South Korea's self-sufficiency rate of rice, one of its staple grains, is expected to drop below 90 percent this year due to a decline in land available for rice cultivation, the government said Sunday.   The country's rice self-sufficiency rate is likely to reach 86.5 percent this year, based on the median output of 4.88 million tons over the past five years, according to the Ministry of Food, A

Neither side in a bitter patent battle is satisfied with Apple Inc.'s $1 billion jury verdict over Samsung Electronics Co. after a three-week trial this summer. Samsung wants a new trial. Apple is seeking an additional $707 million in damages and interest. The two companies filed a blizzard of legal papers late Friday and early Saturday with their demands that a federal judge in San Jose significa

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones, said Friday that it will release its brand new Galaxy Note 2 phablet in Seoul next week.The official launch is earlier than the October date given by Shin Jong-kyun, head of Samsung's IT and mobile unit, at the IFA 2012 trade fair in Berlin last month when the phablet was first unveiled.The company said the start of sales

South Korean stocks advanced 0.60 percent on Friday as foreigners sought after risky assets, buoyed by the recent stimulus measures from major economies, analysts said. The local currency rose against the U.S. dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index closed up 12.04 points to 2,002.37. Trading volume was heavy at 641.9 million shares worth 4.91 trillion won ($4.38 billion) with gainers outpacing losers 461 to 354. “At least, the expectations on the third quantitative easing from W

Apple Inc. has been scaling back purchases of liquid crystal display panels for tablet computers from Samsung Display Co., data showed Friday, amid speculation the iPhone maker is trying to rely less on the affiliate of its archrival Samsung Electronics Co. Samsung Display’s shipments of 9.7-inch LCD panels, which are only used in Apple’s iPad tablets, claimed 13 percent of total August shipments, plunging from 41.3 percent in May, according to data by market researcher DisplaySearch.Samsung Dis

GS Caltex Co., South Korea’s second-largest oil refiner, said Friday it broke ground for a polymer compounds plant in the southern part of the country. The plant to be built in Jinju, 434 kilometers south of Seoul, is slated to start commercial operations in 2015 with an annual production capacity of 120,000 tons, the company said in a press release. Polymer compounds are functional plastics widely used for making cars and home appliances.GS Caltex currently has two polymer compounds plants in C

A German court on Friday found Apple Inc.’s patent infringement claim on Samsung Electronics Co. invalid, giving an upper hand to the South Korean company that suffered a crushing defeat in an earlier U.S. jury verdict.The district court in Mannheim ruled Samsung didn’t infringe the iPhone maker’s patent on multi-touch flags. The patent is one of the six intellectual properties Apple addressed in its June 2011 claim against the South Korean tech titan.Samsung welcomed the German court ruling, pl

A German court on Friday found Apple Inc.'s patent infringement claim on Samsung Electronics Co. invalid, giving an upper hand to the South Korean company that suffered a crushing defeat in an earlier U.S. jury verdict.The district court in Mannheim, one of the three German courts the two rivals have been facing off in, ruled Samsung didn't infringe the iPhone maker's patent on multi-touch flags.

For anyone who's ever been tired of listening to someone drone on and on and on, two Japanese researchers have the answer.The SpeechJammer, a device that disrupts a person's speech by repeating his or her own voice at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds, was named Thursday as a 2012 winner of the Ig Nobel prize _ an award sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for weird and humo