The government on Tuesday approved a revision to immigration law that would impose an emergency exit ban on foreign nationals found responsible for committing murder or other crimes that warrant a prison term of three years to life, government officials said.The adoption of the bill was made at a Cabinet meeting that President Moon Jae-in presided over.If implemented, the law would enable authorities to ask immigration officials to place foreign nationals, who could destroy evidence and escape,

The government has revised regulations on state ceremonies in a way that allows a moment of silence to take place not only in memory of independence fighters and war heroes but also pro-democracy martyrs, officials said Tuesday.The current regulation states that a moment of silence should be offered only in memory of "patriotic martyrs and national defense heroes," terms that refer, respectively, to independence fighters during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule and those killed while defending the c

The government said Tuesday it will implement a prior approval system for biocidal products, such as disinfectants, starting in 2019, in a preventive measure after unscreened use of a deadly substance in a household humidifier disinfectant resulted in more than 70 deaths here.The Ministry of Environment announced the change in two separate legislations regarding the use of harmful chemical substances, which was approved at a Cabinet meeting.Under the amended rules, any biocides or biocidal produ

The recovery pace of the South Korean economy has remained feeble for months as an upturn in exports and private consumption was offset by weak industrial output, a government report said Tuesday."The South Korean economy saw its exports and investment continue to rise and private consumption make a slight rebound, but its recovery pace remained lackluster due to a slowdown in the production of mining and manufacturing," the finance ministry said in its monthly economy assessment repor

South Korea's antitrust watchdog has received the top rating among the world's competition authorities for two years in a row this year for its effective anti-competitive activities, the agency said Tuesday.The South Korean regulator earned five stars, or the "elite" grade, along with France, Germany and the United States, at the latest "Rating Enforcement" survey conducted by the Global Competition Review, the Fair Trade Commission said.The FTC advanced to the top spot in th

South Korean stocks opened higher Tuesday following overnight Wall Street gains, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index added 8.63 points, or 0.36 percent, to 2,407.38 in the first 15 minutes of trading.On Monday (local time), US stocks closed higher, with the Dow edging up 0.12 percent to its ninth-record closing high in a row and the S&P 500 adding 0.16 percent on consumer and technology sector gains.Most large caps on the Seoul bourse traded mixed, with tech and med

WASHINGTON -- North Korea must halt its missile launches if it wants to have talks with the United States, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday, a call Pyongyang quickly spurned by demanding Washington first withdraw its "hostile policy."Tillerson made the remark on the sidelines of meetings involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila, the Philippines."The best signal that North Korea could give us that they're prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches,"

MANILA -- Top diplomats from South Korea and Japan expressed hopes Monday to increase cooperation in fending off their common threat of North Korea. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and her Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, also agreed to make efforts to improve national ties, including resuming their leaders' summit. But they failed to narrow differences over the longtime dispute over Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women."In the face of North Korea's increasingly sophisticated nucle

WASHINGTON -- The United States is actively considering allowing South Korea to increase the capacity of its ballistic missiles in the face of North Korea's growing military threats, the Pentagon said Monday.The remark by Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis comes a day after South Korean President Moon Jae-in requested a revision to the allies' missile guidelines in a phone call with his US counterpart, Donald Trump."Yes, we are working on it," the spokesman told reporters when asked if the

South Korean banks' combined net profit more than doubled on-year in the first six months of 2017, government data showed Tuesday, led by lower loan-loss provisions and higher interest income.Combined net profit at local banks soared 171.4 percent to 8.1 trillion won ($7.18 billion) in the first six months of 2017, compared to 3 trillion won a year earlier, the Financial Supervisory Service said in a statement."The growth was mostly because loan loss expenses were reduced by 5.7 trillion wo

WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump discussed North Korea with two of his top officials on Monday as tensions rose over the communist country's missile and nuclear programs.Trump had an hour-long phone call with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Chief of Staff John Kelly to talk about North Korea and Tillerson's ongoing trip to Southeast Asia, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said, according to a pool report. Details of the discussion were not immediately available. US President Do

The number of convenience stores are on the rise, and is likely to continue to increase despite slackening profits from an overcrowded market, industry watchers said Tuesday.South Korea had 34,376 such stores as of the end of last year. With the country's population counted at approximately 50.12 million, it translates into one store per 1,491 people. This is 1.5 times more than neighboring Japan, where the industry took root long before South Korea. Japan has one store for every 2,226 people.So

North Korea's top diplomat said Monday that there will be no negotiations on its nuclear and missile programs unless the United States gives up its hostile policy toward Pyongyang. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho also told a regional security forum in Manila that the North will not budge in its pursuit of strengthening its nuclear and missile capabilities. His spokesman released the transcript of his remarks at the ASEAN Regional Forum to reporters at a hotel where Ri was staying. "We w

Unionized workers at Hyundai Motor Co. on Monday said they will stage partial strikes in an apparent bid to put pressure on management amid the on-going wage deal.Workers will stage four-hour strikes on Thursday and Aug. 14. The walkouts will run from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and from 8:20 p.m. to 10:20 p.m.The workers said they will not work overtime on weekends until an agreement with management is reached.The unionized workers are currently demanding a monthly wage increase of 154,833 won ($1

The leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed Monday to put maximum pressure on North Korea until the reclusive state chooses the right path of dialogue, Seoul's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said."President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a telephone conversation today and shared their views on the seriousness of the security conditions on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea's repeated provocations," Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun told reporters. The talk

President Moon Jae-in replaced the chief of the state defense procurement agency Monday as he accelerates a drive to reform the big government spender accused of corruption.Jeon Jei-guk, a former defense ministry official, was named to head the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, according to the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.The 64-year-old served various posts at the defense ministry since joining the ministry in 1980. Jeon Jei-guk (Photo courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae) (Yonhap)His appo

Top diplomats from South Korea, the United States and Japan promised on Monday to cooperate to ensure a full implementation of new United Nations sanctions against North Korea. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha met with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in Manila on the sidelines of meetings hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.  (Yonhap)"The foreign ministers of the three countries shared the view that the North's two ballisti

South Korea plans to call for the use of the term East Sea for the body of water lying between the nation and Japan in an upcoming United Nations meeting on geographical names, the foreign ministry here said Monday."Since our delegation first proposed the issue of East Sea naming at the sixth meeting of UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in 1992, (Korea) has called for the dual use of East Sea and the Sea of Japan," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said."Also in the upcomi

Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon called Monday for greater efforts to help North Korean defectors assimilate into South Korean society, saying their successful resettlement will lay the groundwork for eventual unification of the divided Korean Peninsula.Lee made the remark during a visit to the Committee for the Five Northern Korean Provinces, a symbolic committee comprising "governors" of provinces in North Korea, saying that word about how defectors live in the South will spread across the border."I

South Korean marines fired a Spike surface-to-surface missile and more than 200 artillery rounds from K9 self-propelled howitzers, staging a "routine" exercise near the tense western border with North Korea.According to the Marine Corps, the live-fire drills also involved AH-1S Cobra's 2.75-inch rockets, hosted by the Northwest Islands Defense Command in charge of defending the South's northernmost islands in the Yellow Sea, and the 6th Brigade."Conducted in our waters south of the Northern Limi