The chief of South Korea's retail giant Lotte Group met Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo over the weekend, Japanese reports said Monday, in what was the new Japanese leader's first meeting with a South Korean tycoon. Suga held a lunch meeting with Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin and other chiefs of major Japanese companies at a hotel in Tokyo on Sunday, according to Japan's Nikkei. Details about their meeting are not known, but industry watchers estimated that Shin and Sug

First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun met with India's top envoy to Seoul on Monday for talks on strengthening bilateral relations amid the coronavirus pandemic, the foreign ministry said. In the talks with Ambassador Sripriya Ranganathan, the two sides agreed to continue efforts to deepen bilateral cooperation, especially in the defense industry and people-to-people exchanges. They also shared the need to continue close communication via virtual meetings between the two governments and

ASAN -- The new coronavirus pandemic has severely disrupted arrivals of migrant manual workers with work visas in South Korea this year, according to a lawmaker Monday. The number of international workers with the E-9 non-professional employment visas who entered the country during the January-August period reached 5,590, according to Rep. Kang Hoon-sik of the ruling Democratic Party. The figure represents 9.9 percent of the 56,000 international E-9 visa holders who were allowed to come to So

Incheon United striker Stefan Mugosa has been voted the top player in South Korean club football for September. The Korea Professional Football League (K League) announced Monday that Mugosa topped three other candidates for the Player of the Month honor for September. Mugosa is the first Incheon United player to earn this monthly award. Mugosa scored six goals -- coming in two separate hat tricks -- and assisted on one other goal. He was involved in seven of 10 goals that Incheon scored in Se

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced Monday it will give out emergency relief funds to young foreign nationals in the city to alleviate the economic burden of the new coronavirus. The new measure, with a budget of around 1.74 billion won ($1.51 million), will cover some 5,100 elementary and middle school students, born between 2005 and 2013, and some 4,240 of those in the same age bracket but attend alternative or foreign schools. The decision came after a controversy erupted o

The leaders of the ruling and main opposition parties expressed misgivings Monday on what appeared to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) paraded by North Korea in a party event last week. Celebrating the 75th founding anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party on Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned that his country would keep bolstering its nuclear deterrent. The leader also made a conciliatory gesture toward South Korea by expressing his well-meaning wish for South

The Seoul city government on Monday eased tough restrictions on outdoor rallies as the country adjusted its social distancing to the lowest level. The new guidelines allow rallies of fewer than 100 people, lifting an earlier ban on rallies of 10 or more, which had been in place since late August, the local government said. The measures came as the central government lowered social distancing guidelines from Level 2 to the lowest tier of Level 1 at midnight amid a decrease in new coronavirus c

The "top-down" nuclear diplomacy that US President Donald Trump has employed toward North Korea may not be retained if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wins the November election, Seoul's top envoy in Washington has said. During a video-linked parliamentary audit Sunday (Washington time), Ambassador Lee Soo-hyuck made the remarks in response to a lawmaker's question about the possibility of a change in the US approach to the North following the Nov. 3 presidential vote. &q

South Korea welcomes North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's expression of hopes for improved inter-Korean relations, but the conditions are not right yet to propose specific cooperation projects with the North, the unification ministry said Monday. On Saturday, Kim said he is sending a "warm wish of mine to our dear fellow countrymen in the South, and hope that this health crisis would come to an end as early as possible and the day would come when the North and South take each other's hand ag

Foreign investors became net sellers of South Korean stocks in September, extending their selling spree to a second month, data showed Monday. Offshore investors sold a net 2.54 trillion won ($2.2 billion) of local stocks last month, according to the Financial Supervisory Service. Investors from Singapore posted the largest amount of net selling with 4.3 trillion won, followed by those from Switzerland with 300 billion won worth of stocks. In contrast, investors from Luxembourg bought a net 6

