North Korea reported over 260,000 new suspected COVID-19 cases Friday, with the total number of such cases surpassing 2 million, eight days after it first confirmed the virus outbreak. More than 263,370 people showed symptoms of fever and two deaths were reported over a 24-hour period until 6 p.m. the previous day, raising the total number of fatalities to 65, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported, citing data from the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters. The total

South Korea's producer prices grew for the fourth straight month in April as hikes in energy and raw material prices drove up costs of manufacturing products, central bank data showed Friday. The producer price index, a major barometer of consumer inflation, stood at 118.02 in April, up 1.1 percent from a revised 116.70 tallied a month earlier, according to the preliminary data from the Bank of Korea (BOK). From a year earlier, the index jumped 9.2 percent, faster than the previous month�

One person has been killed and nine others injured in an explosion at a refinery run by South Korean oil refiner S-Oil Corp. in the country's southwest, firefighters said Friday. The deceased was a subcontractor who was among the 10 others doing repair work at the alkylation processing line in the refinery in Ulsan, about 415 kilometers southwest of Seoul, when the blast occurred at 8:52 p.m. Thursday. The nine others sustained injuries, mostly severe or minor burns. They were all sent to a