SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Prosecutors sought a 10-year jail term on Monday for a business tycoon accused of creating slush funds and evading taxes of over 800 billion won (US$690 million) in total.Prosecutors demanded the sentence at a trial at the Seoul Central District Court against Cho Suck-rai, chairman of conglomerate Hyosung Group, saying that the group's accounting fraud amounts to 890 billion won over a decade from 1999.Prosecutors also demanded 300 billion won in fines. "While he degraded the c

PAJU (Yonhap) – The U.S. industrial giant General Electric opened a collaboration office in the South Korean border city of Paju Monday as part of efforts to expand business in preparation of the unification of the two Koreas.GE held an opening ceremony to celebrate the opening of its office at Paju City Hall near the western border with North Korea.The ceremony drew some 80 people, including GE Korea head Kang Sung-wook, Paju Mayor Lee Jae-hong, Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo, and Kim Moo-s

SEJONG, Nov. 9 (Yonhap) -- The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Monday downgraded South Korea's 2015 economic growth outlook due to weak domestic consumption and minus export growth.In its latest Economic Outlook report, the Paris-based organization said that gross domestic product (GDP) for Asia's fourth-largest economy will likely grow 2.7 percent this year, down from its previous estimate of 3 percent announced in June.The annual growth number represents a notic

Amid the prolonged global economic downturn, a global expert on sustainability notes that smart city development could be one of the key drivers for growth that countries should focus on. “Actually, there are three drivers for economic growth. One is increasing population, and the second is industrial productivity,” Roland Busch, a member of the managing board of Siemens, told The Korea Herald in a recent interview. Roland Busch, a member of the managing board of Siemens (Siemens Korea)Busch vis

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party said Monday that it was confident it was headed for a landslide victory in Myanmar's historic elections, and official results from the government that began trickling in appeared to back up the claim.Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy icon, urged supporters of the opposition National League of Democracy party not to provoke losing rivals who mostly represent the former junta that ruled this Southeast Asian n

The Herald Design Forum 2015 is set to kick off Tuesday in Seoul, bringing together some of the world’s brightest minds in design to share their ideas and insights. The one-day celebration of creativity and innovation in design, scheduled to be held at Grand Hyatt Seoul, will invite 11 creative minds across diverse fields of design from architecture, art, and branding to 3-D printing, who will speak at seven lectures and discussions with design aficionados in Korea and at a networking dinner eve

The Gwangju Design Biennale, Asia’s largest and oldest design biennale celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is eyeing an expanded role as a facilitator of exchanges among Asian countries in the field of design.  The monthlong festival of design, which opened Oct. 15 in the southern city of Gwangju, presents 12 exhibitions -- all based on local and global networks of designers. Held at the Gwangju Biennale exhibition hall, the event convenes some 3,900 Korean and foreign designers, about 1

Tommy Li, a branding designer known for his audacious visual designs and black humor, is one of Asia’s few designers with a global presence spanning across Hong Kong, China, Macau, Japan and Italy.The Hong Kong-based designer currently heads the Tommy Li Design Workshop, which was selected among the 10 best branding companies in China by Chinabico.com in 2010.He has received over 580 local and international awards for his innovative design concepts, including the Gold Pencil Award from the One S

This is the fifth in a series of articles introducing key features at the upcoming Herald Design Forum 2015 to be held in Seoul on Nov. 10. -Ed. 　Design today seems to be the horse that is pulling the cart. No industry can survive without it anymore.From leaning on design as a strategic marketing tool to subtly expressing a company’s signature values, industrial design has been constantly evolving to where it stands now.Contemporary sofa “Platform for Viccarbe” by Arik Levy (Courtesy of the desi

Design is about more than aesthetics. Its role has expanded to diverse areas of life, helping people live efficiently, safely and comfortably. It has brought innovations in all aspects of life, from consumption of products, living environment and use of technology to how we work in organizations. “Design impacts everything around us. Design means adding creativity into every aspect of our lives, not just choosing the color and form of a product,” said Janne Kyttanen, a designer and pioneer of 3-

