CHICAGO (AFP) ― It’s not every day that a U.S. governor accepts an invitation to the launch of a Japanese-built car, but Nissan’s all-electric Leaf offers environmental credentials that top any nationalistic concerns. “Illinois is laying the groundwork for electric vehicles and a more green economy, and our efforts are paying off,” Governor Pat Quinn said Thursday, as he thanked Nissan for bring...

A growing number of Korean drivers have complaints about BMW vehicles even as the carmaker is securing the No. 1 position in sales among foreign automakers in the local market. According to the Korea Consumer Agency, BMW Korea saw its sales come to 17,072 units for the first seven months of the year, up more than 80 percent from the same period in 2010. Meanwhile, the number of customer complai...

Former representative of Korea to the United Nations Park In-kook will take the helm at the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, SK Group announced Sunday. Park will begin his term as the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies’ secretary general from Monday. Founded in 1974 by former SK Group chairman Chey Jong-hyun, the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies provides scholarships for graduate ...

Lee So-sun, the mother of one of South Korea’s most notable labor activists, died of natural causes at a hospital in Seoul. She was 82. Relatives of the diseased and doctors at Hanil General Hospital said Lee ― the mother of Jeon Tae-il, who killed himself in 1970 to protest brutal working conditions ― had been hospitalized since mid-July due to heart problems and was taken off artificial respir...

As the congressional debt-reduction “super committee” begins work next week, it had better take into account trillions of dollars in anticipated war costs that no one in Washington seems willing to acknowledge. For decades now (and probably much longer) government estimates of war costs strove not to count numerous secondary expenses that result from combat, like veterans’ health care ― or the $...

A leading South Korean newspaper recently published a three-part series of interviews with Kim Hyun-hee, one of the two North Korean agents who bombed KAL 858 in November 1987, killing all 115 persons on board. The articles stirred up a complex strand of painful memories for me, as it probably did for all South Koreans whose pride and excitement about the approaching 1988 Olympics was suddenly p...

Maestro talks about the importance of on-going support after successful European tour Following a successful European tour, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra hopes for more fundraising programs and sponsorship, SPO music director Chung Myung-whun and its president Kim Joo-ho said Friday. “Orchestras in foreign countries have about 30 to 50 fundraising experts working for them,” said Kim. “We are...