The southern port city of Busan will soon reach an agreement with the national governing body of professional baseball to build the sport's Hall of Fame, officials said on Saturday.They said Busan, the nation's second-largest city, will sign a deal next month with the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) and the county of Kijang within the city to open the Hall of Fame by 2016.Building the commemorative hall is part of the KBO's project to celebrate more than 100 years of baseball and 30-plus years

A national interest group for tobacco companies said Saturday it was "disappointed" with a public agency's plan to sue cigarette manufacturers, calling the move a misguided attempt to solve budget issues.In an English-language statement, the Korea Tobacco Association (KTA) said the tentative decision by the state-run National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) to file a suit against the tobacco industry "with little legal merit"  wouldn't be in the best interest of taxpayers.The NHIS said on Friday

Google's widely used free email stumbled Friday as some of the Internet giant's services were disrupted by apparent software woes.An online Google Apps dashboard indicated that trouble rippled through Gmail, Google+ and an array of the company's other services.Google did not disclose the extent of the Gmail glitch but the brief outage was believed to have affected millions of people, including those using the service at work.Complaints were posted online from Europe, Canada, the United States an

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Friday resuming long-stalled nuclear talks with North Korea is a matter of great urgency, calling on relevant nations to create "favorable conditions" to reopen the six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear ambition. Wang made the remarks during a joint interview on Friday with some Chinese media organizations on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The interview transcript was posted on the Chinese foreign ministry's w

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday that Japan and China are "inseparable" and urged Beijing to come to the table for "vital" summit talks as he sought to move on from comparisons he drew with World War I.Abe told lawmakers he would not budge on the sovereignty of the Tokyo-administered islands that Beijing claims, but insisted the disagreement should not prevent a meeting between two closely-intertwined countries."Unfortunately, we have not been able to realise summit meetings with China. But

Bending to intense international pressure, Syria's government and the Western-backed opposition agreed Friday to face each other for the first time since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad.After three days of hostile rhetoric and five hours spent assiduously avoiding contact within the United Nations, the two sides will meet “in the same room,” said the U.N. mediator trying to forge an end to the civil war that has left 130,000 people dead since 2011.Mediator Lakhdar Brahim

North Korea's top envoy to the United Nations said Friday his country stands ready to rejoin the six-party talks on its nuclear program."We have long expressed a position for holding the six-way talks," Amb. Sin Son-ho told Yonhap News Agency after a news conference here. He added the timing of resuming the negotiations depends on "those who oppose" them. He was apparently referring to the U.S. and South Korea.The six-party talks, last held in December 2008, also involve China, Russia and Japan.

전북 고창에서 고병원성 조류인플루엔자(A I)가 발생한 데 이어 부안에서도 2건의 고병원성 AI 의심 신고가 접수돼 행정당국이 방역수위를 더 높이고 있다.농림축산식품부는 18일 "전날 감염의심 신고가 들어온 부안 오리농장의 오리도 고병원성 AI에 감염됐을 개연성이 높은 것으로 판단된다"며 고병원성 AI 감염에 준해서 방역조치를 하라고 지시했다.이날 오전에는 이 농장에서 1.2㎞가량 떨어진 한 오리농장에서 또다시 고병원성 AI 의심 신고가 접수됐다.전북도는 부안에서 처음 AI 의심 신고가 접수된 오리농장의 육용오리 6천500마리를 예방차원에서 살처분한다.또 이 농장 반경 500ｍ 내에 있는 오리농장 3곳 등 모두 6만여마리에 대해 살처 분 처리에 나설 예정이다. 방역당국은 부안 오리농장의 AI 의심 신고가 고병원성으로 확진되면 3㎞ 이내에 있는 닭•오리 농가에서 사육 중인 가금류의 살처분 여부를 검토할 예정이다.반경 3㎞ 내에는 농가 39곳에서 닭•오리 85만2천여만리를 사육 중이다.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye left for Switzerland on Saturday after a state visit to India, where she sought to lay the groundwork for boosting trade and other economic exchanges with the world's second-most populous nation.Her summit with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh produced an agreement Thursday to revise the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement -- a free trade pact in place since 2010.The revision, if realized, would allow South Korean firms wider access to the massiv

President Park Geun-hye called for an "airtight" security posture against North Korea from South Korean soldiers and other officials on Saturday, viewing the North's recent charm offensives as a possible prelude to imminent military provocations."In India, Park ordered the (South Korean) defense minister and other security-related ministers to make more efforts to keep an airtight security posture against (potential) provocations at a time North Korea is conducting a flurry of propaganda offensi

South Korea stepped up quarantine measures Saturday to stop the spread of bird flu and launched an investigation into the possibility that the deadly animal disease might have been caused by migratory birds, health authorities said.The Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency on Friday found the flock of about 1,000 ducks dead in a reservoir in North Jeolla Province, and began an investigation to confirm a possible link to aviation influenza (AI), according to the provincial government. The investigat

