Three North Korean MiG-19 fighters have crashed this year, leading to the suspension of flight drills involving the aircraft, South Korea's military sources said Wednesday.The supersonic MiG-19 aircraft is a Soviet second-generation fighter developed in 1953. Some 400 MiG variants are still in service in the communist North, accounting for about half of its fighters."At least three of the MiG-19s crashed during training missions -- one earlier this year, the others last month and earlier this mo

North Korea July 30, 2014

South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share in the smartphone industry plunge in the second quarter from a year earlier, data showed Wednesday, dented by the rise of Chinese players vying with low-end models.Samsung took up 25.2 percent of the global smartphone market in the April-June period, down 7.1 percentage points from the 32.3 percent posted last year, the data compiled by market researcher IDC Corp. showed. It shipped a combined 74.3 million units of smartphones

Technology July 30, 2014

South Korea is pushing to ease or lift the current daily limit imposed on stock price movements as part of efforts to stimulate the country's stock market, a local media report said Wednesday.According to the daily JoongAng Ilbo, who cited sources from financial authorities, the government is pushing to phase out the 15 percent daily limit in stock price fluctuations. It said the government could announce its position later this month or in August in a meeting chaired by President Park Geun-hye.

July 30, 2014

The captain of a Coast Guard patrol boat was arrested on Tuesday to face questioning over the maritime police's botched initial response to April's ferry sinking that claimed more than 300 lives, prosecutors said.The chief of the Mokpo Coast Guard's patrol boat, called the 123, has come under fire for failing to move swiftly to save more lives even though it was the first ship that arrived at the scene after the Sewol ferry sank in waters off the southwestern island of Jindo on April 16. The cap

Social Affairs July 29, 2014

South Korea and the United States will relocate the U.S. military headquarters in Seoul to south of the capital as planned because it is "a pledge to the people," Seoul's defense chief said Tuesday. In 2004, the allies agreed to relocate the Yongsan Garrison, the sprawling U.S. military headquarters in central Seoul, and the 2nd Infantry Division north of Seoul to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, some 70 kilometers south of the capital, by the end of 2016."The plan to relocate the U.S. bases will b

Defense July 29, 2014

South Korea is considering imposing a travel ban on Libya again as spiraling violence in the African country has raised security concerns, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.Seoul's foreign ministry said it plans to hold a meeting as early as Wednesday to decide whether to raise its travel alert for Libya by one notch to the highest level.Since mid-July, South Korea, which has a four-tier travel advisory system, has strongly recommended that local companies withdraw their staffs or reduce the num

Foreign Affairs July 29, 2014

Sweltering summer heat in Japan has left at least 15 people dead over the past week, while more than 8,000 others were rushed to hospital with heatstroke symptoms, official figures showed Tuesday.At least six people died on Saturday alone, when the state weather agency warned temperatures had topped 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), with dripping humidity in certain parts of the country.Nearly 8,600 people were taken to the emergency room for heat-related symptoms in the week through S

World News July 29, 2014

South Korea has no intention of offering another round of talks with North Korea on its planned Asian Games participation as Pyongyang is responsible for the breakdown of the previous meeting, a government official said Tuesday."For now, we have no plan to first propose (talks) since the North Korean side unilaterally declared the failure of the previous meeting and walked out of it," an official at Seoul's unification ministry told reporters.There is no change in the South Korean government's p

North Korea July 29, 2014

North Korea has denounced allegations that it supplied missiles to Hamas and material support to Hezbollah as "sheer fiction" and a "sinister" effort to link Pyongyang to Middle East disputes.The rebuttal from the foreign ministry was carried in a statement late Monday by the North's official KCNA news agency.It followed a weekend report by Britain's Daily Telegraph, citing Western security sources, that the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas had already made an initial cash down payment to sec

North Korea July 29, 2014

South Korea extended its current account surplus to a 28th consecutive month in June but saw the figure slip from the previous month as the surplus for goods narrowed, central bank data showed Tuesday.The current surplus reached US$7.92 billion last month, compared with a revised $9.08 billion in May, according to the preliminary data by the Bank of Korea (BOK). The current account is the broadest measure of cross-border trade.With the June data out, South Korea's current account surplus for the

July 29, 2014

Even as they grapple with an immigration crisis at the Mexican border, White House officials are making plans to act before November's elections to grant work permits to potentially millions of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, allowing them to stay in the United States without threat of deportation, according to advocates and lawmakers in touch with the administration.Such a large-scale move on immigration could scramble election-year politics and lead some conservative Republicans to p

World News July 29, 2014