South Korean stocks got off to a strong start Tuesday, as a rising Japanese currency lifted investor sentiment here, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) gained 9.40 points, or 0.47 percent, to 1,998.97 in the first 15 minutes of trading. Most shares gathered ground across the board, with large-cap exporters leading the gain. Market behemoth Samsung Electronics inched up 0.2 percent, and No. 1 carmaker Hyundai Motor advanced 0.7 percent. The yen rebounded to 99

South Korea's finance minister on Tuesday stressed the need to boost job creation and encourage more women to join economic activities. "Globally, how to boost employment rates has posed a challenge (to policymakers), warranting attention," Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok told reporters before holding a meeting with Bank of Korea (BOK) Gov. Kim Choong-soo. "It is critical to encourage more women to participate in economic activities." His remarks on job creation are in line with the government's p

South Korea was the original destination for nine North Korean defectors who were eventually sent back to their communist homeland, a human rights activist here said Monday, refuting a claim that they initially hoped to seek asylum in the United States.Controversy persists over who is responsible for the forced repatriation of the nine North Koreans, mostly in their teens, last week. After crossing the border to China in 2011, they moved to Laos, a usual stop for North Korean defectors hoping to

North Korea looks ready to resume the production of weapons-grade plutonium at its main nuclear site in Yongbyon, a move expected to make efforts to revive the six-way denuclearization talks more difficult, according to a U.S. institute.New commercial satellite imagery shows North Korea is making "important progress" in activating the 5-megawatt gas-graphite reactor mothballed since 2007 under a deal with South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopki

U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning faced life in prison as his trial began Monday, three years after he was charged with providing reams of highly-sensitive material to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history.Since then, Manning has admitted to giving the material to Wikileaks and pleaded guilty to charges that would send him to prison for up to 20 years. The U.S. military and the Obama administration weren't satisfied, though, and pursued a charg

The Obama administration imposed new sanctions Monday on Iran and its nuclear program, targeting the country's currency and auto industry and seeking to render Iranian money useless outside the country.The executive order from President Barack Obama broadens a sanctions campaign aimed at crippling Iran's economy, forcing it to comply with international demands that it prove its nuclear program is peaceful. The U.S. believes Iran is working to develop nuclear weapons, a charge that Iran denies. “

Clashes re-erupted in Turkish cities Monday as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shrugged off mass protests against his Islamic-rooted government that have left at least one man dead.Despite facing the fiercest challenge to his rule since he came to office in 2002, with protestors hurling stones and burning cars, Erdogan left Turkey earlier Monday on an official visit to Morocco, where he insisted the situation in his country was "calming down".He earlier rejected talk of a "Turkish Spring" up

The nine young North Korean defectors who were sent back home from Laos late last month had originally planned to seek asylum in the U.S., a South Korean human rights activist said Monday.The North Koreans, aged between 15 and 23, were caught in Laos on May 10 for illegal border trespassing. Seventeen days later, they were expelled to China where they were deported a day later to their home country where they were feared to face severe punishment.The nine first fled the North in 2011 and had bee

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's top memory chip maker, maintained its share of the global chip market at more than 10 percent in the first quarter on the back of growth in system semiconductors, industry data showed Monday.According to the data compiled by market information provider iSupply, Samsung accounted for 10.5 percent or US$7.77 billion of the global semiconductor market in the January-March period to rank second among the world's major chip makers. Samsung Electronics garnered a 1

Some executives of CJ Group attempted to destroy evidence ahead of a prosecution raid over the food and entertainment conglomerate's alleged creation of a slush fund, a prosecution official said Monday.Two weeks ago, a team of prosecutors and investigators raided the headquarters and offices of CJ and the houses of several executives to collect evidence of suspicions that it had created an overseas slush fund worth 7 billion won ($6.2 million) and brought the money into the country. The group ha