Most Popular
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Probe of first lady on Dior bag allegations set to begin
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Over 80,000 millionaires, 20 billionaires in Seoul: report
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Korean battery makers heave sigh of relief over 2-year IRA reprieve
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Young Korean doctors seek plan B: cosmetic dermatology or overseas
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South Korea open to Indonesian proposal to cut KF-21 payments
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Indonesia’s KF-21 fighter jet deal cut back -- what’s next?
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[KH Explains] Can tech firms' AI alliances take on Nvidia?
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Police seek arrest warrant for med student who killed girlfriend
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Coupang earnings hit hard by losses from ailing Farfetch
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Local filmmakers criticize ‘The Roundup: Punishment’ monopoly of screens
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Won hits 17-month high to dollar
The South Korean won soared to a 17-month high against the U.S. dollar on Friday as rate freezes by central banks here and abroad prompted a weaker greenback, dealers said. After breaching the 1,060 mark as soon as the market opened, the local currency ended at 1,054.70 won against the U.S. dollar, up 5.7 won from Thursday and the highest close since Aug. 2 last year. The rate freeze by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank on Thursday caused the greenback to further depreciate, deal
Jan. 11, 2013
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Samsung teams up with Japan firms for memory tech
Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s top memory chip and smartphone maker, said Friday it has set up a joint venture in the United States with Japanese tech giants as they move to develop new memory technologies.Samsung, Panasonic Corp., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. launched “Next Generation Secure Memory” earlier this month to collaborate on a new content protection technology for flash memory cards that are used in mobile devices.The four participants respectively own 25-percent stakes in the
TechnologyJan. 11, 2013
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Korea’s economic freedom ranking falls: report
NEW YORK (Yonhap News) ― The world ranking of South Korea’s economic freedom dropped by three notches this year, an international report said Thursday, citing the country’s corruption problems as hurting “equity” and “trust” in the government.According to the report jointly compiled by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, South Korea came in 34th out of 177 countries in terms of economic freedom, down from 31st last year. It also ranked 8th out of 41 Asia-Pacific
TechnologyJan. 11, 2013
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Seeds of conflict remain at Ssangyong despite reinstatement
Despite Ssangyong Motor’s Thursday agreement to reinstate 455 workers on unpaid leave from 2009, another labor dispute is looming at the nation’s fifth-largest carmaker. At the center of the brewing controversy is how to deal with those who voluntarily resigned or were fired during the restructuring process in 2009. The carmaker didn’t include them in the list of reinstatement, but labor circles, including the Korean Metal Workers Union, have urged the company to rehire them as they left the com
Jan. 11, 2013
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Transition team may upgrade status of small business agency
The transition team of President-elect Park Geun-hye is expected to consider elevating the administrative status of the Small and Medium Business Administration, which oversees policy support for smaller businesses. On Friday, the state-run agency offered its policy briefing to the transition team, emphasizing the necessity for it to be upgraded to a ministerial-level government office to carry out relevant policies more efficiently. The agency, affiliated with the Ministry of Knowledge Economy,
Jan. 11, 2013
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NTS targets tax evasion suspects, shadow economy
A key part of the incoming Park Geun-hye administration’s fiscal policy is to cover 6 trillion won ($5.7 billion) each year of its increased welfare budget with taxes collected from the “underground economy.”For this, the National Tax Service is preparing to gain more access to the Financial Intelligence Unit’s information on cash transactions and conduct tax inquiries on sectors highly suspected of tax evasion.“We first need to establish the necessary infrastructure ― that is, greater access to
Jan. 11, 2013
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Former bodyguard sues Bieber for assault, wages
LOS ANGELES (AP) ― A former bodyguard for Justin Bieber sued the pop superstar Thursday seeking more than $420,000 in overtime and other wages and claims he was repeatedly struck by the singer during an October confrontation. Moshe Benabou’s lawsuit claims Bieber berated him and repeatedly punched him in the chest after a disagreement about how to handle a member of the Grammy-nominated singer’s entourage. After he walked away, Bieber fired him, Benabou’s lawsuit claims.Benabou claims he was mis
Jan. 11, 2013
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Jin Air names new CEO
Jin Air, the low-cost subsidiary of the nation’s flag carrier Korean Air, named Ma Won, the head of Korean Air’s New York branch, as its new CEO on Friday, the company said in a press release. Ma, who joined Korean Air in 1987 and served in an array of departments from passenger marketing to passenger strategy development, is known within the group as a marketing expert.The company said it expects the new CEO to contribute to leading five-year-old and fast-growing airline to its second takeoff b
Jan. 11, 2013
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Moons outside the solar system may have habitable zones
Even exoplanets, where living creatures cannot exist, still have possibility to host exomoons with habitable zones, U.S. scientists said. An exoplanet is one that orbits a star other than the sun.Astronomers have long researched exoplanets to discover an environment that can support life. However, most of them are of gaseous form and only a few have a solid surface on which living creatures can survive.Rory Barnes of the University of Washington and the NASA Astrobiology Institute said in a stat
TechnologyJan. 11, 2013
