Park’s unified candidacy keeps both ruling, opposition parties wary The weeklong media hype over Ahn Cheol-soo’s hint at running for Seoul mayor ended up as a litmus test of his popularity and the prevailing dissatisfaction with existing political parties. Some even say that the 49-year-old entrepreneur-turned-professor has emerged as a potential threat to presidential hopefuls of both the ruli...

Nearly 40,000 sign petition as Seoul makes efforts to draw world attention Dozens of international human rights groups will gather in Tokyo on Wednesday to urge the North Korean regime to halt its inhumane activities and release a South Korean woman believed to be held captive at a prison camp, an activist group here said. The event was organized after a South Korean family’s devastating story ...

Budget planners, politicians in head-on clash over tax cuts for the rich, corporations Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s recent call for higher taxes on the U.S.’s super rich drew much attention from Koreans. Korean media also reported moves by wealthy Europeans to follow Buffett’s lead by offering to pay more taxes to help cut the mounting debt of their governments. Many commentators here...

Korea’s economic growth slightly up from estimate thanks to public spending Koreans saw the growth rate of their purchasing power fall to a two-year low during the second quarter of 2011, though the index inched up. The Bank of Korea said Tuesday that the gross national income inched up 0.6 percent to 252.1 trillion won ($233.4 billion) in the second quarter on a year-on-year basis. This was t...

South Korea took up the seventh position in the global construction market in terms of combined orders won by its builders last year, a trade association said Tuesday. The Korea Federation of Construction Contractors said South Korea’s 11 construction firms clinched a combined market share of 4.8 percent, one notch higher from the previous year, citing an analysis on the 2011 top international c...

HORSENS, Denmark ― For struggling local red meat producers in the post-Korea-EU FTA market, the surest way to seek advice was to go to Danish Crown, Europe’s top pork exporter that continues to expand despite one of the world’s highest production costs. At the Danish livestock farmer co-op’s slaughterhouse in Horsens, 200 kilometers east of Copenhagen, 100,000 pigs are killed and processed per w...