “a golden age of foreign films.” But American audiences wouldn’t know it unless they are lucky enough to live near an art-house cinema, or can tolerate subtitles on rented DVDs. The rising quality of foreign films over the past several years is in sharp contrast, frankly, with the ordinariness of many Hollywood offerings. This summer’s cel...

NEW YORK ― It is obvious that the left and the media establishment in the United States cannot fully understand the popular appeal of the two Republican tigresses in the news ― first Sarah Palin, and now, as she consolidates her status as a Republican presidential front-runner, Michele Bachmann. What do they have that other candidates don’t ― and that so many Americans seem to want? Both Bachman...

Google+, which launched a month ago to great fanfare, is so far feeling more like Google nonplussed. Reported to have crossed the 20-million-user mark two weeks ago, the new social networking site is designed to correct one of Facebook’s major drawbacks: the problem of too much information being shared with too many people. Instead of all social contacts being lumped into one huge group (meaning...

KARACHI (AFP) ― Hundreds of extra paramilitary troops have been deployed in Pakistan’s economic capital Karachi which is struggling to end violence that has killed 58 people in five days, officials said Wednesday. Authorities are battling to halt gunfights raging across the key port city ― used by NATO to ship supplies to Afghanistan ― where political, ethnic and criminal rivalries left more th...