Most Popular
-
1
Chuseok still is a headache for couples
-
2
N. Korea launches trash balloons toward S. Korea for 2nd day: JCS
-
3
Heat wave watch issued for Seoul; latest on record
-
4
Students suffer sleep deprivation, fatigue, suicidal thoughts
-
5
Nearly 2,000 aging separated family members die in first 8 months of year: gov't data
-
6
Popular tourist destinations beckon Chuseok holidaymakers
-
7
Yoon's approval rating hits new low: poll
-
8
On the road for Chuseok? Popular rest stop foods await
-
9
Naver Map starts providing natural disaster information
-
10
Only 12 pct of unsafe food imports taken off market for disposal: report
-
Innovative steelmaker to vie with luxurious interior brands
The steel industry usually stays out of public interest as it is typically traded in the B2B or business-to-business sector. This, however, is soon to change, according to Union Steel, a runner-up steelmaker specializing in treating high-quality special purpose steel sheets.“We may be a steel company but our key rivals in the future will be luxury interior material makers such as Italian wallpaper or marble manufacturers,” said Chang Sae-wook, CEO of Union Steel.The medium-sized company, since 1
BusinessJuly 2, 2013
-
‘No hope’ for Korea’s small-scale farmers in China trade pact
This is the first in a series on the impact of the potential Korea-China Free Trade Agreement on the local agriculture industry. ― Ed.On a plot of land up a narrow dirt road in Beopwon-ri, a quiet Gyeonggi Province area near the inter-Korean border, Hwang In-sik and a farmhand raise some of his 250 beef cattle.His operations are small and he says he gets enough business selling “hanwoo” in Gyeonggi Province and Seoul ― but that rising costs and competition are pressuring his business and industr
July 2, 2013
-
Online retail begins to click in Africa’s biggest market
LAGOS (AFP) ― The headquarters for this Internet startup is cheekily nicknamed “Graceland” and its co-heads are young Harvard graduates with grand plans who have rapidly expanded the business over the past year.Silicon Valley? Not even close. This emerging world Internet company, called Jumia, is now located in Nigeria, and the founders of the business here say there is no better place to pursue their strategy.Nigeria, Africa’s biggest market of 160 million people, has seen Internet access expan
World NewsJuly 2, 2013
-
High-tech gains get disabled people into America’s workforce
SAN JOSE, California (AP) ― When high school football coach Kevin Bella needs an intense, heart-to-heart with a player, he goes home and sits on his couch. That’s because Bella, who is deaf, communicates with his hearing players most clearly with a new technology that brings a live sign language interpreter to his television screen. The player, on a phone elsewhere, hears the interpreter give voice to Bella’s signs. “It’s a huge improvement over typing messages back and forth,” said Bella, a def
World NewsJuly 2, 2013
-
Ultra-wired S. Korea battles smartphone addiction
Kim Nam-hee pulls no punches as she warns a classroom of wide-eyed South Korean 10-year-olds that they stand on the edge of an addiction that will turn them all into “mindless slaves.”The grim presentation by the social campaigner follows a survey with the loaded title: “Who’s your real family?” It asked the students to compare the hours they spend on their smartphones with the time they spend interacting with relatives.South Korea’s pride in its high-tech prowess, from ultra-fast broadband spee
World NewsJuly 2, 2013
-
[Editorial] Beleaguered regime
North Korea broke its silence on President Park Geun-hye’s visit to China a day after the South Korean leader returned home after forging deeper personal bonds with her Chinese counterpart and agreeing to bolster cooperation between the two countries.In a statement issued Monday by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, an organization in charge of cross-border affairs, Pyongyang lambasted Park for her demand that it should abandon its nuclear weapons programs. “Our nucl
EditorialJuly 2, 2013
-
[Editorial] Domestic violence
It is worrisome that Korean society has recently seen a surge in domestic violence cases. The number of people arrested for domestic abuse increased by nearly 30 percent from a year earlier to 8,762 last year, according to government figures. Moreover, the second-offense rate quadrupled over the past four years to 32.2 percent in 2012, suggesting there had been inadequate efforts to prevent family violence.The cases of some husbands beaten by their wives have been cited as reflecting changes in
EditorialJuly 2, 2013
-
China’s slowdown could slam Hong Kong
In the run-up to Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, the world wondered what officials in Beijing would do with the place. Would Hong Kong’s dynamism and openness catalyze change in China, or would the Communist Party try to remake the freewheeling city-state in its image? Sixteen years on, we know it’s more the latter than the former. Beijing has shackled Hong Kong with one bad, handpicked leader after another. China’s commissars and their local lackeys continue to push anti-sedition laws, pat
ViewpointsJuly 2, 2013
-
A rational approach for Korea
Last year, a Vietnamese woman involved in a divorce from her South Korean husband left the country with their 13-month-old child and traveled back to Vietnam. Her husband pressed criminal charges against her for kidnapping and each successive court found her not guilty. Eventually the case reached the South Korean Supreme Court and the court, in its first live broadcast, heard the case. At the time choosing such a case for the very first live broadcast was roundly criticized for feeding into the
ViewpointsJuly 2, 2013
-
[Kim Seong-kon] Why are we still carrying illegal, defective weapons?
