From as early as next year, screen playwrights and other freelance artists in film, performance and publishing industries may be insured against unemployment or industrial disasters like salaried workers. According to a bill submitted to parliament this month, the government will draw up policies to guarantee the social and legal status of artists. It also calls for the government to fund a fina...

By Claire Lee, Korea Herald correspondent BEIJING ― The city is booming, huge, commercial and industrial. Its gigantic roads are filled with countless vehicles, high-rise buildings and almost unbearably polluted air. It is lunch time in Dongcheng District, an urban district in Beijing covering the eastern half of the city’s urban core. And what’s located on the ground floor of Park Plaza Mall, ...

The government said Thursday it plans to boost support for growth industries in the country’s provincial metropolitan areas by injecting 285 billion won ($265 million) this year. The program is the latest in a string of projects that the Ministry of Knowledge Economy has pushed since 2009 to develop regional technology hubs. Under the plan, the ministry will fund nearly 20 billion won this year...

The government is seeking to alleviate the fallout of local oil refiners’ move to raise product prices that were temporarily lowered to help stem inflationary pressure, sources said Thursday. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy recently held talks with local oil companies and called for a “soft landing” approach when they move to mark up gasoline and diesel fuel after July 6, they said. In April,...

The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs unveiled a draft package of traffic safety measures at a public hearing in Seoul on Thursday, which consists of increased speeding fines, brighter crosswalks and tougher penalties for drunk driving. Though the number of deaths from road accidents in Korea has declined by nearly half over the last decade to about 5,500 in 2010, the figure per 1...

Local chambers of commerce join to press government to stick to tax policy Representatives of one of the nation’s top private economic organizations on Thursday called for the government and politicians to stay committed to tax reduction to help the corporate sector. “Tax reduction is necessary to enhance corporate competitiveness and attract foreign capital,” the heads of the country’s 71 regi...

The worldwide semiconductor market is forecast to expand 7.2 percent in 2011 from last year, driven by robust demand for smartphones and tablet PCs, a market researcher said Thursday. Revising up its earlier forecast, IHS iSuppli estimated that global semiconductor revenues will reach $325.9 billion this year, compared with $304.1 billion in 2010. It previously estimated 7 percent annual growth....

Korea’s financial watchdog plans to curb excessive growth of household debt by tightening banks’ loan-to-deposit ratios and requiring non-bank institutions to raise loan-loss reserves, its head said Thursday. Korea is grappling with snowballing household debt as heavy indebtedness is feared to crimp economic growth by putting restraints consumer spending. The government plans to unveil a set of ...

Korea Eximbank should focus on long-term projects of a global scale as the key export credit agency of the country, Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan said Thursday. Speaking at a forum organized by the state-run bank, Bahk said, “The Bank should reduce short-term products such as trade financing, which can be mainly provided by the private sector, but increase mid- to long-term financing for large-s...

Failure of two brokerages’ merger dims prospects The nation is facing a stumbling block in establishing a large-scale investment bank although the chief financial regulator has unveiled a policy toward activation of IB businesses. The pessimistic view comes after KDB Financial Group failed to take over Woori Financial Group amid an uneasy sentiment between the two state-run financial companies....

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s No. 2 mobile-phone maker, said Thursday that it has released the Galaxy S2 smartphone in Japan through the country’s largest mobile carrier, hoping to build on the popularity of its earlier model. NTT DoCoMo Inc. has started sales of Samsung’s latest Android smartphone earlier in the day, Samsung said in a statement. The Korean company added that the latest ...

LG-Ericsson said Thursday that it hoped the launch of its Long Term Evolution network would give it the top spot in the country’s telecommunications industry. Lee Jae-ryung, chief executive officer of LG-Ericsson, said that the company expects to surpass its peak sales figure of 1.1 trillion won recorded in 2008 with the nationwide introduction of fourth generation LTE networks. “It’s difficult...