South Korea's defense procurement agency said Wednesday it plans to import arms worth about 3.5 trillion won ($3 billion) this year in a bid to enhance its defense capabilities.South Korea plans to spend about 9 percent of this year's defense budget of 38.8 trillion won to buy weaponry from overseas, according to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.It said the government plans to spend an average of 3.5 billion won per contract to import weapons from foreign suppliers.Amid North Korea

South Korean top tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. hinted Wednesday that it may take a counteraction against Huawei Technologies Co. after the Chinese company launched lawsuits claiming Samsung's infringement of its patents.Earlier, the Chinese firm brought two suits against the world's top smartphone maker in the U.S. state of California and the Chinese city of Shenzen, seeking compensation for the alleged unlicensed use of 4G technology.Huawei, the world's third-largest smartphone maker, clai

Chinese tech giant Huawei said Wednesday it has filed patent infringement lawsuits against South Korean mobile phone rival Samsung in the United States and China, in a case that highlights the rise of Asian competitors as technology creators.Huawei Technologies Ltd. said it wants “reasonable compensation” but gave no financial figure for its claim against Samsung Electronics Ltd. Huawei smnartphones (Yonhap)Huawei is a leading maker of network switching gear used by phone companies and launched

A 47-year-old man was given a five-year prison term on Tuesday for sexually abusing his underage daughter for seven years since she was 10. The daughter had reported her father’s abuse to the authorities. According to her testimony, the father first made inappropriate physical contact in the summer of 2009 in the backseat of his car. In autumn of the same year, he forcefully “checked whether she was pregnant.” On another occasion, he made her sit on his lap while he watched pornography.  This is

President Park Geun-hye left for Ethiopia on Wednesday on a 12-day, four-nation tour to Africa and France that is expected to boost bilateral ties.The trip, which also takes Park to Uganda and Kenya, comes as South Korean companies are pushing to expand business opportunities in these foreign markets that could give a much-needed boost to Asia's fourth-largest economy. (Yonhap)Africa has emerged as a continent of opportunity in recent years, though South Korea has yet to make significant foray i

Korean-Americans have the most unfavorable view of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump among Asian-American voters in the U.S., a survey showed Tuesday.About 80 percent of Korean-Americans had negative views of Trump, followed by Japanese-Americans with 76 percent and Filipino-Americans with 62 percent, according to the survey of 1,212 Asian-American voters released by Asian Americans Advancing Justice.In total, 61 percent of the respondents had unfavorable views of Trump while only 1

Prospects for progress in global nonproliferation efforts are not bright due to North Korea's continued pursuit of its nuclear program, the U.S. think tank Council on Foreign Relations said Tuesday.In a report on global cooperation, the CFR said that global nonproliferation efforts received a boost from the Iranian nuclear deal last year, but suffered a setback from the North's nuclear program."North Korea continued to threaten the international nonproliferation regime and global peace and stabi

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is expected to seek protectionist trade policies that could include invoking the powerful "Super 301" trade sanctions against foreign countries, a report said Tuesday.The Super 301 tool, which authorizes the president to take retaliatory measures against countries engaged in unfair trading practices, is among a series of options Trump could take without consent from Congress, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency said in a report.Under his "Am

A U.S. Senate defense budget bill for next year calls for setting aside US$7.5 million to strengthen the Air Force's seismic technologies program to better detect nuclear tests, congressional records showed Tuesday.The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 authorizes the fund for the Air Force Research Laboratory's seismic technologies program, saying the program is a key component in efforts to identify and monitor nuclear activity."The committee notes with concern the continu

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is dealing with friends and allies with a tactic best suited to bargaining with enemies, a renowned U.S. foreign policy scholar said.Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, considered a key Asia policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, made the point in a recent article contributed to the Project Syndicate, expressing concern that Trump is taking a "disastrous approach" to allies."Weakening America's alliances, the likel

In the wake of the unprovoked murder of a 23-year-old woman at a unisex public restroom in Gangnam, Seoul National University will install sirens inside women’s restrooms that can be triggered at the sound of a scream, starting from Tuesday.  (123RF)According to the institute’s College of Engineering, the women’s restrooms located on the fifth floor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will transform in to what the school proudly promoted as a “Smart Safe Restroom.”  Electron