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Antarctic lake reached after millennia
Russian researchers say they've obtained the first sample of transparent ice from the water of a unique sub-glacial lake in Antarctica.The scientists have drilled into Lake Vostok, sealed for the last 20 million years beneath Antarctica's ice sheet at a depth of 2.3 miles, RIA Novosti reported Thursday.Vostok, the largest of Antarctica's buried network of icebound lakes, may reveal new forms of life and show how life evolved before the ice age, the scientists said."The first core of transparent
TechnologyJan. 11, 2013
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Amazon.com ramps up challenge to iTunes music store
Amazon.com on Thursday launched a service that gives compact disk buyers instant copies of music in the Internet “cloud” in a major challenge to Apple‘s iTunes shop.Amazon AutoRip provides free MP3 versions of music on CDs bought from the online retail titan.Copies of tunes are stored in Cloud Player libraries on datacenter servers and can be streamed to an array of Internet-linked devices including smartphones or tablets powered by Android or Apple software and Kindle Fire tablets.“What would y
TechnologyJan. 11, 2013
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Device produces 'high-tech bulimia'
A device sucks food out of the stomach after eating so only about a third of the calories are kept in the body, helping in weight loss, its U.S. inventors say.The group of inventors, including the creator of the Segway, said patients eat a meal, wait 20 minutes, then empty 30 percent of their stomach contents into the toilet via a tube -- a small, handheld device, which connects to a skin-port discretely embedded on the outside of the abdomen.Calories not digested are calories not absorbed, whic
TechnologyJan. 11, 2013
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BOK cuts growth forecast to 2.8%
The Bank of Korea said Friday that it has revised its outlook on the growth of the nation’s gross domestic product for this year to 2.8 percent, down from its earlier projection of 3.2 percent.Further, the central bank predicted that the first-half economic growth would stay at 1.9 percent on a year-on-year basis.Its prediction on the 2013 economy was unveiled right after the BOK’s Monetary Policy Committee announced it would maintain the benchmark interest rate untouched at 2.75 percent annuall
Jan. 11, 2013
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BOK freezes key rate for 3rd month in Jan.
South Korea's central bank froze the key interest rate for the third straight month on Friday amid signs of some improvements in the global economy.Bank of Korea (BOK) Gov. Kim Choong-soo and his six fellow policymakers held the benchmark 7-day repo rate steady at 2.75 percent for January. The central bank cut the rate in July and October to prop up the slowing economy.The decision was widely anticipated as 15 out of 21 analysts forecast the rate freeze in a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financi
Jan. 11, 2013
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Seoul shares start higher on upbeat data
South Korean stocks opened higher Friday on improved economic data from China and the eurozone, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) increased 7.39 points, or 0.37 percent, to trade at 2014.19 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Tech blue chips led the market gain, with industry leader Samsung Electronics moving up 0.72 percent and its smaller rival LG Electronics climbing 0.66 percent. Top chipmaker SK hynix edged up 0.56 percent.Logistics shares also gathered gr
Jan. 11, 2013
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Ssangyong to rehire all workers on unpaid leave
Ssangyong Motor’s management and union leaders agreed Thursday to reinstate 455 workers who have been on unpaid leave since the automaker’s large-scale restructuring in 2009. The agreement came one day after a union member attempted suicide and fell into a coma, calling for a prompt resolution of the drawn-out labor dispute at the carmaker. “We have been stepping up efforts to increase car sales and production over the past three years -― the only way to solve the current situation,” Ssangyong s
IndustryJan. 10, 2013
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Samsung shines light on next-gen OLED displays
LAS VEGAS ― Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its next-generation flexible displays and hinted at further innovative components for its products at its keynote session. Woo Nam-sung, president of Samsung’s System LSI business, showcased the prototype for the flexible OLED display and featured a video on bendable and rollable displays.Introducing its upcoming new lineup of future displays under the “YOUM” name, Woo showcased an OLED prototype for handsets made with extremely thin plastic i
IndustryJan. 10, 2013
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Samsung’s Lee receives ‘timeless’ Galaxy phone
What kind of birthday gift do you get a man who has everything? How about a one-of-a-kind smartphone that costs a fortune and is almost ever-lasting? That was what the executives at Samsung were aiming for when they pitched in to get Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-hee a Galaxy smartphone blanketed in lacquer and inlaid with mother-of-pearl for this 72nd birthday this Wednesday. The long-lasting materials represent timeless consistency, according to those close to Samsung. The phone was not
IndustryJan. 10, 2013
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[Newsmaker] Shinsegae’s Chung in hot water
Shinsegae Group vice chairman Chung Yong-jin may be the first target of scrutiny against conglomerates under President-elect Park Geun-hye’s strong pitch for “economic democratization.”The prosecution is reviewing summoning Chung for interrogation on whether he ordered Shinsegae affiliates to charge cheaper sales commissions on his sister’s bakery business.The Fair Trade Commission in October slapped Shinsegae with fines of over 4 billion won for “unfair backing” of Shinsegae SVN. The antitrust
IndustryJan. 10, 2013
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Ministry to support eye-drop vaccine project
The Ministry of Health and Welfare will offer 3.4 billion won ($3.2 million) of funding to a research project developing eye-drop vaccines, officials said.The fund will be given to a team led by professor Seo Kyong-ryul of Severance Hospital in Seoul for the next five years. Seo has been developing an eye-drop vaccine to prevent typhoid fever as alternative to existing vaccines injected through needles.The state-run Korea Institute for Science and Technology and Huons, a local bio-tech firm, wil
TechnologyJan. 10, 2013