Kookmin Bank, South Korea's largest lender, is under investigation for allegedly falsifying customers' loan agreements, police sources said Sunday.Thirty people who took out loans with the lender filed complaints with the Financial Supervisory Service and law enforcement agencies after they found signs that bank employees had intentionally tampered with due dates on loans.Those demanding the probe

PHNOM PENH (Yonhap News) -- South Korea will soon open a diplomatic mission dedicated to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta this year, as Asia's fourth-largest economy seeks to deepen economic ties with the 10-member regional bloc, Seoul officials said Wednesday.Vice Foreign Minister Kim Sung-han and foreign ministers of Southeast Asian nations pledged to work closely together t

CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt's president-elect Mohamed Morsi began selecting a new government on Monday as his supporters pursued a sit-in to pressure the ruling military to hand over full powers to the Islamist.After a tight race in which Morsi was forced to reach out to pro-democracy groups, the former Muslim Brotherhood politician is expected to include ministers who will have the support of his movemen

Park Geun-hye, daughter of former President Park Chung-hee, was slightly ahead of Ahn Cheol-soo, software magnate and popular professor, in a new opinion poll of potential candidates for the December presidential vote, the poll showed Monday.Park, a former head of the ruling Saenuri Party, received 45.8 percent of support, compared with 43.8 percent for Ahn, in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up

TOKYO (AP) -- Long-time Japanese rivals Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp. are working together to develop next-generation TV panels called OLEDs in a reversal of decades of rivalry as they try to catch up with South Korea's Samsung Electronics.The companies said in a joint statement Monday they will share core technologies to develop OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, panels. They are aiming for

BEIJING (AFP) - Moscow and Beijing on Wednesday reaffirmed their strong opposition to intervention in Syria, under mounting international pressure to change a stance that has infuriated Western powers.A joint statement issued after talks between China's leaders and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing said the two countries opposed any attempt to impose regime change in Syria after

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union's executive branch proposed Wednesday a system of centralized banking regulations that would ensure that taxpayers would never again have to bail out ailing banks whose collapse would threaten the wider economy.Under the European Commission proposal, banks that posed no systemic risk to the national or international economy would simply be allowed to fail. But t

BEIJING (AFP) - Leading Chinese dissident Li Wangyang, jailed for more than 22 years after the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests, died in strange circumstances in central China Wednesday, his family and rights groups said.Li, 62, was found dead in a ward at Daxiang hospital in Shaoyang city, Hunan province Wednesday morning, his brother-in-law Zhao Baozhu told AFP by telephone.Police appeared to s

South Korea and Finland have initialed a nuclear energy pact aimed at ensuring the peaceful use of atomic power and boosting bilateral cooperation in the field, Seoul's trade ministry said Monday.The agreement was reached at a bilateral meeting in Helsinki Friday between senior officials from South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Finland's Ministry of Employment and the Economy,

Thirty North Korean officials, once involved in inter-Korean talks, are believed to have been executed either by firing squad or killed in staged traffic accidents, a human rights advocacy group said Thursday.Amnesty International raised the suspicions in its annual report, citing unconfirmed reports in July. The alleged purge suggests that North Korea used the officials as scapegoats for soured i

TOKYO (AP) -- Fitch has downgraded Japan's credit rating to A-plus with a negative outlook, reflecting risks from its ballooning government debt.Fitch Ratings said Tuesday that the downgrade and negative outlook underline growing risks for Japan from high and rising public debt.Japan's gross government debt is projected to hit 239 percent of its economy by the end of this year, by far the highest

BEIJING (AFP) -- Beijing said Tuesday it was investigating the seizure of 28 Chinese fishermen by armed North Koreans, as it gave its clearest indication yet that state forces may have played a role.The men were seized as they fished in waters running between China and North Korea on May 8, and held for 13 days before they were released at the weekend, according to earlier reports.Neither country