South Korea has joined the U.N. refugee agency's club of key donors that pay more than US$20 million a year, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday, underscoring the country's increasing humanitarian activities.The ministry said that as of this year, a total of 15 countries are in the donor group of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The group includes the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Britain, Norway and the European Union.As part of efforts to strengthe

Japan did not offer South Korea any intelligence on North Korea's recent test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) despite a bilateral intelligence-sharing pact that took effect last month, a government source here said Thursday.The source said that although the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) went into force on Nov. 23, there should be additional consultations over how to enforce the deal -- the first military arrangement between the two neighbors since S

A consortium of two South Korean financial firms has been picked as the preferred bidder to purchase the headquarters building of the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) in Washington D.C., industry sources said Thursday.A consortium of Korea Investment & Securities Co. and Hana Asset Management Co. was selected on Wednesday (Washington time) as the winning bidder to buy the building for some US$360 million.NASA uses the building as its headquarters under a lease contract due

A Canadian government delegation visited North Korea this week to discuss the issue of a Korean-Canadian pastor detained in the communist state, the North's state media reported Thursday.The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that the delegation, led by Sarah Taylor, the director general in charge of North Asia and Oceania at Global Affairs Canada, visited Pyongyang from Tuesday through Thursday for talks over "issues of mutual concern," including one involving the pastor Li

BEIJING (AFP) - China said Thursday that the deployment of weapons in the South China Sea had "nothing to do with militarisation", calling the construction of defensive facilities "normal". The comments came after images released by the US-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) showed a series of hexagonal structures on each of seven islets China constructed on uninhabitable rocks and reefs.The structures appear to be large anti-aircraft guns and close-in weapons systems (CIWS) desig

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) _ A possible South Korean presidential contender said Thursday his country should reconsider plans to deploy an advanced U.S. missile defense system to cope with North Korean threats, a move Washington is likely to see as disruptive. Liberal opposition politician Moon Jae-in said the security benefits of having Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, would be curtailed by worsened relations with neighbors China and Russia. He downplayed concerns that South Korea ba

NAGATO, Japan (AP) _ The leaders of Russia and Japan met at a hot springs resort in western Japan on Thursday for talks on a territorial dispute that has divided their countries for 70 years.For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the summit meeting marks his first official visit to a G-7 country since Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.In brief remarks to reporters before the meeting, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe referred to the famous hot springs waters of Nagato, the city where they are m

New allegations surrounding an influence-peddling scandal involving South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her confidante emerged during a parliamentary hearing on Thursday, ranging from a cover-up attempt to spying on a top justice and bribery involving a deputy premier-level official. The National Assembly held the fourth round of inquiries into the case focusing on alleged wrongdoing by Park's friend Choi Soon-sil and her ex-husband Chung Yun-hoi, who was an aide to Park when the president

After positioning itself as the first direct car insurer, AXA Direct Korea will grow into a direct general accident insurer with an aim to acquire 1 million customers by 2022, its CEO Francois Lecomte said. “We are mostly a motor insurance company, but now we try to be equally strong in accidental health insurance, where AXA Group in other countries is strong. We want to develop that in Korea, too,” Lecomte told The Korea Herald. Last month, Lecomte won approval from Paris-based AXA Group for a

Koreans will face stricter requirements in order to gain access to a government-backed mortgage although the size of funds available for those eligible will be expanded, the financial authorities said Thursday.The Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the Financial Services Commission and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport jointly announced that regulators will expand government-backed mortgages for next year, but will also limit the value of eligible properties and add an upper cap

Behind-the-scenes talks between Samsung Group and the National Pension Service must have occurred to push through the controversial merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries in July 2015, legal sources have claimed. The merger had faced strong opposition from individual shareholders led by US hedge fund Elliott Management.“There must have been coordination between Samsung and the NPS prior to the shareholders’ meeting on such a huge deal,” a legal source who is familiar with the matter tol

South Koreans tuned into the parliamentary hearing of the country’s nine biggest corporations with shame and embarrassment, as the nation’s business leaders looked solemn and agitated.The owners of conglomerates attended a public hearing by the National Assembly to be grilled about suspicious connections between them and President Park Geun-hye’s confidante Choi Soon-sil. Many young Koreans watched the hearing on social networking sites including the Facebook Live service and expressed their dis

South Korea’s financial watchdog on Tuesday designated 176 small and medium-sized enterprises to undergo restructuring, the largest number of firms since 2010.The Financial Supervisory Service evaluated credit risks of a total of 2,035 SMEs with credit ceilings of less than 50 billion won ($42.8 million) and graded them in levels from A to D. The annual evaluation is conducted by the watchdog in order to reduce risks of corporate bankruptcies. A total of 71 firms were given a grade of C, while 1

The South Korean economy grew less than 1 percent for the past three consecutive quarters, raising the possibility of the government failing to reach its annual growth target. According to the Bank of Korea on Friday, Korea’s gross domestic product expanded 0.6 percent on-quarter in the third quarter of 2016. The revised figure was lower than the 0.7 percent growth preliminary estimated by the BOK in October.  Since the fourth quarter of 2015, the quarterly growth has been hovering below 1 perce

Citibank Korea will challenge the current adverse conditions in the banking industry with a new business model for wealth management instead of seeking quantitative growth, said CEO Park Jin-hei on Thursday. Despite falling profits this year, Park has decided to focus on materializing a new concept of wealth management and “smarter mobile banking” for Korean consumers, and has come up with a noticeable outcome -- opening of the country’s largest wealth management center in Cheongdam in the afflu

South Korean investors are making aggressive investments in overseas funds in diverse forms of stocks, bonds and derivatives while avoiding local securities, figures showed Wednesday. According to data from Korea Financial Investment Association, the accumulated amount of money invested in foreign funds stood at 78.9 trillion won ($67.5 billion), as of Wednesday. The figure hit 88.2 trillion won last Friday, the largest since 2007. At the same time, the balance of cash management accounts hit a

South Korea’s financial watchdog will enhance its monitoring of changes in stocks linked to political figures over the next three months, amid growing uncertainty about President Park Geun-hye’s term in office.The Financial Supervisory Service said Wednesday it would more closely monitor online postings, messages via mobile messengers and other social networking sites for rumors concerning about 60 publicly traded stocks. “For the particular stocks, uncertainties have been spiking regardless of

South Korea’s state-run financier has established connections across Southeast Asia to export its know-how on development finance to other countries.The Korea Development Bank announced last week that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Sarana Multi Infrastruktur, or SMI, its Indonesian counterpart to open a local operational office named “Korea Desk” in Jakarta. The KDB’s Korea Desk will be installed in the headquarters of SMI, and the two banks agreed to work together on project f

Backed by expanding fiscal spending in advanced economies, global investors are highly likely to hunt for riskier assets that would boost stock markets around the world next year, said a securities brokerage firm based in Seoul. Hanwha Investment & Securities forecast the global economy would have a modest but stable growth next year due to huge investments in infrastructure and fiscal spending by governments, despite high political uncertainties remaining in many parts of the world. “At least,

Clinching contracts with new customers abroad has raised market watchers’ expectations on the growth of BHflex, a flexible printed circuit board provider based in South Korea. According to the financial industry on Monday, the company’s sales and operating profit for next year are estimated to surge compared to this year as it received new overseas orders. The FPCB manufacturer is forecast to post 376.1 billion won ($321.8 million) in sales by the end of the year, and 13.4 billion won in operati