The wife of an Indian minister was found dead Friday at a luxury hotel in New Delhi after a controversy over her husband's alleged affair with a Pakistani journalist.Spokesman Rajan Bhagat said police were investigating the cause of Sunanda Pushkar's death. The Press Trust of India news agency reported the cause was believed to be suicide. Police declined comment.The marriage of the 52-year-old Pushkar and her husband, junior Human Resources Development Minister Shashi Tharoor, made headlines Th

World News Jan. 19, 2014

China called on both South and North Korea Friday to take steps to nurture better cross-border relations, with Pyongyang's "peace offensive" raising fresh concerns that tension on the peninsula may rise sharply again ahead of joint military drills between Seoul and Washington.North Korea has proposed this week that both Seoul and Pyongyang stop military provocations and mutual slandering to improve bilateral relations, but demanded the cancellation of upcoming South Korea-U.S. military exercises

North Korea Jan. 17, 2014

Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co. said Friday that it will continue seven large projects in Singapore and Malaysia despite the company being placed under court protection.Chairman Kim Seok-joon has agreed with officials from the two countries' governments and private firms to continue to carry out its projects worth around 2 trillion won ($1.9 billion) as planned, the builder said.The projects include the Marina Coastal Expressway in Singapore and St. Regis Langkawi Hotel in Malaysia.Ssan

Industry Jan. 17, 2014

Fans of such K-pop stars as rapper Psy, BigBang and 2NE1 will be able to see their idols whenever they want in hologram form.The government, telecom giant KT and YG Entertainment jointly opened a hologram performance venue for K-pop stars on Friday in a shopping mall in the Dongdaemun Market area, one of the country's most popular tourist destinations.Located inside the Lotte Fitin shopping mall, the "Klive" theater has a hologram concert hall with a floor space of 1,650 square meters and variou

Jan. 17, 2014

The South Korean association of councilors urged the Japanese prime minister Friday to resign to take responsibility for his rightward moves and failure to apologize for past wrongdoings.Some 50 former and current councilors of municipal and provincial governments nationwide gathered in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and held a protest, demanding a halt to Japan's distortion of history and an apology for its brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula."Stopping its regression toward the

Politics Jan. 17, 2014

South Korea's rival political parties welcomed Friday the U.S. Congress' approval of a spending bill that calls on Japan to apologize for its sexual enslavement of Korean and other Asian women during World War II.The Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2014, which passed through the U.S. Senate on Thursday, is attached with a nonbinding clause calling on the secretary of state to step up efforts to get Japan to apologize for forcing as many as 200,000 women to provide sexual services

Politics Jan. 17, 2014

The Export-Import Bank of Korea has become the first Korean company to sell a non Taiwan dollar- denominated note in Taiwan as the so-called Formosa bond market gathers pace.Kexim, as the state-owned bank is known, sold 500 million yuan ($82.6 million) of 10-year notes listed in Taiwan, or Formosa bonds, to yield 4.5 percent and 500 million yuan of five-year Dim Sum securities to yield 3.625 percent, according to a person familiar with the matter. Chinatrust Commercial Bank, a unit of Taiwan’s f

Jan. 17, 2014

The governments of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province on Friday issued their first ultrafine dust advisories this year, urging people to stay indoors.In Seoul, the advisory was put in place at 11 a.m. after the city's atmospheric concentration levels of "particulate matter 2.5" pollutants stood around 95 micrograms per cubic meter for more than two hours. It was the year's first advisory of its kind issued by the Seoul metropolitan government.The Gyeonggi provincial government posted the same advisory

Social Affairs Jan. 17, 2014

A South Korean civic group dedicated a statue in the southern city of Geoje Friday to mark the suffering of Korean women forced into sexual slavery by colonial Japan during World War II.Up to 200,000 young women and girls, mostly Koreans, were coerced into providing sexual services at Japan's front-line military brothels during World War II, which remains an unresolved grievance between the two nations as Tokyo has refused to admit to its past wrongdoings.According to the committee in charge of

Social Affairs Jan. 17, 2014

South Korea is evaluating the real intention behind North Korea's surprise peace gesture, while closely monitoring military moves there to see whether the communist neighbor is committed to keeping its word, government sources said Friday.After North Korea proposed Thursday the two Koreas halt all slander against each other, President Park Geun-hye's national security chief, Kim Jang-soo, convened an emergency security meeting with Cabinet members and security officials to discuss the North's pr

North Korea Jan. 17, 2014

South Korea said Friday it will go ahead with joint military exercises with the United States in coming months as planned, a move that analysts say may prompt Pyongyang to stage provocations.North Korea has repeatedly called on South Korea to scrap the joint military drills scheduled to run from late February to April. The North suspects the military exercises could be a rehearsal for a nuclear war against it. Seoul and Washington have said the routine drills are defensive in nature.On late Thur

North Korea Jan. 17, 2014

South Korea's rival political parties showed mixed reactions Friday to North Korea's proposal for a halt to all cross-border provocations.The North's proposal, announced through the official Korean Central News Agency late Thursday, calls on South Korea to halt "all acts provoking and slandering the other side from Jan. 30, a day before the Lunar New Year's Day."Specifically, it calls on Seoul to cancel the annual joint military exercises with the United States, which are scheduled to begin next

Politics Jan. 17, 2014

Hanwha Group, a South Korean chemical conglomerate, said Friday that it will not join the race to buy LIG Insurance Co., the country's fifth-largest non-life insurer."It is not true that Hanwha Group is seeking a takeover of LIG Insuarance," it said in a regulatory filing.LIG Group, a mid-sized local business group, put up a 20.9 percent stake in its non-life insurance unit, LIG Insurance, to secure cash to compensate investors for losses incurred from its 2011 financial fraud scandal.The sale o

Jan. 17, 2014

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest carmaker, said Friday that it seeks to move "up market" in India this year, while expanding sales of its popular mini-sized city cars.The carmaker is already the second-largest automotive nameplate on the subcontinent with its market share topping a little over 15 percent with around 380,000 vehicles sold in 2013.The Indian car industry as a whole is dominated by Maruti Suzuki, a subsidiary of Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp. that held a 43 percent market share

Industry Jan. 17, 2014