A skeleton unearthed last month at a factory restroom in Incheon has yet to be identified, raising concerns the case will go unsolved. The National Forensic Service reported to police on Monday that tests on the bones had proved unsuccessful after they found no DNA matches on the existing database. The skeleton was discovered on April 28, buried 40 centimeters below the concrete floor of a toilet on factory premises in Cheoncheon-dong, Incheon.  This is a stock image. (123RF)It was impossible to

대만 로맨스 영화 “나의 소녀시대 (我的少女時代)”가 한국에서 ‘흥행몰이’할 수 있었던 결정적 비결은 바로 남 주인공 쉬타이위, 그를 연기한 배우 왕대륙(王大陸)이라는 것에 많은 여성 팬이 입을 모을 것이다. 고교 시절의 풋풋한 첫사랑 이야기를 담은 이 영화에서 왕대륙은 아픈 사연이 있는 학교 대표 문제아로 분해 모성애를 자극하며 여성 팬의 마음을 사로잡았다. '나의 소녀시대' 린전신(송운화)와 쉬타이위(왕대륙)그런 왕대륙이 24일 개인 인스타그램에 한국 여배우 박신혜의 사진과 함께 “그녀는 나의 첫사랑”이라는 글을 게재해 한국 팬들의 아쉬움이 높다. 인스타그램 팬들은 ‘박신혜 부럽다’, ‘마음이 아프다’며 안타까워 하는 글을 남겼다.영화 “나의 소녀시대”에서 덤벙거리지만 순수한 여주인공 역은 송운화 (宋芸樺)가 연기했다.  왕대륙의 인스타그램 계정은 @taluwang 이다. (khnews@heraldcorp.com)

South Korea's unification ministry said Tuesday that a small number of North Korean restaurant staff have recently escaped their workplace in China.The confirmation comes a day after local media reported two or three North Koreans are moving to a third country after fleeing a Pyongyang-run restaurant in China, according to local media reports. The reports claimed the North Koreans may have escaped from a restaurant in either Xian or Shanghai.The case is the second escape by North Korean restaura

South Korea's opposition parties on Tuesday urged the presidential office to support a controversial bill that will enable parliament to open hearings more often, adding that the move will not lead to disruptions in state affairs as claimed by the government.The remarks came amid speculation that President Park Geun-hye may veto the controversial bill. Park is expected to determine whether or not to endorse the bill after she returns home from her overseas trip.The revision to the National Assem

China's imports of North Korean goods nosedived 22.3 percent on-year in April, data showed Tuesday, after tightened U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang started to bite. The Chinese customs data was compiled by the Beijing unit of South Korea's Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency.The plunge in the imports of North Korean goods suggested that China, the North's economic lifeline, has been strictly implementing the latest U.N. sanctions, which were adopted in early March following the North's

The average return on government-operated public funds dropped significantly from a year earlier in 2015, but it was largely due to record low interest rates, the finance ministry said Tuesday.The average yield of 44 separate government funds came to 2.41 percent last year, compared with 3.04 percent the previous year, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.The on-year drop was mostly attributed to low interest rates."Earnings of the public funds reviewed dropped from a year earlier d

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited a saltworks in an apparent move to encourage salt production to better meet the country's demand for the key mineral, the North's official news agency reported Tuesday.The North's Korean Central News Agency said that Kim visited the Kwisong Saltern to learn about salt production from underground ultra-saline water. The plant is run by the Korean People's Army.Kim's latest visit to the salt works is the fifth in his inspection of industrial sites following

The Seoul metropolitan government on Tuesday said it will conduct a full-scale investigation to see if any city-run preschools and nursing homes have used a set of allegedly toxic humidifier disinfectants, as part of its efforts to assuage growing public health concerns.The municipality said it will look into city-run or public preschools, nursing homes and welfare institutions for the physically challenged to check their past records of using humidifier disinfectants, and call on victims to rep

Six South Korean banks made the global top 100 banks list, though none of them were included in the top 50 bracket, data showed Tuesday.The six South Korean banks in the top 100 are KB Financial Group, Shinhan Financial Group, Hana Financial Group, Woori Bank, Nonghyup Financial Group and the Industrial Bank of Korea, according to an analysis of data of Bankscope, a global database on information about banks worldwide.The list is based on Tier 1 capital, a core measure of a bank's financial stre