South Korea and Japan are having discussions on holding a men's football friendly match in Japan later this month, an official here said Wednesday. The official with the Korea Football Association confirmed an earlier media report that the Japan Football Association has proposed a friendly match during the next FIFA international match window of March 22-30, despite obvious hurdles presented by the coronavirus pandemic.  Any football match between these two bitter rivals is a must-see

Samsung Electronics further upped its leadership in the global NAND flash market in the fourth quarter of 2020, a report showed Wednesday, despite revenue decline.  The South Korean tech giant, also the leader in the DRAM sector, had a 32.9 percent share of the global NAND flash market in terms of revenue in the October-December period, up 1.5 percentage points from a quarter earlier, according to market tracker TrendForce.  But Samsung's revenue from NAND flash products came to a

Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong met with a victim of Japan's wartime sexual slavery Wednesday, as Seoul seeks to defuse persistent historical tensions with Tokyo amid Washington's calls for tighter trilateral cooperation with its key Asian allies. The meeting with Lee Yong-soo, Chung's first with a sexual slavery victim since taking office last month, came as the 92-year-old Lee has stepped up calls for the government to bring the case to the International Court of Justice with no diplomatic s

Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings said Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia's state-run oil firm Saudi Aramco to cooperate on a hydrogen project. Under the deal, Hyundai Oilbank, HHIH's refining unit, will import liquefied petroleum gas from Saudi Aramco to produce blue hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuel resources such as natural gas, the holding company said. Carbon dioxide captured and stored during the production process will also be provided to Saudi Aramco for

South Korean stocks finished higher Wednesday on strong institutional buying amid mixed prospects of a post-pandemic bond yield hike. The Korean won rose against the US dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 39.12 points, or 1.29 percent, to close at 3,082.99 points. Trading volume was moderate at about 2.2 billion shares worth some 13.9 trillion won ($12.4 billion), with gainers outnumbering losers 655 to 206. Institutions bought a net 691 billion won, while for

Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings Co. (HHIH) said Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia's state-run oil firm Saudi Aramco to cooperate on a hydrogen project. Under the deal, Hyundai Oilbank Co., HHIH's refining unit, will import liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Saudi Aramco to produce blue hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuel resources such as natural gas, the holding company said. Carbon captured and stored during the production process will also be provided to Saudi

South Korea and the United States will hold a new round of talks in Washington later this week on the sharing of the cost for stationing the US Forces Korea (USFK), the foreign ministry said Wednesday, amid expectations the two sides are close to a deal. Seoul's top negotiator, Jeong Eun-bo, and his US counterpart, Donna Welton, will meet in the US capital Friday, the ministry said, amid speculation that the two sides are nearing a multiyear deal for the upkeep of 28,500 American troops in Kore

Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong met with a victim of Japan's wartime sexual slavery Wednesday, as Seoul seeks to defuse persistent historical tensions with Tokyo amid Washington's calls for tighter trilateral cooperation with its key Asian allies. The meeting with Lee Yong-soo, Chung's first with a sexual slavery victim since taking office last month, came as the 92-year-old Lee has stepped up calls for the government to bring the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with no diploma

The defense ministry on Wednesday began administering coronavirus vaccines to military personnel, with doctors and other health care workers becoming the first recipient group, officials said. The medical staff at the Korean Armed Forces Yangju Hospital in the city of Yangju, some 50 kilometers north of Seoul, received COVID-19 vaccine shots under the first round of the inoculation campaign in the military. They are among around 2,400 health care workers at 16 military hospitals across the nat

Apartment prices in Seoul have continued to rise under the Moon Jae-in government, except for four months, despite a string of measures to stabilize the market, a civic group survey showed Wednesday. Such a policy failure has sharply widened the gap in the values of assets owned by homeowners and those who do not possess houses, according to the Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ). It made public the results of an analysis of tracking data on the prices of 117,000 units in a total

Unification Minister Lee In-young did not mean that global sanctions are the sole reason for causing a humanitarian crisis in North Korea when he recently stressed the need to review their efficacy, his spokesperson said Wednesday. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Lee raised the need to see whether sanctions have just ended up causing hardships to North Korean people without achieving their intended purpose of forcing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. The rem

South Korea said Wednesday it plans to keep up brisk overseas sales of agricultural products in 2021, as demand for ready-to-eat products has been growing around the globe with more people dining at home amid the virus pandemic. Outbound shipments of agricultural products expanded 7.7 percent on-year in 2020 to a record high of $7.57 billion, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. The country plans to maintain the growth to post exports of $8.1 billion this year as

South Korea's exports of fishery goods moved down 7.4 percent on-year in 2020 amid the new coronavirus pandemic, data showed Wednesday. Outbound shipments of fishery goods reached $2.32 billion in 2020, compared with $2.5 billion tallied the previous year, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. By segment, exports of ready-to-eat products, such as seaweed and processed fish products, advanced 3.8 percent and 8.1 percent, respectively, over the cited period. Th

South Korea on Wednesday unveiled another set of measures to support airlines hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in the latest move to help airlines stay afloat during the crisis. The government will continue to reduce the airport usage fee for the airlines until June, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement, adding the fee will be lowered by 45.7 billion won ($40.6 million). The ministry said it will later consider whether to extend the fee reduction again by tak

Loans extended to companies in South Korea grew at a slow pace in the fourth quarter of last year, as manufacturing firms got fewer loans amid the coronavirus pandemic, central bank data showed Wednesday. The outstanding amount of corporate loans came to 1,393.6 trillion won ($1.23 trillion) at the end of December last year, up 27.7 trillion won from three months earlier, according to the data from the Bank of Korea (BOK). It compared with a 37.8 trillion-won rise tallied in the third quarter

The average amount of time South Koreans spent using the internet reached over 20 hours per week last year, 2.7 hours more than the time spent the previous year amid the stay-at-home trend driven by the pandemic, a report showed Wednesday. South Koreans used the internet 20.1 hours a week on average last year, compared with 17.4 hours the previous year and 16.5 hours in 2018, according to the report from the Ministry of Science and ICT that surveyed 60,000 people over the age of 3. The report

South Korea's ICT ministry said Wednesday it will extend support for online religious activities until next month due to continued COVID-19 infections across the country. The Ministry of Science and ICT first introduced support for such activities in April last year, such as providing network data and technical assistance to religious organizations, to discourage in-person meetings to prevent COVID-19 infections. Under the support measures, the ministry also plans to provide 100 gigabytes of d

The South Korean government will step up efforts to contain misleading information online about coronavirus vaccines, as the country began its mass inoculation program last week. According to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on Wednesday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) will work together with internet portal sites and social media services to remove coronavirus falsehoods swiftly from their platforms. Un

GOYANG/PYEONGTAEK -- Two patients at long-term care hospitals in Gyeonggi Province died Wednesday after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, the first cases of deaths since the country began its nationwide vaccination program last week. A 50-something patient with multiple underlying diseases died at a hospital in Goyang, just outside of Seoul's northwestern border, after receiving the vaccine shot Tuesday morning, health officials said. The patient began to show symptoms of he

South Korea's finance minister said Wednesday the government will make efforts to create some 300,000 jobs by 2025 in the service sector that has borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki unveiled a road map on developing the service industry, under which the country will focus on helping the service segment do business in a non-contact and digitalized manner. "The country's service industry has lagged behind the manufacturing sector in terms of productivity a