The Korea Herald

Brazil’s TV dream machine fueled by 7,000 people

Dec 11, 2013

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) ― In a Rio suburb, wealthy and beautiful heiresses, orphans and assassins lunch together in a mini-city where Globo television creates the soap operas that captivate more than 50 million Brazilians.Mind-boggling, super-realistic cardboard sets are spread across 165 hectares of unused farmland surrounded by hills filled with tropical vegetation to form the ultra-modern television production center, Latin America’s largest.Located in the Jacarepagua neighborhood, the mini-city
U.S. concerned over deal by China's Huawei in South Korea

Dec 4, 2013

Top U.S. officials expressed concern Tuesday at reports that Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is set to build a new broadband network in South Korea that Washington sees as a possible spying risk.Huawei, barred from projects in the United States and Australia over national security concerns, was reportedly selected as a subcontractor for LGU+, a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Corp, to build a Long Term LGU+Evolution (LTE) network.But U.S. defense and intelligence officials and key lawmakers on Capi
WBG head calls on Korea to invest in Africa

Dec 3, 2013

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim on Tuesday urged the Korean private sector to invest in under-developed countries, namely those in Africa where Kim saw new investment opportunities. “The (Korean) private sector can play a huge role,” Kim said at a press conference at Seoul’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, stressing the purpose of his visit was to focus on regions where people may not have viewed as an opportunity ― “in this case, Africa.”He declined to detail what his organization was doing to promo
S. Korea to hold talks with U.S., China, Japan to actively cope with security issues

Dec 1, 2013

South Korea plans to hold strategic talks with the United States, China and Japan within the next month to cope with rising security challenges facing Northeast Asia, government sources said Sunday.The plan comes as China unilaterally drew a new air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea that overlaps similar lines draw by South Korea and Japan, as well as a move by Tokyo to seek an aggressive policy on its right to collective self-defense that could allow the country to projec
First discovery of Chinese documents marking Dokdo as Korean territory

Dec 1, 2013

A researcher here said Sunday that she found multiple documents published by China in the 1900s that describe South Korea's ownership of the easternmost islets of Dokdo, which are also claimed by Japan.Yoo Mi-rim, a researcher at the Korea Dokdo and Marine Territory Research Center under the state-run Korea Maritime Institute, published a book with multiple diplomatic documents she found in the archives of the Chinese foreign ministry.The documents were estimated to be written between Korea's li
Beijing rejects Seoul’s call for adjustment of its air zone

Nov 28, 2013

China on Thursday rejected South Korea’s demand to adjust its recent demarcation of an air defense zone in the East China Sea, which has raised tension by covering an area over Korea’s southwestern submerged rock of Ieodo.Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo made the demand during his talks in Seoul with Wang Guanzhong, the deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.Wang came here to attend the regular bilateral strategic defense dialogue, where China’s unilateral draw
Jeju faces 10 mln tourists

Nov 27, 2013

The annual tally of tourists to South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju is expected to top 10 million this week.As of Tuesday, the number of visitors to Jeju had reached 9.97 million, up 11.4 percent from 8.95 million during the same period last year, the Jeju provincial government said. The figure is divided into 7.71 million locals and 2.2 million foreigners.The cumulative number of tourists is sure to top 10 million this week, considering that the daily average of visitors is 20,000. The
S. Korea displeased with illegal fishing nation designation by EU

Nov 26, 2013

South Korea on Tuesday expressed its displeasure with the European Union's preliminary designation of the country as an illegal fishing nation, noting it has already revised law to intensify fishing regulation set to go into effect early next year, according to a ministry official."South Korea has consistently sought to react to various issues raised by the European Union since last year, and the result of such efforts was the revision to the law on deep-sea fishing, which was legislated in late
Japan air defense zone violates S. Korea's territorial airspace

Nov 26, 2013

Japan's air defense zone extends into South Korea's airspace over its territorial waters near the southernmost island of Marado, the defense ministry spokesman said Tuesday.The violation happened because Japan set its air defense identification zone in 1969 when territorial waters of a country were considered to be within three nautical miles from its territorial sea baseline, ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said.The concept of territorial waters was later extended to 12 nautical miles from the
Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai receives EU Sakharov rights prize

Nov 20, 2013

STRASBOURG, France (AFP) - Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai was handed the EU's prestigious Sakharov human rights prize Wednesday in recognition of her crusade for the right of all children, girls and boys, to an education.To thunderous applause announcing the European Parliament prize, the assembly's president Martin Schulz praised the 16-year-old activist as "a survivor, a heroine and an extraordinary young woman" and said: "You have given hope to millions of people."Malala, dressed in oran
Russia suspends bank linked to Putin's cousin

Nov 20, 2013

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia suspended on Wednesday the operations of a popular Moscow bank whose board includes a cousin of President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of laundering more than half a billion dollars.Investigators accused managers at Master Bank -- Russia's 75th-biggest by total assets - of stealing more than $600 million (444 million euros) in clients' money and other illegal transactions.The unexpected announcements prompted an unscheduled parliament hearing and left long lines of anxious c
Militants kill Afghan district police chief in ambush

Nov 20, 2013

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - An Afghan district police chief was killed in an ambush by militants in the volatile southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, officials said.Tooryalai Khan, police chief of Helmand's Marjah district, was leading an operation against Taliban insurgents in the area when he was ambushed early in the morning, said provincial spokesman Omar Zewak.His bodyguard was wounded in the attack.Ismael Hotak, a senior provincial police officer, confirmed the incident and said Kh
Baghdad bears brunt as Iraq car bombs, shootings kill 33

Nov 20, 2013

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A wave of attacks, most of them car bombs targeting Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killed 33 people on Wednesday in the latest bout of deadly violence to hit Iraq.The bombings and shootings, which left more than 70 people wounded in all, come amid a protracted surge in bloodletting just months ahead of general elections that has forced Iraqi officials to appeal for international help in combating the country's worst unrest since 2008.At least eight explosions, including seven c
Ruling party slams Japanese minister for defamatory remarks

Nov 20, 2013

The ruling Saenuri Party lashed out at a senior Japanese government official Wednesday for calling a revered Korean independence fighter a "criminal" in defiance of Seoul's repeated calls on Tokyo to repent for its colonial past.On Tuesday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga expressed dismay over plans by South Korea and China to set up a monument honoring Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean independence fighter who assassinated Korea's first Japanese governor-general, Hirobumi Ito, in Harbin,
Korea to fly relief goods to Philippines

Nov 13, 2013

South Korea will fly two planes of relief goods to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines this week as part of assistance efforts, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.Two military planes carrying relief goods including food, blankets and hygiene products will head out Thursday morning and arrive in Tacloban -- the area hardest hit by the recent super typhoon -- around 3 p.m., local time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.Seoul earlier this week had pledged to send a 40-man team of res