The South Korean government has canceled or postponed officials' visits to the border region between North Korea and China out of terrorism concerns, a public institute under the unification ministry said Thursday. The Institute for Unification Education said that it has indefinitely postponed its education program for government officials and those from publicly owned enterprises, which was initially slated to start at the end of this month.About 60 senior and mid-level officials from several g

New housing permits in South Korea spiked 16 percent from a year earlier in April, data showed Thursday, amid government efforts to prop up the local real estate market.The number of new home permits issued came to 59,675 last month, up 8,330 from the same month last year, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.April marked the 16th consecutive month of an on-year increase in new home permits.The sharp rise last month was driven by a robust gain in p

Organic light-emitting diode display panels are forecast to replace liquid crystal display panels for smartphones, as Apple Inc. and other smartphone makers are moving to equip their smartphones with OLED display panels, reports showed Thursday.The global shipments of OLED display panels are expected to soar to 630 million units in 2019 from 250 million in 2015, according to a report by industry tracker IHS. The shipments of LCDs, in the meantime, are forecast to inch up from 1.29 billion to 1.3

South Korea's defense and technology ministries on Thursday discussed the feasibility of creating a cybersecurity reserve force in preparation for a national network emergency.The idea was raised at a senior-level meeting between the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning aimed at strengthening cooperation in defending the country from security threats."The two sides discussed ways to form a government-civilian cyber reserve force," the ICT ministry sai

South Korea's household debt jumped 11 percent in the first quarter despite stricter lending rules at banks, its central bank said Thursday. The country's overall household debt climbed to 1,223.7 trillion won ($1.035 trillion) in the January-March period from 1,098.3 trillion won a year earlier, the Bank of Korea said in a statement.Quarter-on-quarter, household debt, which includes credit-card spending, rose 1.7 percent, it said.  "As banks have adopted a stricter evaluation system before exte

The South Korean Navy and Air Force on Thursday conducted a joint firing exercise in the country's waters off its east coast in a bid to boost their capacity to hit North Korean warships with guided missiles, military officials said.The drill involved South Korea's warships and planes' conducting attacks on imaginary North Korean naval corvettes, according to officials."The drill helped us strengthen the war fighting capabilities of the Navy and Air Force to conduct joint military missions and t

A key official of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party held talks with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana earlier in the week to boost their cooperative relations, the North's official media report said Thursday.North Korea's Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the Workers'Party of Korea central committee, had the meeting Tuesday and also conveyed greetings and a personal letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Castro, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of C

South Korea's ruling and opposition parties were at odds over U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's potential bid for the presidency on Thursday, as his possible run in next year's election is raising fresh uncertainties in the fluid political landscape here.The ruling Saenuri Party apparently welcomes Ban as a potential standard-bearer, while opposition parties expressed wariness, nitpicking at his lack of experience in domestic politics beset by relentless factional rivalries and partisan backb

A high-profile South Korean gay couple said Thursday they will appeal a recent court's rejection to legally recognize their marriage.Kim Jho Gwang-soo and Kim Sung-hwan tied the knot in September 2013 but are still seeking to get legal status.They submitted a report of marriage to a Seoul district office, but it was denied by the office on the grounds that "same-sex marriage does not satisfy the definition of husband and wife in civil law." They made an appeal in May 2014, asking the court to ru

The government will announce steps to counter violent crimes targeting females next week as witnessed in a recent random murder of a woman at a bar's bathroom in southern Seoul, the gender equality minister said Thursday. "Everyone can be a victim (of violent crimes), and thus it's urgent to beef up the social safety network, especially for women, children and the elderly," Minister Kang Eun-hee said during a government-ruling party meeting on female safety."Countermeasures against violent anti-

South Korea has deployed the latest upgraded model of Apache helicopters, which are expected to enhance its overall combat capability, the country's defense procurement agency said Thursday.According to the Defense Acquisition Procurement Administration, four AH-64E Guardians were delivered to Army units, which recently completed combat deployment. The four are the first to reach front-line South Korean combat units.The agency signed a $1.6 billion contract with the U.S. in 2013 to buy 36 AH-64E

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged a return to talks with North Korea despite its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons.Ban, who is on a six-day visit to his native South Korea, made the call during a forum on the southern resort island of Jeju, saying the tensions on the Korean Peninsula are "one of the great challenges to global action and regional cooperation.""Rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula could cast a shadow across Northeast Asia and beyond," he said in a keynote ad

Police sent the suspect of the recent stabbing death of a 23-year-old woman near the country's busiest subway station in Seoul to state prosecutors on Thursday.The 34-year-old man is accused of stabbing the victim, who was a complete stranger to him, multiple times in a bathroom in a building near Gangnam Station last week. The man, identified only by his surname Kim, was arrested by police later in the day.Kim waited for about 40 minutes for a woman to show up at the building, according to the

The possibility of North Korea conducting another nuclear test is high as the reclusive country is striving to intimidate others to engage in peace treaty talks, a local think tank here said Thursday."The possibility is high that the North will sooner or later conduct its fifth nuclear test or fire off another long-range missile," the Sejong Institute, a private think tank, said in its recently published report. It said such actions are aimed at getting other countries to come to the negotiating

More people in the older generations are connecting to the Internet through their smartphones and other digital gadgets, although their use of applications was fewer in number and diversity than younger age groups, a survey said Thursday.Nielsen KoreanClick, basing its findings on mobile behavioral data from October 2014 to April 2016, said 77 percent of South Koreans in their 50s-60s use the Internet through personal computers and mobile phones. This is an increase from 53 percent in 2013. The

The number of patents registered by South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. in the United States last year jumped nearly two-fold from six years ago, a company official said Thursday, as the tech player battles for an upper hand in the ongoing global patent wars.The world's No. 1 maker of smartphones and memory chips said it registered a total 5,072 patents in the U.S. last year, up 1.7 times from 2009, which is the second-greatest number of patent filings in the U.S. after multinational technolog

Employees at South Korea's top 30 percent of companies in terms of sales are getting paid more than double the salaries of their counterparts in the bottom 30 percent, according to an analysis released on Thursday.Data provided by a research team of local daily Energy Economic News said the average annual salary last year at the country's top 2,000 companies, sorted by their annual sales, was 47.3 million won ($39,983), an increase of 4.9 percent.  Petrochemical firms had the highest average of

South Korea's consumer sentiment fell in May from a month earlier with more people expecting worsening conditions for their livelihoods down the road in the wake of revamps in the corporate sector, central bank data showed Thursday.The composite consumer sentiment index came to 99 for May, moving down from 101 the previous month, according to data from the Bank of Korea. The figure marks the lowest since February.A reading above 100 means optimists outnumber pessimists, while a reading below the

The United States acknowledges the "pain of the past" associated with its 1945 atomic bombings of Japan, and wants to move toward building a stronger alliance with the foe-turned-ally, the State Department said Wednesday.State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner made the remark when asked to comment on Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida's reported statements that the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "extremely regrettable.""I would just say that, you know, we acknowled

South Korean insurance companies posted a 6.3 percent gain in combined first-quarter net profit helped by an increase in insurance premium income, government data showed Thursday. For the three months ending March 31, the country's 25 life insurers and 32 non-life insurers posted 2.235 trillion won ($1.89 billion) in combined net profit from 2.103 trillion won a year earlier, the Financial Supervisory Service said in a statement."In the first quarter, the insurers' insurance premium income excee