North Korea has demanded that South Korean firms operating in a jointly run factory park in the communist nation pay taxes to North Korea, an official said Monday, in an apparent breach of a September deal.The North said in a notice last week that the firms in the factory park in the North's western border city of Kaesong should pay taxes incurred between Jan. 1 and April 8, according to the official handling the issue at the unification ministry.The ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs,

North Korea Dec. 30, 2013

South Korean stocks closed 0.45 percent higher on Monday, the last trading day of the year, as gains of bank shares and automakers propped up the market, analysts said. The local currency fell against the U.S. dollar.After trading in a tight range, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) gained 9.06 points to 2,011.34. Trading volume was moderate at 167.8 million shares worth 3.17 trillion won ($3.01 billion) with gainers outpacing losers 494 to 311."Amid thin trading, the local

Dec. 30, 2013

Ten people were killed Monday in a blast on a trolleybus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, a day after a deadly suicide bombing at the city's main train station, officials said."According to initial information, 10 people were killed and 10 were wounded" in the explosion, the spokeswoman of the local branch of the emergencies ministry Irina Gogoleva told the Interfax news agency.Reports said that the blast was so strong that the trolleybus -- a common form of municipal transport in Russ

World News Dec. 30, 2013

South Korea's point man on North Korea said Monday that the communist country appeared to be continuing purges of officials after the high-profile execution of leader Kim Jong-un's once-powerful uncle, Jang Song-thaek.Seoul's Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said in a parliamentary session small-scale purges appear to be under way in North Korea, noting that people close to Jang were recalled to Pyongyang.South Korea detected "circumstances of purges," Ryoo told lawmakers, without elaborating.

North Korea Dec. 30, 2013

South Korean President Park Geun-hye slammed Japan Monday for "digging up wounds of the past" after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid his respects at a war shrine last week in a move seen as an attempt to glorify the country's militaristic past.Abe made the visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on Thursday, sparking angry protests from South Korea and China. The shrine honors Japan's war dead, including class A criminals. Abe was the first Japanese prime minister to visit the shrine in more than seven y

Politics Dec. 30, 2013

South Korean stocks traded 0.04 percent higher late Monday morning, the last day of trading, as bank shares and carmakers gained ground, analysts said.After trading in a tight range, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 0.72 points to 2,003 as of 11:20 a.m.Bank shares and carmakers gained ground. Top banking group Woori Finance rose 3.52 percent and industry leader Hyundai Motor gained 1.96 percent.But market leader Samsung Electronics shed 2.01 percent, and chip giant SK

Dec. 30, 2013

Leaders of unionized rail workers agreed to end their prolonged strike after the ruling and opposition parties promised to form a parliamentary subcommittee aimed at ensuring no privatization of rail services, lawmakers said Monday.The breakthrough came three weeks after some 8,700 workers of the Korea Railroad Corp. (KORAIL) walked off their jobs on Dec. 9 in protest of a government plan to establish a KORAIL subsidiary to run part of the high-speed train services. The union suspects the move i

Politics Dec. 30, 2013

Both Samsung Electronics Co. and SK hynix Inc. claimed Monday to have developed the next-generation mobile DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chip with twice-as-fast speed than the existing model.Dubbed the new LPDDR4 (Low Power DDR4), the product is the industry's first eight-gigabit memory chip using 20 nanometer technology with a speed of 3,200 megabits per second (Mbps), two times faster than the 1,600 Mbps of its predecessor LPDDR3, the companies said.The two South Korean tech giants each

Industry Dec. 30, 2013

The execution of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's once-powerful uncle has made relations between the two Koreas harder to predict, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said, pledging to maintain airtight security against possible provocations.In an article contributed to the Project Syndicate, Park also said she will stick to her trademark trust-building policy toward the communist nation to lay the groundwork for unification on the divided Korean Peninsula."The recent North Korean political si

Politics Dec. 30, 2013

Records related to South Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II will be permanently kept as state-designated records, the government said Monday.The National Archives of Korea said it will designate some 3,060 documents related to the former sex slaves being kept at "House of Sharing" as state records. The home is for the living former sex slaves and is located in Gwangju, just south of Seoul.The records to be kept include the women's voice recordings, drawings, bel

Politics Dec. 30, 2013

South Korean tech giant LG Electronics Inc. likely sold more than 3 million units of its latest flagship smartphone, the LG G2, around the globe since its launch in August, according to analysts here Monday.The firm is estimated to have sold more than 2 million units of the model in the fourth quarter following its official announcement that it sold 1 million units between August and September, analysts said."Although we cannot reveal specific data, the sales of (the LG G2) is gathering ground s

Industry Dec. 30, 2013