SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Yonhap) -- North Korea imported six times more mobile phones in 2010 than in 2009, a media report said Wednesday, indicating growing mobile penetration in the reclusive country.North Korea bought 430,000 mobile phones from China in 2010, up from 68,000 phones the previous year, accor

SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's jobless rate fell last year from a year earlier, but its labor markets remain tough amid worries over a slowing economic recovery, a report showed Wednesday.The jobless rate stood at 3.4 percent in 2011, down 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier, accordi

SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Yonhap) -- The number of South Koreans retiring to farming surged to a new annual high in 2011 thanks to local governments' efforts to attract retiring baby boomers, a report showed Wednesday.According to the report by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the nu

SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Yonhap) -- The ruling Grand National Party on Wednesday proposed removing the word "conservative" from its platform in a symbolic move to widen its appeal ahead of the April parliamentary elections.The proposal by the party's emergency council is the latest in a series of reform meas

Prosecutors on Wednesday raided the residence of a former secretary of National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae as part of their investigation into allegations Park offered bribes to fellow lawmakers before a 2008 party leadership race. The move came after Grand National Party (GNP) lawmaker Koh

SYDNEY, Jan 9, 2012 (AFP) - An Australian woman whose bungee jumping cord snapped, plunging her head-first into raging crocodile-infested waters in Africa's Zambezi River, on Monday described her "miracle" survival.Erin Langworthy, 22, was on holiday on New Year's Eve when she took on the 111-metre

SEOUL, Jan. 9 (Yonhap) -- Samsung Electronics Co., the world's second-largest handset maker, swept the Russian mobile phone market, ranking first in four categories in November last year, a research firm said Monday.Samsung Electronics took first place in the Russian mobile phone market in terms of

STOCKHOLM (AP) _ A file-sharing group in Sweden that considers itself a spiritual organization says the government has recognized it as a religious community.Isak Gerson, 20, said Thursday that his Church of Kopimism received that approval in late December, but the government agency was closed for t

WASHINGTON, Jan 5, 2012 (AFP) - Scientists said Thursday they have designed  tiny wires, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair but with the same electrical capacity as copper, in a major step toward building smaller, more potent computers.The advance, described in the US journal Science, shows

Prosecutors said Thursday they have indicted SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won on charges of embezzlement, but he will be allowed to stand trial without physical detention. The indictment came about a week after they arrested the group's vice chairman, Chey's younger brother Jae-won, over the same char

SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Yonhap) -- The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) said Thursday it will request prosecutors to look into allegations that one of its former party leaders bribed fellow party members to get the chief post in the past leadership election, dealing yet another blow to the struggling party

SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Yonhap) -- Ahn Cheol-soo plans to depart for the United States on Sunday to meet Microsoft founder Bill Gates to receive advice on charitable foundations and discuss the latest trends in information technology, his close aides said Thursday, Ahn Cheol-sooAhn, who currently teache

FRESNO, California (AP) _ Northern California scientists say they have found a possible explanation for the honey bee die-off: A parasitic fly that hijacks the bees' bodies and causes them to abandon hives.The symptoms mirror colony collapse disorder, in which all the adult honey bees in a colony su

SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Yonhap) -- The rising number of female lawmakers has led to an expansion in their legislative activities, slowly introducing groundwork for gender equality at the male-dominated National Assembly, a government report showed on Wednesday.According to the report by the state-run Korean

Korean war epic “My Way” by director Kang Je-kyu will be featured as one of Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama sidebars this year, the film’s distributor said Wednesday. Arguably Korea’s largest-ever movie with a budget of $30 million, and featuring an Asian all-star cast including Jang D

People who eat too much of a high-calorie, low-protein diet tend to gain more body fat than people who overeat high amounts of protein, US researchers said Tuesday.A study published in the January 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association included 25 people in Louisiana who agreed t

NEW YORK (AP) _ Look who's got a big smile behind his mask on Broadway _ none other than the once-mocked Spider-Man.The Broadway League reported Tuesday that ``Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'' took in a whopping $2,941,790 over nine performances last week, which is the highest single-week gross of an

SYDNEY, Jan 3, 2012 (AFP) - Scientists said on Tuesday that they had discovered the world's first hybrid sharks in Australian waters, a potential sign the predators were adapting to cope with climate change.The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common bl

SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Yonhap) -- The government said Wednesday it will expand beneficiaries of its daily one-hour parental leave to include pregnant public servants and male officials who have a baby younger than one year old, as part of efforts to boost the country's birthrate.Currently, only female offic

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) _ Saudi Arabia said Monday it will begin enforcing a law that allows only females to work in women's lingerie and apparel stores, despite disapproval from the country's top cleric.The 2006 law banning men from working in female apparel and cosmetic stores has never been put