Finance Ministry to reevaluate all fiscal spending plans from scratch

   The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Sunday that it will reevaluate all of its existing fiscal spending plans from scratch to come up with the necessary funds needed to meet President-elect Park Geun-hye's campaign pledges, sources from the presidential transition team said Sunday.   Park, who takes office as the country's first woman chief executive on Feb. 25, has said she will need 134.5 trillion won(US$127.3 billion) over the next five years to follow through on the various promises

Jan. 13, 2013

S. Korea expected to launch space rocket on Jan. 25

  South Korea is expected to try again to launch its space rocket later this month after successfully conducting experiments to check if all systems are working properly, a government source said Sunday.   The official said South Korean and Russian researchers are expected to discuss results of repairs made to the rocket late last year and touch on the present state of the Naro-1 rocket. He added Seoul successfully carried out combustion tests on the kick motor on the locally built second stage

TechnologyJan. 13, 2013

Global handset shipments top 1.74 billion in 2012

Worldwide sales of mobile phones, including smartphones and feature phones, reached 1.74 billion last year, growing 1.8 percent from the previous year, data showed Sunday.The on-year growth was attributed to robust demand for some of the latest models in the smartphone market, such as Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 phones as well as Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5, according to the data by Strategy Analytics.Strong shipments of the Samsung and Apple phones, combined with seasonal de

TechnologyJan. 13, 2013

LINE eyes 100 million users

  NHN Japan, a subsidiary of South Korea's top portal operator NHN Corp., is likely to see the number of its "LINE" messenger users break the 100 million mark this week, sources said Sunday.   LINE, launched in June 2011, is the company's free group messenger application that runs on the Android, Blackberry and iOS operating systems.   The service, which has been launched in roughly 230 countries, has ranked No. 1 in downloads on Google Play and App Store platforms in 41 countries.   After garne

TechnologyJan. 13, 2013

Gov't to conduct detailed safety tests on Gori, Wolsong reactors

 The government plans to conduct detailed safety tests on two nuclear reactors that have exceeded their original operating life cycles to ensure no problems occur, an official said Sunday.   The official, who declined to be identified, said the Nuclear Safety Commission will include plans to conduct so-called stress tests on the Gori 1 and Wolsong 1 reactors in a report to President-elect Park Geun-hye's transition committee. A stress test refers to a series of experiments that push the reactors

TechnologyJan. 13, 2013

S. Korea's leading export products on decline

  South Korea saw the number of its leading export products fall from a year earlier, raising alarm bells over the country's trade competitiveness, data showed Sunday.   The number of South Korea's leading export products reached 61 in 2011, down from 71 the previous year, according to the data by the financial industry and the Korea International Trade Association (KITA). Leading export products refer to product categories in which South Korea ranks first in export market share.   The data show

Jan. 13, 2013

Hyundai-Kia emerges as biggest exporter to Germany: VDIK

South Korea's Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group emerged as the biggest exporter of automobiles to Germany last year, industry data showed Sunday.   Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. have sold 155,673 units in the biggest European market in 2012, according to data by the International Association of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK).   Renault SA came second with 150,740 units and Skoda third with 142,611 units last year.   Hyundai-Kia was third with 128,931 units in 2011, when Ren

MobilityJan. 13, 2013

Younger people's economic participation hits 27-yr low

Economic participation among younger people in South Korea dropped to the lowest level in about 27 years, data showed Saturday, indicating the frozen job market is taking its toll especially on young job seekers.According to the data by Statistics Korea, the economic participation rate among those in their 20s stood at 60.1 percent last month, down from 62.3 percent tallied in the same month a year earlier.The figure marked the lowest level since February 1986, when the rate was 59.6 percent.The

Jan. 12, 2013

Seoul shares to trade in tight range next week

South Korea's stock market is expected to trade in a tight range next week with economic indicators from China and the currency exchange being among the major factors that will determine its direction, analysts said Saturday.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) closed at 1,996.67 this week, down 0.75 percent from a week earlier after undergoing choppy trading.The local currency's ascent against the dollar and the weakening yen of Japan could weigh on the market amid worries th

Jan. 12, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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