Most Popular
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Thousands rally in Seoul to call for Yoon's resignation
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Suicide attempts spike among youth in Korea
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Opposition mulls delay of financial investment income tax
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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is killed in Beirut strike, Israel's military says
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[Weekender] How Seongsu, once an industrial zone, has become ‘Seoul’s Brooklyn’
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Immigration policy must go beyond labor supply: experts
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‘Korea crossed the line too far’ disgraced singer’s lawyer cries foul after 3rd visa denial
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Nasrallah's killing reveals depth of Israel's Hezbollah penetration
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Korean American documentary ‘Free Chol Soo Lee' wins Emmy
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S. Korea to showcase Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile on Armed Forces Day ceremony for 1st time
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Seoul reviewing whether to OK TB medication aid to Pyongyang
South Korea said Thursday it is reviewing whether to approve a charity group's request to send tuberculosis medication to North Korea amid its latest move to slap tighter sanctions on the North.The EugeneBell Foundation Korea, the South Korean unit of the EugeneBell Foundation, has requested the Unification Ministry to approve its plan to ship medication to the impoverished nation. It said lives of some 1,500 patients in North Korea are at risk due to a lack of medical aid.On Tuesday, Seoul unve
North KoreaMarch 10, 2016
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DSME to slash 12,000 workforce by 2019
The chief of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering said Thursday it will slash 12,000 of its workforce by 2019 as part of efforts to revive its struggling core business. “We are planning to reduce the number of employees to a similar level to 2009 and 2010 when management efficiency was the highest,” DSME CEO Jung Sung-leep said in a press conference at the firm’s headquarters in Seoul. According to Jung, the nation’s second largest shipbuilder had around 30,000 employees, including vendor fi
IndustryMarch 10, 2016
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Writer Han Kang is longlisted for 2016 Man Booker Int'l Prize
South Korean fiction writer Han Kang has been nominated for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, the first time for a Korean novelist.According to the announcement on the organizer's website Thursday, Han Kang's "The Vegetarian," translated by Deborah Smith, is among the 13 books contending for the 2016 prize.The longlisted candidates, picked from 155 authors from 12 countries, were selected by a panel of five judges who are renowned journalists and novelists. The annual contemporary fiction
BooksMarch 10, 2016
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Pyongyang slams Seoul's approval of N. Korea human rights bill
North Korea on Thursday denounced the human rights bill passed by South Korea's parliament, claiming that it will further aggravate inter-Korean relations.Calling the bill an "unprecedentedly confrontational evil law," North Korea's main newspaper the Rodong Sinmun claimed the bill will further fuel distrust and confrontation between the two Koreas and also annihilate any bit of chance to improve inter-Korean relations.On March 2, South Korea's National Assembly approved the bill on North Korean
North KoreaMarch 10, 2016
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Patti Smith, Bowie releases set for Record Store Day
NEW YORK (AFP) - Rare or new releases by musical giants including Patti Smith, David Bowie and the Doors will come out next month for Record Store Day, the growing celebration of vinyl's resurgence. Created in 2007 by independent U.S. stores as a quirky tribute to their existence, Record Store Day has developed into an annual rite for shops around the world seizing on the growing market for vinyl. The latest Record Store Day will take place on April 16 and feature more than 300 special releases
PerformanceMarch 10, 2016
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Milwaukeeans‘ struggle to find affordable housing
“Evicted” By Matthew Desmond Crown (432 pages, $28) For nearly a decade, Matthew Desmond has studied the relationship between eviction and poverty in a single American city: Milwaukee. The MacArthur Foundation awarded him a “genius” grant last year for his research, including the Milwaukee Area Renters Study he designed and supervised, which yielded this sobering conclusion: “Among Milwaukee renters, over 1 in 5 black women report having been evicted in their adult life, compared to 1 in 12 Hisp
BooksMarch 10, 2016
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Sarah Bakewell on Sartre, de Beauvoir and existential philosophy
“At the Existentialist Cafe” By Sarah Bakewell Other Press (439 pages, $25) Here’s a startling thought. Consider what you are doing right now without realizing you’re doing it. For example, you are reading the English language written in the Roman alphabet, even though thousands of languages and writing systems have existed, and you would just as easily use one of them instead if you had been born in a different time or place. You are probably flipping pages of a newspaper or clicking through a
BooksMarch 10, 2016
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Pulling back the curtain on Paul Kagame’s Rwanda
“Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship” By Anjan Sundaram Doubleday Books (208 pages, $25.95)In the early 1990s, the world watched in horror as Hutus and Tutsis slaughtered each other in Rwanda. When it ended, Paul Kagame was heralded as one of the leaders of forces that ended the bloodshed. As president since 2000, President Kagame has fooled much of the world into thinking his country is a happy democracy and has received tons of international funding because on the surface Rwanda shine
BooksMarch 10, 2016
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Kennedy Center taps Q-Tip as first hip-hop director
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Kennedy Center, the prolific Washington concert hall led by the US government, has tapped Q-Tip to a new position of artistic director for hip-hop culture. Q-Tip -- whose former group, A Tribe Called Quest, was at the vanguard of art-house hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s -- will take the role for the Kennedy Center's 2016-2017 season. The 45-year-old New York rapper and DJ, whose real name is Jonathan Davis, will curate a series of hip-hop events in the upcoming season.