Some time ago, I heard a funny joke from one of my colleagues. When I was about to enter the women’s room on campus by mistake, a professor warned me solemnly, “If you go in there, you will be arrested for carrying an illegal weapon.” Then he added teasingly, “If you are over 50, you will be arrested for carrying a defective weapon.” Since “illegal weapons (bulbeob mugi)” rhymes with “defective weapons (bulyang mugi)” in Korean, it made a fine joke. With newspapers filled with reports of sex cri
ViewpointsJuly 2, 2013
-
Grumpy old Scalia versus those pesky kids
You may have heard that Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the majority opinion striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as “legalistic argle-bargle.” Intemperate as the dissent was, derision for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s jurisprudence of dignity and personhood was nothing new for Scalia, who has been castigating what he once called Kennedy’s “sweet mystery of life” rhetoric for a decade. What’s new about Scalia’s numerous dissents issued over the U.S. Supreme Court’s remarkable June is how muc
ViewpointsJuly 2, 2013
-
Why are so many college graduates driving taxis?
It’s a parent’s nightmare: shelling out big money for college, then seeing the graduate unable to land a job that requires high-level skills. This situation may be growing more common, unfortunately, because the demand for cognitive skills associated with higher education, after rising sharply until 2000, has since been in decline. So concludes new research by economists Paul Beaudry and David Green of the University of British Columbia and Benjamin Sand of York University in Toronto. This rever
ViewpointsJuly 2, 2013
-
Veteran curator of Russia’s Pushkin Museum quits at 91
MOSCOW (AFP) ― The tireless 91-year-old matriarch of the renowned Pushkin Art Museum in Moscow is leaving her post after steering the institution for 52 years, Russia’s cultural minister said Monday.The announcement came as a surprise but follows a protracted battle Pushkin director Irina Antonova has waged to return to Moscow a collection of Impressionist art from Saint Petersburg, where it was sent on orders of Joseph Stalin in the 1940s.“Irina Alexandrovna is a living legend, and she is a per
CultureJuly 2, 2013
-
Penguin, Random House launch book giant
LONDON (AFP) ― British publisher Pearson and Germany’s Bertelsmann have completed a deal to create a publishing firm, Penguin Random House, the parent groups announced on Monday.In October, Pearson, publisher of the Penguin paperback books and owner of the Financial Times newspaper, announced with Bertelsmann plans to form a joint venture.Bertelsmann will hold 53 percent of the new company and Pearson the remainder, aiming to compete with new forms of publishing epitomised by online giant Amazon
BooksJuly 2, 2013
-
Steinway, piano-maker for the stars, going private
NEW YORK (AFP) ― Steinway, which has built the pianos used by some of the world’s greatest classical musicians for more than 160 years, on Monday said it was being taken private in a $438 million deal with private equity group Kohlberg & Co.New York-based Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc., which owns the iconic Steinway & Sons piano brand, said Kohlberg will offer to acquire all the outstanding shares of the company for $35 a share, a premium of 33 percent from the average closing price of the
PerformanceJuly 2, 2013
-
Box office sales near 100 million in first half
Nearly 100 million movie tickets were sold at cinemas in the first half of this year, with more than half of them seeing Korean films, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Tuesday. Inspired by the record-breaking number, the authorities have been pushing a number of policies to support the local filmmaking industry, including subsidies, stipulation of fair contracts and encouragement of exports. According to the ministry, the number of cinemagoers marked 98.5 million between January
FilmJuly 2, 2013
-
Art lovers can now visit New York’s Met every day
NEW YORK (AFP) ― Art lovers can now visit New York’s famed Metropolitan museum every day of the week after the management dropped a policy of being closed on Mondays.The Met, which welcomed a record-breaking 6.28 million visitors last year, had closed its doors on Mondays for more than 40 years.“Art is a 7-day-a-week passion, and we want the Met to be accessible whenever visitors have the urge to experience this great museum,” Met director Thomas Campbell said in a statement.The change announced
PerformanceJuly 2, 2013
-
Restoring the glory of long-abused ancient Babylon
BABYLON, Iraq (AFP) ― At ancient Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, Iraqi workers labor with a heavy saw, hammers, a chisel and crowbar to break up and remove a concrete slab that is hastening the structure’s decay.The concrete lies between the two long, towering walls of tan bricks decorated with processions of bulls and dragons that make up the more than 2,500-year-old Ishtar Gate, in what is now Iraq’s Babil province.The masonry slab was laid during the late dictator Saddam Hussein’s rule.Removing the co
CultureJuly 2, 2013
-
Music Bank to run international K-pop chart this week
Music Bank, a weekly pop-ranking show on state-run broadcaster KBS, will dedicate this Friday’s edition to hallyu, or Korean pop culture fever. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of KBS World, the satellite broadcasting division of the broadcaster, “Music Bank World K-Chart!” will unveil who is the most popular K-pop star overseas. The short list includes Psy with “Gentleman,” SNSD’s “I Got a Boy,” SHINee’s “Dream Girl,” INFINITE’s “Man In Love” and 2PM’s “Come Back When You Hear This Song.”
PerformanceJuly 2, 2013
-
Tony An joins list of this year’s old-school comebacks
Former H.O.T. idol star Tony An is joining the list of veteran stars working their way back into today’s dynamic music scene. Representatives of An’s agency TN Entertainment announced that the star is releasing his newest EP “I’m Tony An” Wednesday. This is the first album he has released in more than two years since his previous EP “Top Star” in 2011. An’s new four-track album includes the electro-heavy lead track “Until Here…” and features the members of Big Bang and Se7en. “An is currently ab
PerformanceJuly 2, 2013