Free Republic

SEOUL, Nov. 11 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has sharply reduced next year's budget for building up the defense capability of the United States Forces Korea (USFK) amid the ongoing talks on how to share the cost of keeping American troops here, a defense ministry report showed Monday. According to the report submitted to Rep. Park Joo-sun, South Korea has set aside a total of 799.7 billion won (US$749.6 million) in next year's budget to co-finance USFK's defense activities in the country. South Korea's annual defense cost contribution to USFK covers four main sectors -- defense capacity building, military facility upgrading,...

Lee Jung-hee, chairwoman of the Unified Progressive Party, has sparked controversy by calling President Park Geun-hye “Ms. Park Geun-hye” at a public protest rally. At the rally at Seoul Station on Saturday, Lee never used the term "president" and referred the president as “”Ms. Park Geun-hye,” “dictator,” and “dictatorial Park Geun-hye force.” “’Park Geun-hye ssi (Ms.)’ is none other than a dictator, who even fires the prosecutor-general if the latter does not follow order,” Lee said. “Park Geun-hye ssi is none other than a dictator, who fabricates the crime of rebellion collusion against an opposition party for criticizing the administration,...

<p>In a controversy that echoes the ordeal of South African runner Caster Semenya, the 27-year-old is facing accusations about her gender.</p> <p>At 1.80 meters tall and weighing 74 kg, Park was top scorer in the South Korean women's league last season with 19 goals and she led Seoul City Hall Amazones to second place in the table.</p>

Leaders of the massive candle-carrying protests against U.S. beef imports in 2008 do not have to compensate the government for the damage incurred during the demonstrations, a Seoul court ruled yesterday. The government in July 2005 requested some 517 million won ($487,726) in compensation for medical fees for injured police, lost police equipment and damage to buses and cars from civic groups and their leaders after they organized candlelight vigils against U.S. beef imports between May and June 2008. The protesters believed U.S. beef posed a risk of infecting people with mad cow disease. The Seoul Central District Court ruled...

A 22-year-old university student died Saturday nine days after she underwent a bimaxillary or corrective jaw surgery in a cosmetic surgery clinic in Busan. In June this year, a woman in her 30s died a month after undergoing the same procedure in the hope of looking prettier. Corrective jaw surgery is an extremely difficult procedure under full anesthesia that involves the use of surgical drills to carve away at bones, carefully avoiding muscles and nerves in the face. The procedure was originally developed to treat patients with congenital defects that make it difficult for them to chew properly. But it...

Sixty years after the end of the Korean war, the United States and South Korea still can't agree on who should take charge if another war breaks out with the communist neighbour to the north. For years, Washington has been trying to persuade the South Korean military to take operational control of its own forces in wartime, ending a six-decade arrangement during which US commanders have retained that authority over South Korean troops. Although supportive in principle, a succession of governments in Seoul has repeatedly delayed the command transfer, reinforcing doubts about whether the South Korean military is capable of...

(Reuters) - South Korea's industrial production fell the most in six months in September from August as strikes hit top automakers Hyundai Motor Co. (005380.KS) and Kia Motors Corp. (000270.KS), denting a recent run of upbeat data. Industrial output fell by a seasonally adjusted 2.1 percent in September from August, data released by Statistics Korea data showed on Wednesday. August's reading was revised down to 1.6 percent growth from a preliminary 1.8 percent rise. The output numbers showed the sharpest decline since March and were worse than any individual forecast provided in a Reuters survey of 13 economists. The median...

(Reuters) - South Korea may struggle to cut its reliance on nuclear power, as a working group has suggested it do, because the country has no natural resources to fill its huge energy requirements, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday. Seoul is under pressure to rethink nuclear power following a scandal that started with bogus certificates for cables and snowballed into the indictment of 100 people. Switching to alternatives such as gas to fire generators may calm safety concerns, especially after Japan's Fukushima disaster, but could cost tens of billions of dollars. South Korea has to import...

It was South Korea's biggest Armed Forces Day ceremony in a decade, and the first since North Korea conducted its third atomic test and threatened nuclear war earlier this year. About 11,000 troops, 190 weapons systems and other equipment and 120 aircraft were featured at Tuesday's ceremony at a military airport just south of Seoul. Among them were GPS-guided, Hyunmu-3 cruise missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) that South Korea developed in recent years. It was the first time the domestically built Hyunmu-3 was publicly shown, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry. President Park Geun-hye said in a...

(Reuters) - It started with a few bogus safety certificates for cables shutting a handful of South Korean nuclear reactors. Now, the scandal has snowballed, with 100 people indicted and Seoul under pressure to rethink its reliance on nuclear power. A shift away from nuclear, which generates a third of South Korea's electricity, could cost tens of billions of dollars a year by boosting imports of liquefied natural gas, oil or coal. Although helping calm safety concerns, it would also push the government into a politically sensitive debate over whether state utilities could pass on sharply higher power bills to...

