Unfavorable weather conditions are likely to further disrupt the search for the 16 people still missing from a deadly ferry sinking off the country's southwest coast, government officials said on Sunday.About 100 divers are standing by, but fast tidal currents in the area, along with foggy and windy conditions, may prevent them from doing so, the officials said.The joint search team of civilian and military divers last retrieved a body on Wednesday, and the death toll stands at 288. A total of 4

South Korea has invited members of North Korea's Catholic community to attend the upcoming mass to be held by Pope Francis in Seoul, officials here said Sunday.They said representatives of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea and the Archdiocese of Seoul met with members of the North Korean Catholic Church in Shenyang, China, on May 18 and 19, and invited them to attend the papal mass.Pope Francis will celebrate the mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul on Aug. 18 and deliver a message for

South Korean companies' dividend payouts to foreign investors surged nearly 14 percent from a year earlier in 2013, partly reflecting a growth in foreign investment in the local market, related data showed Sunday.According to the Korea Securities Depository, local firms that settle their annual accounts in December paid a combined total of 4.63 trillion won ($4.51 billion) in dividends to foreigners last year, up 13.9 percent from 2012.The increase was largely attributed to the payouts by Samsun

South Korean defender Yun Suk-young will finally report to the country's pre-World Cup camp on Sunday, after the London-based Queens Park Rangers refused to release him ahead of a key club match.The Korea Football Association said Yun will join the rest of the country's 23-man squad for the World Cup in Brazil at the National Football Center in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, late in the afternoon on Sunday. He will be the last player to arrive at the NFC, as the country prepares for the June 12-July 1

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un paid a visit to an electrical machine factory that earlier leaders of the communist state helped open, Pyongyang's state media reported on Sunday.The Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Seoul, said Kim visited the Chonma Electrical Machine Plant, accompanied by other officials. The KCNA noted that the area where the plant is located is "closely associated with the footprints of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il," the current leader's grandfather and father.The repo

 24 hours of risk in Korean life[1] Trying not to be late for work, Kim Jung-soo, an office worker and father of a 3-year-old girl, hurriedly bundles up his daughter and places her in the back seat of his car.*Bundle up 꾸리다, 챙기다[2] He fastens her seatbelt, which is too big for her, without putting her in a car seat ― his mother told him not to bother because kids outgrow the seats too fast.*Don’t bother 수고할 것 없다, 신경쓰지 말라*Outgrow  너무 커서 맞지 않게 되다[3] After a 10 minute drive, he drops off his daught

Foreign banks operating in South Korea have transferred a large sum of dividends and consulting fees to their parents firms, industry data showed Sunday, triggering a controversy over a massive capital outflow and the local units' financial soundness.According to the data, two foreign banks -- Citibank Korea Inc. and Standard Chartered Bank Korea -- have paid a total of 3.25 trillion won ($3.18 billion) in dividends and consulting fees to their parent firms over the past 10 years, which is equiv

The campaign for the upcoming local elections will begin this week, with public safety emerging as a hot-button issue following last month's deadly ferry sinking.The 13-day official campaigning period for the June 4 legislative elections starts on Thursday and will run through the eve of election day, according to the National Election Commission.Up for grabs in the elections are 17 new provincial governor and mayor posts, including mayorship of the capital Seoul, as well as more than 3,900 seat

Rescue divers retrieved one more body early Sunday morning from a ferry that sank off South Korea's southwest coast last month, bringing the confirmed death toll to 286, officials said. The body of a woman was recovered from the crew's cafeteria on the third-floor dock at around 5 a.m., the government emergency response team said. The number of those still unaccounted for dropped to 18 as the search and rescue operation entered the 33rd day. The 6,825-ton ferry Sewol carrying an estimated 476 pa

An apartment building under construction in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang has collapsed, causing an unspecified number of casualties, the state media reported Sunday. The North's Korean Central News Agency said the accident occurred in the Pyongchon District on May 13 as "the construction of an apartment house was not done properly, and officials supervised and controlled it in an irresponsible manner." An unidentified North Korean official apologizes to local citizens for the collapse o