SEJONG -- South Korea collected 37.4 trillion won ($32.3 billion) in taxes in August, up 4.8 trillion won from a year earlier, the finance ministry said Monday. Income tax revenue amounted to 9.5 trillion won in August, up 3.2 trillion won from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Dues collected from companies, on the other hand, reached 11 trillion won in the month, down 900 billion won from a year earlier due to the lackluster earnings of local firms. Taxes col

South Korea's economy remained subdued as a recent resurgence of new coronavirus infections hit domestic demand, a state-run think tank said Monday. "The Korean economy remains subdued led by domestic demand due to a resurgence of COVID-19," the Korea Development Institute (KDI) said in its English-language Monthly Economic Trends publication. However, the report said the nation's economy is showing signs of its exports and output declining at a slower pace. Externally, worries ov

Banks in South Korea are expected to tighten their lending to households and companies in the fourth quarter of the year as credit risks will remain high amid the pandemic-caused economic uncertainty, a central bank poll showed Monday. The Bank of Korea's index measuring the banks' attitude toward fresh loans came to minus 5 for the October-December period, after hitting zero three months earlier. It marks the first time that the index fell into negative terrain since the fourth quarter of las

The Bank of Korea (BOK) is widely expected to keep its policy rate steady at a record low of 0.5 percent this week, as it will likely gauge the impact of the protracted pandemic on the economy, a poll showed Monday. In a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency, all 17 analysts polled predicted the BOK will freeze the base rate at its rate-setting meeting, slated for Wednesday. They also forecast the BOK to stand pat on the rate during the remainder of the year an

South Korea has called on Iraqi authorities to carry out a fair investigation into the death of a South Korean businessman involved in a large port construction project in the Middle Eastern country, the foreign ministry said Monday. The senior director at Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. was found dead Friday in the company compound located in the southern province of Basra, and Iraqi police initially concluded that he committed suicide. But Iraq's interior ministry formed a commi

The defense ministry decided to lift a vacation ban for enlisted service members after the government eased social distancing guidelines on the new coronavirus, officials said Monday. Since mid-August, the military authorities banned rank-and-file troops from vacationing and off-base movement, as the country saw a surge in confirmed COVID-19 cases and implemented a tougher social distancing scheme. However, as the guidance was adjusted to the lowest level starting Monday following a slowdown

Hyundai Motor Co., BMW, Mercedes-Benz and four other companies will voluntarily recall nearly 50,000 vehicles to fix faulty components, the transport ministry said Monday. This is the latest in a series of recalls by carmakers operating in South Korea and vehicle importers due to problems with vehicle components. The four other companies are Kia Motors Corp., Audi-Volkswagen Korea, Jaguar Land Rover Korea and Daijeon Machinery Co., which imports Kawasaki motorcycles, the Ministry of Land, Infr

South Korea's parliament said Monday it has adopted a hydrogen fuel-cell electric bus as it pushes to promote hydrogen-powered vehicles. The National Assembly became the country's first state organization to adopt a hydrogen bus, and it will use the zero-emission bus to help transport people within the parliament and from neighboring subway stations, the parliament said in a statement. "We will initially operate the hydrogen bus two to four times a day as a shuttle bus for those who visit

As the South Korean baseball league enters its third-to-last week of the regular season, stadium gates will open back up for fans who have been itching to return to seats. The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) clubs will play their final two three-game sets this week, with makeup games of rained-out affairs to follow from Oct. 20 to 30. They received some welcoming bit of news Sunday, as the government eased social distancing restrictions to allow sports teams to start playing in front of fans

K-pop megastar BLACKPINK's first full-length album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard main album chart this week, setting a new record in the history of South Korean girl groups. "At No. 2 on the Billboard 200, BLACKPINK's debut full-length 'The Album' enters with 110,000 equivalent album units earned," Billboard reported Sunday (US time), one day before its chart will be updated. Of the total, 81,000 came from traditional album sales, while the remaining came from streaming and digi