North Korea will take the first steps to fulfill its proposal made earlier this week to end inter-Korea tensions, the country's main newspaper said Saturday, calling on Seoul to follow suit."Our will to fulfill the latest important proposal is solid," said the Rodong Sinmun daily, which is run by the governing party. "As we have declared, we will first show our actions to fulfill it," it said. The newspaper article, however, did not elaborate on what specific actions the country will take.The Ro

The South Korean stock market is expected to move sideways next week due to investors' jitters over the fourth-quarter corporate earnings, analysts said Saturday.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) gained 0.9 percent from the previous week to close at 1,944.48 Friday.Earlier this week, Seoul shares gathered ground as the weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data curbed concerns that its central bank may speed up the tapering of its quantitative easing.The U.S. added 74,000 jobs in

The United States and Japan agreed Friday to strengthen cooperation between their top national security bodies in dealing with North Korea and other pending issues, the White House said.National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with her Japanese counterpart, Shotaro Yachi, at her office."During the meeting, they agreed to frequent regular communications between the two National Security Councils," the White House said in a press release. "They also discussed updating our defense partnership and o

President Barack Obama called Friday for the end of his government's control over masses of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans, and promised in a major and long-expected speech that U.S. intelligence would no longer be listening in on the telephone conversations of leaders of nations that are U.S. friends and allies.The existence of the U.S. intelligence program that bugged the phones of leaders like Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, for ex

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a spending bill which includes a highly symbolic provision on Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean and other Asian women.The signing of the bill came a day after Congress passed it in order to keep government spending going for the fiscal year 2014.The legislation includes language calling for Secretary of State John Kerry to encourage the Japanese government to address the issue of the "comfort women."They refer to as many as 200,000

“한국 사람들은 영어의 중요성을 잘 알고 있습니다. 자신의 뿌리에 대해 자랑스러워하면서도 국제사회에서 경쟁하기 위해선 영어가 필요하단 걸 이해하고 있죠.”ETS 글로벌 총괄대표인 주비어 야지드 박사는 지난 10일, 자사가 후원하는 사회배려계층 영어캠프 개소식을 앞두고 코리아헤럴드와 가진 인터뷰를 통해 영어의 중요성에 대해 강조했다.글로벌 ETS 한국지사가 후원하고 서울영어마을 풍납캠프가 운영하는 이번 캠프는 서울시 배려계층 학생 25명을 대상으로 진행된다. 야지드 대표는 “중요한 건 영어를 얼만큼 아느냐가 아니라, 얼마나 영어로 의사소통을 잘 하느냐”라고 말하면서서 학생들이 국제사회에서 지도자로 자리잡기 위해서 다양한 문화적 배경을 갖고 있는 사람들과 영어로 의사소통을 할 수 있는 능력이 필수라고 지적했다. 야지드 대표는 이러한 목적을 위해서 지난 2008년 세계 각지에서 글로벌 리더로 성장할 학생들을 위한 장학금 제도를 진행해왔다고 설명했다. 이 프로그램을 통해 해택을 받은 학생들

전주 상산고등학교가 결국 교학사 한국사 교과서 채택을 철회했다.상산고의 박삼옥 교장은 7일 오전 전북도의회에서 기자회견을 통해 교학사 교과서를 다음학기에 사용하겠다는 결정을 철회하고 지학사 교과서 1종만을 선정했다고 밝혔다. 박 교장은 “균형잡힌 역사교육을 위해 복수 교과서 (교학사와 지학사)을 선정한 취지와 달리 불신과 분열을 초래해 학생들이 매우 심각한 피해를 볼 상황이 발생해서“라며 설명했다.박 교장은 “외부의 강압에 의한 철회는 아니다”라면서 “학생들이 양분되는 등 바람직하지 못한 사태가 일어나 교육적인 차원에서 문제를 해결하자는 취지로 이번 결정을 내린 것”이라고 설명했다.애당초 논란이 많았던 교학사 교과서를 선택한 이유에 대해서는 “역사 왜곡에 대한 논란이 교학사 교과서에 충분히 수정됐으리라 생각했고, 충분히 검토할 시간이 없어 자세한 내용을 보지 못한 면이 있다”면서 채택과정에서의 실수를 사실상 인정했다.또한 철회를 촉구하는 내용이 담긴 홈페이지 게시판을 폐쇄한 것에 대

GM Korea Co., the local unit of U.S. automaker General Motors Co., said Monday that it aims to secure a double digit market share in South Korea this year.The company sold a total of 151,040 vehicles in 2013, including imported vehicles, for a market share of 9.8 percent. This represents a 0.3 percentage point gain from the year before and the best figures by the company so far.To reach the new target, the carmaker outlined five major goals, which include improving profitability, greater success

China brushed aside on offer Monday by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to meet the leaders of Seoul and Beijing to explain his visit to a controversial war shrine that has draw scathing criticism from both South Korea and China.China's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, made the remarks shortly after Abe expressed the intention during a press conference in Tokyo earlier in the day. On Dec. 26, Abe paid homage at the Yasukuni shrine honoring 14 Class-A war criminals convicted by an Al