Korea may be a highly advanced country in manufacturing, but in the labor and social sectors, it still resembles a developing nation, a government report said yesterday. The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) announced the fourth-largest Asian economy ranked second among 150 countries in terms of per capita working hours in 2012, according to statistics complied by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Mexicans were the only people to work more. Koreans work 2,090 hours a year on average, compared with Mexico’s 2,226 hours. The United States came in 12th with 1,790 hours, data showed. Japan was 15th with...

The Financial Services Commission and five financial associations including the Korea Federation of Banks launched a saving campaign in February this year in a bid to increase the household savings rate. The financial authorities, associations and commercial banks together went out to the streets and handed out campaign leaflets as they used to do in the early 1980s. Eight months from the onset of the campaign, the Dong-A Ilbo asked of the campaign to an official from a commercial bank. Disappointedly, he asked back, “Have we run such a campaign?” He even complained that “deposits are not fully welcomed because...

South Korea says six men returned by North Korea on Friday all entered the communist state via China, some in search of a better life. The men, aged 27 to 67, were handed over at the truce village of Panmunjom, on the border between the two nations. The men said they had been held in detention centres before their return. The group could face charges, because South Korea bans its citizens from entering North Korea without official permission. The men entered North Korea illegally between 2009 and 2012, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, either by walking across frozen rivers...

Korea is to get its first nude beach on the east coast in Gangwon Province. The Gangwon provincial government on Tuesday said it wants to set up the nude beach by 2017 to invigorate tourism. The site will be selected from recommendations or in a competition next year. It will open in 2017 once facilities have been installed and access to outsiders restricted. The regional government wants to benchmark popular nude beaches abroad.

More and more Koreans are deciding to stay single or, if they marry, to have no children. Like most developments this is led by the capital, where the number of people who live alone has increased more than 10-fold over the last 30 years, while that of childless couples has grown more than four times. The figures come from data about the 3.6 million households within city limits released by the Seoul Metropolitan Government on Tuesday. Childless married couples accounted for a mere 5.51 percent or 101,135 households in 1980, but that surged to 12.8 percent or 423,229 in 2010....

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday that it would announce interim results of its probe into the alleged political intervention by cyber warfare agents with negative online comments against the main opposition party candidate ahead of last year's presidential election. "Tomorrow afternoon, an interim explanation will be given on the investigation," Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters at a press briefing, declining to comment on further details. Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin ordered the investigation into the allegations on Oct. 15 after the left-leaning local daily Hankyoreh reported some soldiers and military personnel at the ministry's Cyber Warfare Command posted...

Foreign investors are on their longest-ever buying spree of South Korean stocks – another sign that the country has emerged as a one of Asia's most popular safe-havens, analysts say. Data on Monday showed foreign investors bought South Korean stocks for a 37th straight session, bringing the net total to more than 12.6 trillion won (US$ 11.8 billion), while the country's stock market closed at its highest level since August 2011. (Read More: It's not easy being green, just ask South Korea) The data follows a report from investment bank Morgan Stanley last week which highlighted South Korea as a...

What should Korea do after the World Energy Congress? Two years ago, Daegu was in the world’s spotlight when top athletes visited the city for the World Athletics Championships. The city was again in the spotlight last week, hosting the 22nd World Energy Congress. I found the city quieter and calmer this time, perhaps because the event last week dealt with more serious (or maybe not as entertaining) issues such as energy, the environment, the global economy and social equality. However, this doesn’t mean that the event wasn’t successful or unimportant. In fact, the 22nd World Energy Congress was the...

The South Korean military's artillery firefinder radar systems failed to detect the North Korean artillery shells when they fell in waters near the Northern Limit Line close to Yeonpyeong Island on Aug. 10. The Seoul area is threatened by about 340 long-range artillery pieces with a range of 54-65 km, including 170 mm self-propelled howitzers and 240 mm multiple rocket launchers, which the North has deployed along the western frontline near the demilitarized zone. This means large parts of the metropolitan area lie within the range of the North's long-range artillery, which is reportedly capable of raining up to 7,000...

The military will cut down on mobile exercises of the Army, Navy and Air Force and reduce heating in a bid to save fuel costs amid soaring oil prices. "The Defense has adjusted the fuel control level after the government upgraded its energy alert level," a Defense Ministry official said Thursday. "As of Wednesday, the ministry raised the fuel control level for both training and operations." The military is trying to save 5 percent or 280,000 barrels of oil for training and 8 percent or 440,000 barrels on operations out of the 5.53 million barrels it is authorized to use...