PerformanceMarch 10, 2016
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Publishing’s lack of diversity fails readers: author Rai
HONG KONG (AFP) -- As the film and music industries grapple with the fallout from the race controversy that dogged the Oscars and the Brit Awards, English author Bali Rai warns publishing too has a serious diversity issue. The award-winning writer, who has Indian heritage but was born and grew up in Leicester, England, echoes critics of Hollywood and the Academy Awards when he suggests gatekeepers are only recognizing a narrow band of talent and ideas, which does not properly reflect society. He
BooksMarch 10, 2016
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Samsung mobile chief confident of Galaxy success
Samsung Electronics’ mobile chief on Thursday showed confidence in sales of the company’s latest flagship smartphone Galaxy S7 and its Edge variant, saying the phones will exceed their predecessors. After a week-long preorder period, the latest Galaxy phones will go on sale globally from Friday. Samsung’s mobile chief Koh Dong-jin poses with the Galaxy S7 and its Edge variant phones at a press conference in Seoul on Thursday. (Samsung Electronics)“There are positive reviews about the new phones
TechnologyMarch 10, 2016
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Korean works, writers to be featured at Paris Book Fair
Korea will be spotlighted as the guest of honor at the Paris Book Fair, to be held March 16-20 at the Paris Expo Porte de Versaille exhibition center, where a selection of Korean works will be displayed and some of the country’s most influential writers will be holding talks, the Korean Publishers Association said in a statement Wednesday. Some 60 works by 30 Korean authors will be featured, including the esteemed Hwang Sok-yong, who wrote the novel “Evening Star,” and Han Kang, whose novel “Th
BooksMarch 10, 2016
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Calls grow to move up date of Arbor Day
President Park Geun-hye plants a tree at Cheong Wa Dae to celebrate Arbor Day in 2015. (Cheong Wa Dae)Due to constantly rising temperatures worldwide caused by global warming, South Korea’s local governments voiced concerns that National Arbor Day should be held earlier in a more suitable tree-planting season.Currently, Arbor Day falls on April 5, when nationwide tree-planting campaigns and events kick off.The Korea Forest Service, which has been hosting Arbor Day over the past 70 years, said ch
Social AffairsMarch 10, 2016
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Convenience stores in Korea evolve
South Korean convenience stores have evolved from simple 24-hour corner shops into all-in-one stopovers for foods, goods and services tailored to modern needs. Despite sluggish consumption, convenience stores have constituted the country’s fastest-growing retail segment, outpacing offline retailers by a large margin with a 29.6 percent on-year hike in sales in 2015, according to Statistics Korea. KDB Daewoo Securities analyst Lee Jun-ki predicts “a continued growth of Korea’s convenience store
IndustryMarch 10, 2016
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AMCHAM delegation to visit Washington for Korea promotion
A delegation of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea plans to visit Washington D.C. next week to meet government officials and politicians to stress the importance of South Korea as an economic partner. The delegation includes James Kim, AMCHAM chairman and CEO of GM Korea, AMCHAM president John Schuldt, United Airlines country manager David Ruch, attorney Jeffrey Jones, Johnson & Johnson Medical Korea chief Swami Raote, and GE Korea adviser Choi In-bom. They plan to attend around 30 meetin
IndustryMarch 10, 2016
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‘Bio firms cash in on demographic change’
South Korean bio firms enjoying record-high sales last year may have benefitted from a demographic change of women outnumbering men, with their economic power stronger than before, according to industry observers quoting statistics. Statistics Korea said in its September announcement that the number of women stood at 25,715,304 in June, 492 higher than the male population, marking the first time women have outnumbered men since the government began compiling data in 1960.The gap between men’s an
IndustryMarch 10, 2016
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Hyundai Department Store to open Dongdaemun outlet
Hyundai Department Store will open a new outlet in Dongdaemun, a popular shopping district in Seoul, on Friday, targeting Chinese tourists looking for high-quality products.Built on a 37,000- square-meter plot, the nine-floor outlet will have lifestyle and food sections, a branch of Kyobo Bookstore as well as medical and beauty service centers. It will also have the first offline store of e-commerce operator Wemakeprice, it added.Total floor space of the outlet’s food and beverage section -- sim
IndustryMarch 10, 2016
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N. Korea unlikely to have thermonuclear weapon: UK institute
North Korea’s claim to have miniaturized a nuclear weapon to fit a ballistic missile is likely to be false, a London-based defense information provider said Wednesday.The communist country had revealed a photo of its leader Kim Jong-un inspecting a silver sphere -- believed to be the device in question -- in front of the state’s KH-08 long-range missile. Kim had directly stated that his engineers succeeded in miniaturizing the nuclear warheads.But Karl Dewey, a senior analyst at IHS Jane’s said
North KoreaMarch 10, 2016
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SKT to cement partnership with Google, Facebook
Mobile network operator SK Telecom said Thursday that it had joined a Google-led global initiative, dubbed OpenConfig, to improve network infrastructure around the world.SKT’s chief technology officer Choi Jin-sung delivers a presentation at the annual Open Compute Summit event Wednesday in San Jose, California. (SKT)OpenConfig, an informal working group of network operators, was founded in October 2014 with the aim of developing network systems and enhancing the efficiency of network infrastruc
TechnologyMarch 10, 2016
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Asia markets rally as ECB meeting comes into focus
HONG KONG (AFP) -- Asian investors turned positive again Thursday, extending a global advance, as they turn their attention to a European Central Bank policy meeting later in the day that is expected to see another stimulus push.But while most regional markets are in the ascendancy, Shanghai -- which analysts say has been supported in the past few days by state-backed buying -- was in retreat despite a strong Chinese inflation reading.Confidence across trading floors is broadly upbeat this month
World BusinessMarch 10, 2016