The South Korean financial watchdog on Thursday took "name and shame" measures on local banks and financial institutions rated as having poor customer service, forcing them to display hard-to-miss posters at their entrances.The Financial Supervisory Service last month announced the results of a customer complaint report on 85 local financial institutions, rating the quality of their customer service in five levels, ranging from excellent to poor.Seventeen of the institutions, including banks, sa

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest car producer, said Wednesday it would seek an immediate appeal against a U.S. court verdict ordering it to pay $248 million in punitive damages for a 2011 accident.The parents of Missoula's Tanner and Trevor Olson filed a lawsuit against Hyundai for the crash of a Hyundai car that killed the teenagers aboard. They claimed the 2005 Hyundai Tiburon lost control due to a steering defect, leading it to collide head-on with a vehicle driving in the opposite la

Self-styled King of Pop Michael Jackson is back from the grave again this week with a second posthumous album of songs recorded before his death in 2009."Xscape" went on sale in the United States on Tuesday, after being released in various European countries at the weekend and on Monday."This music has never been (previously) released," said L.A. Reid, the veteran American music mogul behind the project, on NBC television's "Today" breakfast program."Some of it has been leaked through the years.

Five more bodies were recovered from the sunken ferry Sewol on Wednesday, raising the death toll to 281 and lowering the number of those missing to 23, four weeks after the ship sank off South Korea's southwest coast.A joint team of government and civilian divers retrieved the five bodies shortly after it resumed search operations in the afternoon, officials said.Divers searched the sunken ferry for about an hour overnight, but no bodies were found then. In the morning, strong currents prevented

Samsung Electronics Co. officially apologized and promised compensation Wednesday over the sufferings and deaths of its semiconductor workers from illnesses that family members claim are work-related."Several workers at our production facilities suffered from leukemia and other incurable diseases, which also lead to some deaths," said Kwon Oh-hyun, the CEO of the electronics giant."We should have settled the issue earlier, and we are deeply heartbroken that we failed to do so and express our dee

South Korea has fined a businessman 1 million won ($977) for making an unauthorized contact with North Koreans over a project to build a high-speed railway and a parallel road in North Korea, an official said Tuesday.The unification ministry imposed the administrative penalties in March on the businessman, identified only by his last name Kim, for meeting with North Koreans in China in December for the project, the ministry official said.South Koreans are required to win the government's approva

President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday she will soon issue a statement to the nation about how the government will upgrade the country's safety and emergency response system in the wake of the deadly sinking of the ferry Sewol.Park made the remark as she opened a Cabinet meeting aimed at discussing key issues to be included in the statement she plans to make to apologize for the government mishandling the ferry's sinking and to announce reform measures for the country's safety system."I hope inten

South Korea and Japan will hold director-general level talks in Tokyo later this week to discuss the Japanese wartime army's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, Seoul's foreign ministry said Tuesday.Lee Sang-deok, director general for Northeast Asian affairs from the foreign ministry, will meet with his Japanese counterpart, Junichi Ihara, on Thursday and Friday in their second negotiations to discuss the issue of comfort women, a source of diplomatic tension between the two

The personal assets of Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Kun-hee, hospitalized over the weekend after a heart attack, are estimated at 12.9 trillion won ($12.5 billion), a tracker of corporate data said Tuesday, which could amount to up to 5 trillion won in inheritance taxes should those assets be handed over to his family members.The 72-year-old tycoon, who effectively controls Samsung Group through a web of share cross-holdings of the group's affiliates, owns 11.7 trillion won worth of list

South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share in tablet PCs reach a record-high level in the first quarter of the year, data showed Tuesday, narrowing its gap with U.S. Apple Inc.The world's No. 1 maker of smartphones took up 22.6 percent of the global tablet PC market by shipping 12.8 million units of such devices in the January-March period, the data by market researcher Strategy Analytics showed. It marked a 3.7 percentage points increase from the 18.9 percent posted i