President Lee Myung-bak on Wednesday chided the nation’s top financial watchdog for its failure to reform itself despite the 1997-98 financial crisis and to properly supervise mutual savings banks, eight of which had their operation suspended so far this year.Having championed efforts to seek a “fair society” through the second half of his term, Lee slammed the Financial Supervisory Service for no

Politics May 4, 2011

President says conglomerates need to seek mutual growth with small firmsPresident Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday urged leaders of large business conglomerates to “open-mindedly discuss” with smaller companies how to seek mutual growth, a key policy goal of the Lee administration.Lee asked Huh Chang-soo, new president of the Federation of Korean Industries, the nation’s most powerful business lobby, to v

Politics May 3, 2011

The Seoul government on Monday said it will pay 300,000 won per month for pre-school education of 5-year-olds from 2016, extending the state-funded compulsory education period by a year to 10 years.Currently, public elementary (six years) and middle school (three years) education in Korea is free, whereas the government provides 177,000 won per month for pre-school education or childcare of 5-year

Politics May 2, 2011

An aide to President Lee Myung-bak criticized a group of Busan lawmakers for pushing for legislation to make the government provide full compensation for lost savings at suspended mutual savings banks, saying it would bring about moral hazard.“Ignoring the existing law to guarantee full compensation for all savings when Busan Savings Bank is suspected of having told (its VIP customers) to withdraw

Politics May 2, 2011

China’s chief nuclear envoy said Friday he plans to visit North Korea to coordinate efforts to revive six-party talks on the North, wrapping up a South Korean visit that coincided with a trip to Pyongyang by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.Speaking to Yonhap News Agency before departing for China, Wu Dawei, however, said he did not yet have a specific timetable for his visit to North Korea, the

North Korea April 29, 2011

By Kim So-hyunPresident Lee Myung-bak agreed with visiting Iraqi Prime minister Nouri Kamil Al-Maliki during summit talks Thursday to extend economic cooperation, hoping for greater participation of South Korean businesses in developing Iraqi oil.The two countries signed an agreement to promote economic and energy cooperation which is expected to provide a framework for increased two-way trade and

Politics April 28, 2011

By Kim So-hyunDemocratic Party presidential hopeful Sohn Hak-kyu now has a good chance of becoming the strongest candidate of the entire opposition.Having won his ticket back to the National Assembly in Wednesday’s by-election, Sohn is set to regain his clout in the DP, which had fizzled out after the defector from the Grand National Party lost in the DP’s internal race for presidential candidacy

Politics April 28, 2011

President Lee Myung-bak on Wednesday discussed with visiting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke how to get the pending Korea-U.S. free trade deal approved by the parliaments of both countries.The bilateral free trade agreement, first signed in 2007 and supplemented last December, is yet to be ratified by the National Assembly and the U.S. Congress.Lee’s meeting with Locke Wednesday came a week

Politics April 27, 2011

The Seoul government is set to receive a massive database from Berlin on the 1990 reunification of East and West Germany to prepare itself for “sudden changes” in North Korea. President Lee Myung-bak has assigned the Ministry of Unification, which he initially planned to merge into the Foreign Ministry, with two main jobs ― preparation for reunification with the North and taking care of the increa

Politics April 26, 2011

South Korea’s prosecution is looking into whether North Korea was involved in the weeks-long paralysis of the South Korean farm cooperative’s banking system after finding some suspicious Internet protocol addresses originating from China, officials said Tuesday.Traces of break-ins into Nonghyup’s servers were discovered in a laptop owned by an employee of IBM Korea, the cooperative’s computer netw

Social Affairs April 26, 2011

South Korean prosecutors have summoned about a dozen employees of Deutsche Bank's New York and Hong Kong offices for questioning over alleged stock manipulation that forced the key index to nosedive last year, officials said Monday.The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office believes that employees at the German bank's overseas bureaus gave orders to the Seoul unit to place massive sell orders

April 25, 2011

The ratification bill for South Korea's free trade agreement with the European Union is expected to pass the parliament's standing committee later this week, as the South Korean government has responded positively to rival parties' demand to offer transfer tax cuts to small livestock farms, removing the last remaining hurdle to the long-stalled free trade deal, officials and lawmakers said Monday.

Politics April 25, 2011

South Korea's top financial regulator said Monday that it has launched a probe into SC First Bank, the local unit of British banking giant Standard Chartered Plc, on allegedly infringing domestic bank regulations by giving metal loans to corporate customers. "Investigators were dispatched to SC First Bank and if we find (the bank) violated local regulations, we will summon the bank officials and d

April 25, 2011