Iran's central bank has threatened to close its Korean currency-based transaction settlement accounts opened at two South Korean banks following economic sanctions on the Islamic country, calling for higher deposit rates on the accounts, sources said Thursday.Iran has notified two local state-owned banks -- Woori Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) -- of not using the Korean-currency accou

Hanwha Group chairman Kim Seung-youn was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 5.1 billion won ($4.5 million) by Seoul Western District Court on Thursday for embezzlement and other illegal financial activities. In January 2011, Kim was indicted without detention on charges of illegally making Hanwha Group subsidiaries guarantee payment for the 320 billion won debt held by companies he was op

Japan arrested 14 people after pro-China activists landed Wednesday on an island at the centre of a bitter territorial row in an episode that threatens to further destabilise fractious ties.The group -- some of whom made it to shore -- had sailed from Hong Kong on Sunday to the archipelago, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, with the intention of planting a Chinese flag.Prime Minister

Police found three more bodies in a national park in Kazakhstan Tuesday, bringing to 11 the number of people found slain in the area.Eight bodies were discovered Monday, RIA Novosti reported.Those bodies bore stab wounds.All of the remains were found near the Aksai gorge in southeastern Kazakhstan in an area used by local forest rangers.Five of the bodies have been identified. Police gave no detai

China on Wednesday said Japan should respect victims of its imperial aggression after two of the country's cabinet ministers visited a war shrine, on the anniversary of Tokyo's World War II surrender.China's foreign ministry said a key issue was "whether Japan can acknowledge and treat the history of imperial aggression in the right way, whether it can respect the feelings of victims in Asian coun

A group of South Koreans, led by famous rock star Kim Jang-hoon, reached the country's easternmost islets of Dokdo on Wednesday after three days of relay swimming aimed at marking Korea's 1945 independence from Japanese colonial rule.Two members of the team arrived at Dokdo around 7:30 a.m., 48 and a half hours after the team departed the southeastern port of Jukbyeon, in a relay swimming project

Stopping bullying has an evolutionary basis, a U.S. researcher says, preventing them from monopolizing resources so groups can increase their odds of survival.The urge to band together against strong aggressors is a key to humanity's success as a species, biomathematician Sergey Gavrilets at the University of Tennessee said.He used mathematical models to investigate why humans exhibit strong egali

A member of Japan's cabinet paid a visit to a Tokyo shrine honoring the country's war dead, including class-A criminals, on Wednesday in a move expected to anger South Korea and other Asian neighbors.Jin Matsubara, a chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, is the first Japanese cabinet member to visit the Yasukuni Shrine since the Democratic Party of Japan rose to power in September 200

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pressed Japan to take sincere steps to resolve long-running grievances over Tokyo's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, saying the act was a violation of "universal human rights and historic justice."Lee made the remarks during a Liberation Day address marking Korea's independence from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule, as tensions between the two countries

Standard Chartered on Tuesday settled allegations that it helped Iranian clients dodge U.S. sanctions, announcing a fine of $340 million from a New York banking watchdog.The "civil penalty" came amid allegations that the London-based bank hid 60,000 transactions with proscribed Iranian clients worth $250 billion over ten years.The clients included the state-backed Central Bank of Iran and the Nati

North Korea seems to be on course to complete the construction of a new light-water reactor in its main nuclear complex in 2013, a U.S. think tank said Tuesday after analysis of satellite imagery.A set of photos taken in May and June by commercial satellite shows cranes, a rectangular steel structure of considerable height and two metal beams, according to the Institute for Science and Internation

The ruling Saenuri Party said Tuesday it has rejected an appeal request by a member allegedly implicated in a money-for-nomination scandal ahead of April's parliamentary election.The party's central ethics committee said it has carefully examined the request made by Hyun Ki-hwan, and decided arguments raised did not warrant a reconsideration of its earlier decision to expel the former lawmaker.The