Eleven people were injured Monday after an insulator exploded on a subway train in Gunpo, just south of Seoul, officials said.The explosion occurred around 6:56 p.m. as the train was entering Geumjeong station on Line 4, causing some of the train'swindows to break and wounding eleven people on the platform, police and fire officials said.The wounded were taken to a hospital, they added."It appears that the accident occurred as an insulator connecting the train to the electric supply equipment su

Major banking group KB Financial Group Inc., retail giant Lotte Group, and three others offered their bids to buy LIG Insurance Co., a local non-life insurer which has been on the selling block since late last year, industry sources said Monday.LIG Group, a mid-sized conglomerate, has put up some 21 percent in the country's No. 5 non-life insurer to secure cash to compensate retail investors for losses incurred from its 2011 financial fraud scandal.The price tag for LIG Insurance ranges from 400

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se plans to ratchet up pressure on Japan over its wartime enslavement of women and call for global efforts for better human rights conditions in North Korea at a U.N. session on Wednesday, officials said Tuesday. Yun departed for Geneva early Tuesday morning for a U.N. Human Rights Council session scheduled for March 3-28. He will be the first South Korean top diplomat to attend the meeting since 2006, and the first ever to raise the sex slavery issue there. His three-

A North Korean man has defected to a South Korean western border island on Friday and is currently under investigation by authorities, a military official said. “An unarmed North Korean man arrived in Gyodong Island earlier in the day,” a military official said. “He was found by residents at around 3:40 a.m.” The 46-year-old man knocked on the door of an island resident‘s home, saying he came from the North, the official said. He was subsequently reported to military officials who took custody o

President Park Geun-hye plans to host a lunch for the chiefs of the country‘s top 10 business conglomerates next week to hear their views on how to revitalize investment and create jobs, her spokeswoman said Friday.The lunch, slated for Wednesday, would mark the first time Park has invited the top 10 chaebol heads to Cheong Wa Dae, though she held breakfast meetings with accompanying business leaders during her trips to the United States and China earlier this year.Park plans to use the meeting

The office of President Park Geun-hye bristled Friday at the main opposition party likening an election meddling scandal involving the state intelligence agency to the 1960 presidential election rigging that forced the resignation of then-President Rhee Syng-man.Earlier this week, members of the main opposition Democratic Party issued an open letter urging Park to learn a lesson from the case in which the Rhee government employed a series of illicit means to help him win re-election in the March