The government has started to buy up 370,000 tons of rice harvested this year to stabilize domestic prices of the staple grain, the agriculture ministry said Sunday. It said regional governments have been notified of Seoul's plans to "isolate" rice this year and details related to the purchase. Besides the rice to be bought from growers for the purpose of keeping market prices at certain levels...

The government said Sunday it will set up a committee comprised of experts to review President Moon Jae-in's industrial technology-related state affairs and policy goals. Earlier, the Moon administration announced that finding new growth engines through the so-called fourth industrial revolution for the South Korean economy is one of its key policy objectives. Moon said the revolution will help ...

One out of 9 senior-aged workers have experienced discrimination at their work, which affects their sense of well-being, a study showed Sunday. A team from Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine surveyed 32,984 people aged 19 and over who had participated in a poll of office working conditions in 2014. Results showed that 5.9 percent of them suffered some sort of discriminatory experience ...

Sales of luxury cars in South Korea exceed those of richer countries, industry data showed Sunday. Numbers provided by foreign carmakers and the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association showed South Koreans bought more new BMW 5-series and Mercedes-Benz E-class cars than Germans and neighbors in Japan from late last year to early 2017. Data also showed demand for top-of-the-line ...

The market of fifth-generation network services in South Korea will reach some 35 trillion won ($31 billion) in 2025, as the faster network technology is anticipated to be used in many areas from mobile phone networks to smart homes and connected cars, industry data showed Sunday. According to the data compiled by Digieco, a research center run by South Korea's mobile carrier KT Corp., the count...

South Korea's bourse operator is set to decide this week on whether to allow the resumption of trading of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. on the local stock market, industry sources said Sunday. The trading of Daewoo Shipbuilding stocks have been halted since July last year, due to its impaired capital base, and the shipyard was given a one-year rehabilitation period to improve its ...

MOSCOW -- A North Korean diplomat has said that Pyongyang will not return to multilateral talks until it resolves issues with the United States, a source said Sunday. Choe Son-hui, director-general of the North American department of North Korea's foreign ministry, made the remark during a session at an international forum on nonproliferation in Moscow on Saturday, according to the source who at...

South Korea's top diplomat has said North Korea is quickly reaching the stage of possessing complete nuclear capabilities, as she visited Europe to seek international cooperation on the issue. In an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Brussels on Saturday, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha also said North Korea is prepared to carry out additional provocations at any time. "Parts of its tunnel ha...

Professionals in jobs that traditionally enjoyed high pay like lawyers and accountants earned an average of 230.8 million won ($203,796) per individual last year but close to 15 percent of the people in these professions made less than one-tenth of the amount, data showed Sunday. Records provided by the National Tax Service for parliamentary audits said 35,108 people were registered to be in pri...

The combined market capitalization of South Korean firms listed on the main and secondary bourse ranks 11th among global peers, claiming 1.77 percent of the total, on the back of a rise in market heavyweights, such as Samsung Electronics, data showed Sunday. The combined market cap of the world's stock markets reached a record high of $88.59 trillion as of Thursday, increasing 35 percent from a ...

The net value of foreign investment fund assets held by South Koreans exceeded 120.2 trillion won ($105.9 billion), a local capital market association said Sunday. According to data by the Korea Financial Investment Association, foreign investment funds assets, including private equity funds, was up a sharp 10 trillion won as of Tuesday, compared with three months earlier. The numbers also repr...

South Korea's exports of culture content and leisure service-related goods posted double-digit growth in the first seven months of the year on the back of the popularity of K-pop, government data showed Sunday. According to the data compiled by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, exports of the country's key 11 culture-related goods reached $1.55 billion in the January-July period, up 2...

Sixty-six police officers were fired after committing sex crimes from 2014-2016, but about half of them have since returned to work following successful appeals against the punishment, police data showed Saturday. According to the data 17 regional police agencies across the country submitted to Rep. Park Nam-chun of the ruling Democratic Party, a total of 148 officers were disciplined for sexual...

The avian influenza viruses recently detected in central South Korea have been confirmed to be low pathogenic strains, the agriculture ministry said Saturday. Bird flu viruses were discovered in three samples of wild bird droppings collected from a river in Iksan, about 200 kilometers south of Seoul, on Thursday. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said low pathogenic H5N2 and H...

Two US B-1B strategic bombers flew over South Korea on Saturday as part of their participation in the Seoul air show. The long-range, multi-mission supersonic bombers flew low over Seoul Air Base for eight minutes as part of the air show, formally called the Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition 2017. The first one appeared in the skies over the air base, escorted by two South Ko...