South Korean police nabbed some 90 people and seized hundreds of stolen artifacts in a sweeping, nationwide investigation into the looting, forgery and smuggling of artifacts, the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency said. Not only investigators, but heritage experts and even retired looters joined hands in the search, which ran from August to October.   Looted artifacts seized by police in a recent investigation are on display at a police briefing Wednesday at the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency

BEIJING -- Artist Yang Haegue is one of the most visible Korean artists in the international art scene nowadays. Her works were exhibited at major Western art institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Modern Museum in Sweden, Vienna Biennale and Lyon Biennale -- all within this year.  She opened her first museum show in China on Oct. 30, bringing some 36 major works spanning from 1994 to the present, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beiji

Family members of artist Chun Kyung-ja, whose death this past summer was revealed by media last week, said Tuesday they learned about her death from a Korean bank only a few days before the news broke.  “I learned on Oct. 19 about my mother’s passing from a staff member of a Korean bank, who called to ask for the approval (from a family member) required to close my mother’s bank account,” said Sumita Kim, the third of Chun’s four children at a press conference in Seoul. Kim is an artist herself

A former Spanish museum director is among the three contenders short-listed to head the state-run National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, a local daily reported Monday.Chosun Ilbo revealed that Bartomeu Mari, former director of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, has made it to the final list along with two other Koreans.If selected, Mari will be the first foreigner to be director of the public art museum in Korea.  The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (

Yeongwol International Museum Forum, one of the biggest academic events in the field of museum, will be held in the scenic county of Yeongwol, Gangwon Province. The third edition of the forum invites leaders of public museums in 34 countries, including Japan, Vietnam, Australia, China, Ethiopia and Uganda, to share their insights on this year’s theme “National Policy and Role of Museum in Society” from Oct. 28-30. The biennial forum, which began in 2011, is expected to be held annually with incr

Artist Chun Kyung-ja, whose death in the past summer was revealed to the public Thursday, was a female cultural icon in Korea’s male-dominated art society. According to the Seoul Museum of Art, Chun died on Aug. 6 in New York, where she had lived since 1998. The artist, who was 91, reportedly had a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003 and had suffered from poor health since then. “It was reported to me that Chun’s daughter visited the museum on Aug. 20, carrying the remains of her mother,” Kim Hong-hee,

Seoul Fashion Week for spring-summer 2016 was held from Oct.16-21 at Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul. (Yonhap)Seoul Fashion Week is arguably the biggest and single most important event in Korean fashion. Held twice a year since 1997 -- once in spring and again in autumn -- it is an occasion for the country’s most visible designers to present their collections, offering style previews for the seasons ahead. This year’s event, which ended Wednesday, was therefore a chance to check on Korea’s pres

This is the second in a series of articles introducing key features at the upcoming Herald Design Forum 2015 to be held in Seoul on Nov. 10. - Ed.A film festival’s star-studded red carpet is brought to your home in a 360-degree panoramic view. Virtual reality and hologram technology provides an alternative to live concerts, enabling fans to digitally interact with their stars -- dead or alive. Entertainment today mingles with new technologies, churning out innovative new ways of engaging people

From “Toy Story,” the first completely computer-animated feature film released in 1995, to this summer’s hit “Inside Out,” Pixar movies have captured the hearts of children and adults around the world. The man who made the computer-generated imagery possible is Alvy Ray Smith, cofounder of Pixar Animation Studios and a pioneer of computer graphics. Since founding Pixar in 1986 with Ed Catmull, he has been at the forefront of leading innovations in computer graphics and its applications to variou

The image of Van Gogh comes alive in his signature self-portrait with a pipe. The legendary painter blows a puff of smoke, from which an image of him peacefully resting in a field emerges. The digitally rendered image of Van Gogh was made by Korean artist Lee Lee-nam, who has been digitally transforming masterpieces of Western and Eastern art into an animated video art form. Lee, a widely loved media artist in the Korean art scene, has been invited to give a lecture on his art world at the Heral