Rep. Lee Hahn-koo, the floor leader of the rulingSaenuri Party is shown next to President-elect Park Geun-hye at a meeting.Rep. Lee Hahn-koo, the floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, is being touted as one of the candidates most likely selected to be the deputy prime minister as well as th…

Sec.-Gen. Chung Jin-sok of the National Assembly Secretariat held a breakfast meeting with senior staff of the 16 National Assembly Standing Committees and two special committees on Jan. 23 to check major issues facing those committees as the new government led by President-elect Park Geun-hye is se…

Yuh Pok-keun, director for the Territory and Oceans Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, reconfirmed the government’s position on Dokdo during an interview with NewsWorld. Yuh said, “Dokdo is not a matter of dispute since Korea’s easternmost island in the East Sea is an integral…

Seo Kwang-hyun, administrator of the KoreanAgency for Technology and Standards (KATS)Korea now ranks 10th in the world in terms of international standardization activities as of 2012. The nation has set its sights on joining the ranks of the global top seven in terms of international standardization…

The Health and Welfare Committee of the National Assembly approved a plan to provide free childcare education to children under two years old by raising the education budget by 2 trillion won. But Minister Rim Che-min of the Ministry of Health and Welfare opposed the plan since the National Assembly…

The ruling Saenuri Party’s candidate Park Geun-hye has been elected South Korea’s first female president. Her victory has a special poignancy because she returns to the presidential mansion, Cheong Wa Dae, as president, where she left 33 years ago after her father, the late president Park Chung-he…

“We strive to do our utmost to carry out port policies designed to raise the nation’s overseas standing by continuously developing ports as a national basic infrastructure and transforming them into strategic centers for national economic development,” said Kim Jin-sook, director general for the …

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) has implemented diverse activities to enhance public concern over book reading in celebration of the designation of the National Year of Reading 2012. A survey on public book reading, conducted recently by the MCST, showed that people’s rate o…

Financial regulators have allowed the listing of government bond leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which would have the investment effect of extending the maturity to 20 years with twice as much price fluctuations, thus diversifying the Korean ETF market. The regulators also announced tha…