United States diplomacy appears to have been caught flat-footed this past week by an avalanche of anger from its closest allies, apoplectic over one report after another detailing vast American spying, including the tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal cell phone and data on tens of millions of calls in Spain in a single month. The most recent revelations from classified documen...

Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj arrived in Pyongyang on Monday as the first foreign head of state to enter the isolated country since Kim Jong-un took power in December 2011. The Rodong Sinmun, an official newspaper of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, expressed hopes that Elbegdorj’s trip would upgrade bilateral ties and boost cooperation in economy, culture and sports. He was officiall...

Prosecutor-general nominee Kim Jin-tae is known inside the law enforcement agency by his piquant nickname: Bull Pen. He was an acting prosecutor general in late 2012 when then the prosecutor-general resigned, taking responsibility for a series of corruption and sex scandals involving some prosecutors, as well as a failed prosecution reform. Kim was the man who put immediate effort to settle the u...

Kimjang, the traditional practice of making kimchi before winter, may soon be included on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list, government officials announced on Wednesday. Representatives of Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration submitted the recommendation for kimjang, categorized under the title “Kimjang; Making and Sharing Kimchi,” to be added to the UNESCO list. Kimjan...

KT Corp. has long been cut from the strings of the government apron, but it seems the fate of its chief executives remains in the hands of the administration. KT chairman Lee Seok-chae has been plagued with rumors of his imminent departure from the moment President Park Geun-hye took office. The allegations about his mismanagement aside, the biggest strike against Lee is that he started his ter...

LS Group, the nation’s 16th-largest conglomerate by assets, is struggling to contain the fallout from its units’ involvement in nuclear power plant-related corruption scandals. On Monday, LS Group placed an ad on the front page of the nation’s major dailies under the name of group chairman Koo Ja-yeol, saying that the group would take full responsibility for wrongdoing and inconvenience caused b...

Luxembourg’s embattled prime minister would likely not appreciate the comparison, but Jean-Claude Juncker shares something in common with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a man derided in the West as “Europe’s last dictator.” It might be unfair to describe the enduring Luxembourger as authoritarian, but now he certainly vies with the Belarusian strongman for Europe’s longest-lasting le...

Yoon Seok-yeol, a senior prosecutor who was leading an investigation into the spy agency’s alleged election interference last year, is in the political limelight after being ousted from the special probe team last week. His dismissal has sparked a backlash from the main opposition Democratic Party, which claims the government attempted to meddle in the high-profile probe. The probe team has loo...

Daesung Group chairman Younghoon David Kim, 61, made an international debut as leader of the World Energy Council, the world’s largest independent network of global energy leaders and practitioners. Kim was chosen as a co-chair of the WEC last December and took office on the last day of the World Energy Congress in Daegu that closed Thursday. It is the first time for a Korean to take the top po...

Ryu Hyun-jin of the Los Angeles Dodgers threw seven shutout innings against the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday, becoming the first South Korean to pick up a starting win in the Major League Baseball postseason. At Dodger Stadium on Monday night, he allowed just three singles and struck out four batters in seven innings, leading his team to a 3-0 win over the Cardinals. It was the second career p...

Shiller had warned about the 1990s-era “stock bubble” and about high home prices before the decline in housing values that greatly contributed to the recession from which the U.S. economy continues its slow recovery. The award comes five years after a financial crisis that drove the United States and world economies into their deepest recession since the Great Depression. Shiller said the 2008 f...

The nation will most likely freeze the portion of nuclear power in its total energy generation at between 22 to 29 percent by 2035, based on recent recommendations from a joint working group on the second phase of the national energy framework on Monday. Although not a binding directive, the group is considered to have sway in energy policy. Monday’s recommendations mark a sharp turn around fro...

The winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is a body that has spent years trying to rid the world of chemical weapons in relative obscurity and was recently thrust into the limelight by the Syrian crisis. From Russia to the U.S., Iraq and Libya, inspectors from the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, have been slowly but surely destroying the world’s most ...

The White House has nominated Janet Yellen as the first woman to head the United States Federal Reserve, arguably the most important job in global finance. But the decision will likely face stiff opposition by extreme conservatives in the U.S. Senate. If she is confirmed by the Senate, President Barack Obama will make history by tapping the first woman to head the American central bank in its 10...

CJ Korea Express vice chairman Lee Chae-wook has been appointed chief executive of CJ Corp., the de facto holding firm of the embattled CJ Group. The conglomerate’s Oct. 8 personnel overhaul is drawing wide interest as the 67-year-old businessman joined CJ Group only six months ago when CJ LNS merged with Korea Express. According to market insiders, the appointment comes as an emergency measure...