A local court on Friday ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to compensate five former Korean employees who were forced into hard labor during Japan’s colonial rule.The Gwangju District Court ruled that the engineering and aviation giant should provide each of four complainants, including 82-year-old Yang Kum-duk, with 150 million won ($141,000) and the family of a deceased laborer with 80 million won in overdue salary and other damages. The ruling marks the third victory for former conscrip

South Korean stocks closed 0.46 percent higher on the back of the country's brisk exports that offset investors' concerns over U.S. tapering of its economic stimulus, analysts said. The local currency ended unchanged against the U.S. dollar.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 9.33 points to finish at 2,039.42. Trading volume was light at 290.1 million shares worth 3.59 trillion won ($3.37 billion) with gainers outstripping losers 402 to 394. The main index kept its upwar

About four out of every five smartphones shipped globally in the third quarter ran on Google Inc.'s Android platform, data showed Friday, further cementing its dominance over other operating systems (OS).Shipments of Android-powered smartphones totaled a record 204 million units in the July-September period, according to the data by Strategy Analytics.That translates into the Android platform powering 81.3 percent of smartphones shipped during the cited period, also a record high, the data showe

The International Monetary Fund said Friday that it has decided to maintain its previous 2014 growth outlook for South Korea at 3.7 percent but expressed concerns over the relatively weak domestic demand caused by "debt overhang" in the household and corporate sectors. The decision was made by an IMF team led by Isabelle Mateos y Lago, the deputy chief of the IMF's Asia-Pacific bureau. It completed its two-week-long annual meeting here with South Korean policymakers to assess its overall economi

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit South Korea later this month for a summit with President Park Geun-hye about bilateral relations, peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, and other issues of cooperation, her office announced Friday.The Nov. 12-13 visit will mark the second time Park meets with Putin since she took office in February. In September, the two leaders met bilaterally on the sidelines of a Group of 20 major economies meeting in Russia's second-largest city of Saint Pete

State prosecutors on Friday raided the offices of KT Corp., the country's top fixed-line operator and No. 2 mobile carrier, as part of their ongoing corruption probe into its chairman.A team of prosecutors and investigators obtained computer hard drives and confidential documents, including accounting books, from the company's three offices and houses of several executives to corroborate the charges, prosecutors said.The raid comes just 10 days after the prosecution office first swooped down on

South Korean stocks traded 0.3 percent higher late Friday morning, led by bullish tech firms and insurers, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) added 5.64 points to 2,035.73 as of 11:20 a.m.Chip giant SK hynix widened its gains further to surge nearly 4 percent. Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, a major non-life insurer, shot up 2.5 percent.  In contrast, retail blue-chip Lotte Shopping slumped more than 3 percent, with LG Chem, a leading chemical producer fallin

South Korea is poised to buy four Global Hawks from Northrop Grumman through the U.S. Foreign Military Sale (FMS) program, with a decision expected to come early next year, a government source said Friday.Seeking better surveillance capabilities on North Korea, Seoul has sought to buy the high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), obtaining sales approval for four airplanes from the U.S. government in April.But the higher-than-expected cost for four RQ-4 Block 30s, which was

Overseas credit card purchases by South Koreans rose 41.7 percent over the past five years, data showed Friday, raising concerns that the trend may spark a social disharmony amid the economic slump.Overseas credit card bills totaled 5.5 trillion won ($5.1 billion) last year, rising sharply from the 3.1 trillion won tallied in 2008, according to the data compiled by the Credit Finance Association submitted to parliament.The number of cardholders making purchases overseas doubled over the cited pe

Having once been in the driver's seat to take the Korean Series, the Doosan Bears suddenly find themselves on the brink of a historic collapse against the surging Samsung Lions.And the Bears don't have anyone but themselves to blame, for it's their own inability to drive in runners in scoring position that has hurt them.The Bears have lost a 3-1 series lead in the championship final for the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), having dropped the fifth and sixth games of the best-of-seven showdown.

