On the fourth floor of POSCO’s building in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, there is a Poreka lounge for POSCO employees. Inside the Poreka lounge sits a green, wooden coffee shop called Caf Oasia.But this cafe is different from other coffee shops. Opened on Feb. 18, Caf Oasia employs three immigrant women from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam as its baristas.The caf was created through investments from several members of social enterprises. POSCO, the nation’s top steelmaker, leased the space for f

POSCO, the nation’s top steelmaker, said on Tuesday it decided to pull out of a $5.3 billion steel mill construction project in Karnataka, a state in southwestern India, mainly due to opposition from local residents.The decision came as the company failed to make any progress in purchasing land for the construction in the Gadag district of central Karnataka for the past three years. Gadag is located near Bellary district, which has the highest deposits of iron ore in Karnataka. “Instead of dropp

Incandescent light bulbs, which were introduced in 1887 in Korea, will gradually disappear from everyday life here as the government is banning production and imports of them from next year as part of its energy-saving policy, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Tuesday. “The move is based on the plan to phase out low-efficiency lighting, which was announced in December 2008,” a ministry official said. According to industry sources, incandescent light bulbs consume as much as nine ti

For the past six decades, Korea has experienced rapid industrialization, and with it, rapid urban growth. As the nation’s core industries quickly evolved from the primary sectors to manufacturing and services between the 1960s and 1990s, the urban population grew rapidly. Ninety-one percent of the population lived in cities in 2010, compared to 50 percent in 1970, according to Hyundai Research Institute. In the course of urbanization, population and income per capita have grown as well, spurring

LS Cable & System won a project to supply U.S.-based Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative with extra-high-voltage cables to transmit 230 kilovolts of power, the Korean company said Monday. The cables and connectors will be used for implementing a new power transmission and distribution network being built to handle the increased power demand in southern Maryland, the Korean firm said. The project will help establish an extra-high-voltage cable network for 1.5 kilometers across the Patuxent Riv

Financially faltering STX Group, the nation’s fourth largest shipbuilder, said Friday it completed the sale of STX Energy to Orix, a Japanese financial service company. “The group’s board approved the sale of its remaining 43.15 percent stake to Orix for 270 billion won ($240 million) in its latest meeting,” the group said in a press release. With the deal, Orix’s stake in STX Energy, whose core businesses are power generation and solar power manufacturing, soared to 93.2 percent. Orix secured a

Frequent and fractured updates by the U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board on what happened in the cockpit of the doomed Asiana jet that crash-landed at San Francisco Airport have triggered a flood of speculations over the exact cause of the incident. News reports on the accident have flooded the media based on varied information attained from the Washington-based NTSB’s press briefings. In the four days since the accident, the chief investigator hosted two media conferences, releasing

A pilot’s latest testimony indicated that a mechanical problem could be to blame for the Boeing 777 passenger jet’s crash landing in San Francisco over the weekend that killed two passengers and injured 180 others on board. According to a briefing by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday (Washington time), the captain of the Asiana Airlines flight told NTSB investigators that the automatic throttle system was not maintaining the speed at which he had thought it was programmed.

The East Sea (or Donghae) Free Economic Zone Authority, which will be responsible for the development of a newly designated FEZ, opened in Donghae City, Gangwon Province, on Wednesday.The FEZ Authority set a bold vision to build four globally competitive districts, including an industrial cluster for material businesses, on the east coast by 2024. Trade, Industry and Energy Vice Minister Kim Jae-hong, who joined the opening ceremony with officials from Gangwon Province, said, “I expect the East

Korea Forest Service Minister Shin Won-sop visited Indonesia to discuss cooperation with Indonesian government officials in the forestry field and to participate in a forum last week. He discussed a wide range of issues related to the opening of an eco-education program on forestry near Jakarta, overseas plantation investment and Korean companies’ participation in Indonesia’s development of forestry resources. He also toured Korean companies’ plantations in the Southeast Asian country.Following

The investigation into the cause of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday (San Francisco time) is making progress just one day after the accident that killed two passengers and injured about 180 others.The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Korean inspection team dispatched to the crash site revealed some of the facts of the moments just before the landing and the investigation of the pilots.The focus of the joint investiga

Asiana Airlines’ passenger plane carrying 307 people crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday (local time), killing at least two people, who were Chinese girls, and injuring about 180 others on board, officials in Seoul said.The cause of the accident was not immediately known. The U.S. government said it is looking into what caused the accident. President Barack Obama received a report on the accident shortly after it happened, according to the White House. He ordered his

The government sent a task force composed of about 20 officials from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and Asiana Airlines to San Francisco on Sunday to investigate the cause of the crash-landing of the airliner’s Boeing 777-200ER and to develop measures to deal with the aftermath. “No exact cause of the crash has been determined, but U.S. officials have ruled out terrorism from the beginning,’’ Choi Jeong-ho, the head of the ministry’s aviation policy bureau, said in a media br

With the weak yen trend expected to continue, local think tanks are issuing a negative outlook for exports for the second half of the year.“The rise in the yen against the dollar above the psychological mark of 100 last week, again in a month, is considered a trend among market watchers, not a temporary jump,” said Chung Sung-choon from the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.The movement toward devaluation of the yen regained steam from the end of June when the global financial ma

Hyundai Heavy Industries, the nation’s top shipbuilder, will open its first luxury resort in Gangneung, a city on the east coast in Gangwon province, in 2015 by rebuilding its Hotel Hyundai near the Gyeongpodae beach, the company said in a press release on Thursday. Richard Meier, an American architect and a winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, will design the high-end resort, which will have a ‘hanok’ hotel, a 15-floor convention center, an outdoor performance hall, and a swimming pool. t

Visiting rural areas with well-preserved traditional houses is a common desire of city dwellers. Oeam Village, located 8 km south of Onyang in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, has been used as a location for several films such as “Taegeukgi: The Brotherhood of War” (2004) and “The Classic” (2003). The origin of the village goes back to the middle of the Joseon era, about 500 years ago. The noble Lee family of Yean settled in the area and its descendants have taken root there. Oeam Village has b

Located at the southern tip of Korea, Daraengi Village was not only on the list of “Rural-20” awardees last year but has also been on the list of 100 recommended local tourist sites by the Korea Tourism Organization for two consecutive years. The village was also named one of 50 beautiful places to visit in Korea by CNN. Some 230,000 tourists visit the village every year.The well-preserved village features the extraordinary sight of “daraengi,” or tiny paddy fields, on a steep mountain slope aga

For those who look to countryside summer vacation spots for a break from their busy city life, the eighth festival for vacationing in rural and fishing villages this weekend will offer a chance to preview hundreds from around the nation. During the event, which kicked off on Thursday at KINTEX in Goyang City, Gyeonggi Province, and will last until Sunday, about 300 rural or fishing villages from six provinces set up booths to highlight their village tour programs. Some of them boast of pristine

The nation’s free economic zones, specially designated regions to attract foreign investment, will face restructuring based on their development performance, according to government officials.After a 10-year-long investment, Korea has eight FEZs, and the number of business districts in them has soared to 101. However, only 52.5 percent or 53 business districts are under development. “A revised law in August 2011 gave FEZs three years to find a land developer. Based on the law, the government can

As the economic growth of India, Brazil and the EU is projected to be slower than expected in the latter part of this year, Korean exporters in these markets need to prepare for the risk of delayed payment, according to the state-run Korea Trade Insurance Corp., known as K-sure.The outlook for growth in these three markets was made based on a survey of officials from 14 overseas branches of K-sure on risk of nonpayment in the nation’s key export markets. The main business of K-sure is to guarant