KT Corp., South Korea's top fixed-line and No. 2 mobile operator, said Friday its third-quarter net profit plunged 63 percent from a year earlier due to a decline in sales and currency losses.Net profit reached 136 billion won ($128 million) in the July-September period, compared with 369 billion won a year earlier, the Seoul-based company said in a regulatory filing.Sales fell 7.3 percent on-year to reach 5.73 trillion won over the cited period, while operating income surged 23 percent to 307 b

South Korean stocks began higher Friday as blue-chip exporters gained on the back of record-high exports for October, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 8.93 points, or 0.44 percent, to 2,039.02 in the first 15 minutes of trading. Samsung Electronics soared 1.7 percent, with Hyundai Motors rising 0.4 percent. Chip giant SK hynix hiked more than 2 percent. The trade ministry said South Korea's trade surplus reached an all-time monthly high of $50.5 billion

세계 최대의 인터넷 서비스 업체인 구글은 안드로이드 운영체제(OS) 최신 버전인 안드로이드 4.4 '킷캣'(KitKat)과 이를 탑재한 레퍼런스(기준) 단말기 '넥서스 5'를 31일(현지시간) 출시했다.구글 넥서스 5는 우리나라와 미국을 비롯한 10개국에서 1차로 판매에 들어갔으며, 킷캣은 구글 플레이를 통해 무료로 공개됐다.구글의 안드로이드•크롬•앱 책임자인 순다르 피차이 선임부사장은 이날 샌프란시스코 사무실에서 현지 기자들을 상대로 브리핑을 열고 이런 내용을 공개했다.넥서스 5의 1차 출시국은 한국을 비롯해 미국, 캐나다, 영국, 호주, 프랑스, 독일, 스페인, 이탈리아, 일본이며, 인도 시장에도 곧 나올 예정이다.가격은 미국 기준으로 16GB 모델이 349 달러(37만1천 원), 32GB 모델이 399 달러(42만4천 원)다. 이는 무약정 가격으로, 최고 수준의 사양을 갖춘 플래그십(기함) 제품으로서는 매우 저렴한 편이다.단말기는 전세계에 언락 상태로 공급되며, 1차 출시국 1

South Korea's exports surged to a new monthly high last month on growing shipments to the United States and Europe, posting a trade surplus for the 21st consecutive month, the government said Friday.The country's total outbound shipments came to $50.5 billion last month, up 7.3 percent from the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.The previous monthly record was at $48.95 billion posted in July 2011. It also marks the first time the country's monthly expo

South Korea and the United States are discussing how Seoul can contribute more to regional missile defense, a senior U.S. official said.Rose Gottemoeller, acting under secretary of state for arms control and international security, emphasized bolstering missile defense in the region is crucial in promoting diplomatic efforts toward North Korea."The United States stands ready to work with the Republic of Korea (ROK) to strengthen its ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities," she said at a mu

South Korea's consumer prices grew at the slowest pace in 14 years in October, affected by falls in costs of farming products, a government report showed Friday.The country's consumer price index rose 0.7 percent on-year in October, decelerating from a 0.8 percent on-year gain tallied in the previous month, according to the report by Statistics Korea.The October figure marked the slowest consumer price growth since July 1999 when it increased 0.3 percent. It was also the second straight month th

North Korea's authoritarian leaders were to blame for the famine that killed hundreds of thousands in the 1990s, experts told U.N. investigators probing possible crimes against humanity in the secretive nation. Speaking at a hearing in Washington, two American experts said former leader Kim Jong Il's regime continued acquisitions of fighter jets and failed to increase food imports to make up for a shortfall in food.Andrew Natsios, a former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Devel

Toronto police said Thursday they have recovered a video deleted from a computer that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking from a crack pipe.Police Chief Bill Blair said he was “disappointed” after viewing the video, but that there was nothing in the video that would provide grounds to press charges against the mayor of Canada's largest city. Ford faced allegations in May that he had been caught on video puffing from a glass crack pipe. Two reporters with the Toronto Star said they saw the vid

Israeli warplanes attacked a shipment of Russian missiles inside a Syrian government stronghold, officials said Thursday, a development that threatened to add another volatile layer to regional tensions from the Syrian civil war. The revelation came as the government of President Bashar Assad met a key deadline in an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014 and avoid international military action.The announcement by a global chemical weapons watchdog that

Google unveiled its new smartphone Nexus 5, which will run the latest Android 4.4 KitKat operating system, on Thursday in San Francisco. Following the previous Nexus 4, the U.S. search engine has again teamed up with LG Electronics.Google chairman Eric Schmidt, visiting Korea this week, met with LG Electronics’ mobile chief Park Jong-seok at the company’s R&D center in Incheon to discuss sales expansion of their latest smartphones. Key changes from its predecessor include a bigger 4.95-inch scr