Apparently yielding to growing calls from high-ranking prosecution officials and public resentment, the chief prosecutor will offer his resignation later this week, a prosecution official said Thursday,Prosecutor General Han Sang-dae will step down on Friday and ask President Lee Myung-bak to "newly appoint" a successor, the official said, adding that he will also offer an apology to the people and announce planned prosecution reform measures on the same day.Ranking prosecutors of the Supreme Pr

North Korea apparently replaced its defense chief recently in the latest in a series of signs that leader Kim Jong-un is shaking up top military posts depending on the personnel's allegiance to him, a senior South Korean official said Thursday.Kim Kyok-shik, a hawkish general believed to have orchestrated the North's sinking of a South Korean warship and an artillery attack on a border island in 2010, replaced Kim Jong-gak as minister of the People's Armed Forces, the senior official said.It is

Cellphone addiction shows similarities to compulsive buying and credit card misuse, a study by marketing researchers at Baylor University in Texas found.Addiction to cellphones and to text messaging are driven by materialism and impulsiveness and can be compared to other consumption pathologies, the researchers said."Cellphones are a part of our consumer culture," Baylor marketing Professor James Roberts said. "They are not just a consumer tool, but are used as a status symbol. They're also erod

South Korean manufacturers' business confidence for December declined to a near four-year low as the growth outlook remained bleak amid the global economic downturn, the central bank said Thursday.The index of manufacturers' outlook on business conditions came in at 67 for December, down from 70 tallied for November, according to a monthly survey by the Bank of Korea (BOK). The index measures manufacturers' expectations for the coming month.The December data marked the lowest reading since the i

South Korean stocks opened higher Thursday as investor sentiment got a boost from overnight gains on Wall Street following a brighter outlook on the U.S. fiscal cliff issue, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) climbed 14.22 points, or 0.74 percent, to trade at 1,927.00 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Shares gathered ground across the board, with market bellwether Samsung Electronics increasing 0.28 percent, while leading carmaker Hyundai Motor climbed 1.34 pe

The Philippines has become the latest country to say it will not stamp visas in a new Chinese passport because it includes a map of the South China Sea that Manila says shows its territory.The Department of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday that the visas will be stamped in a separate visa application form.It said the move reinforces its protest formally conveyed to Beijing last week against China's ``excessive claim over almost the entire South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea.''It sai

The expected U.N. vote Thursday to recognize a state of Palestine will be far more than symbolic _ it could give the Palestinians leverage in future border talks with Israel and open the way for possible war crimes charges against the Jewish state.The Palestinians want the 193-member General Assembly to accept “Palestine,” on the lands Israel occupied in 1967, as a non-member observer state. They anticipate broad support.For Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the U.N. bid is a last-ditch attem

Apple Inc. (AAPL) won a Dutch sales ban on some of Samsung Electronics Co. (005930)’s older Galaxy tablets and smartphones after a Netherlands court ruled in a patent lawsuit. Samsung’s Galaxy products using certain versions of Google Inc (GOOG)’s Android operating system infringe an Apple patent describing a way to navigate images in a photo gallery, Judge Peter Blok said today. Samsung last year tweaked a feature on the smartphones to bypass a Dutch injunction. Today’s ban concerns products th

A North Korean long-range rocket launch in the next several weeks is technically possible but unlikely, experts here said Wednesday.Although Pyongyang has political reasons to show increased activities in its missile test site, they said, pressing ahead with a high-stakes blast is a different matter."I believe it is technically possible for North Korea to again attempt to launch a multi-stage, Unha-3-type rocket during the December-January timeframe, but I have my doubts it will happen,"Greg Thi

No issue that might lead to a forced delay of South Korea's scheduled launch of a space rocket was found in a final rehearsal Wednesday, launch organizers said.They said the analysis of data obtained in the launch rehearsal confirmed the launch of Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1), also known as Naro-1, on Thursday is "technically possible.""A comprehensive evaluation and analysis of the data showed the launch of Naro space rocket tomorrow is technically possible," the Korea Aerospace Resear

South Korean pop group JYJ ended more than three years of legal dispute with its former management agency, S.M. Entertainment, bringing to an end an "unjust" contract between them, court officials said Wednesday, marking its members' official departure from their original group.The members of JYJ -- Kim Jae-joong, Park Yu-chun and Kim Jun-su -- and S.M. Entertainment, one of the country's top entertainment agencies, agreed under court mediation that their contracts ceased as of July 31, 2009, th

The Supreme Prosecutors Office said Wednesday that it has launched an internal inspection into a high-ranking official on suspicion that he gave advice to a corrupt prosecutor under investigation for taking bribes.Choi Jae-kyong, the head of SPO's central investigation unit, the powerful team that exclusively probes political heavyweights and big names, is suspected of advising Kim Kwang-joon on how to deal with media while Kim was under investigation by special prosecutors, the inspection team

Spain said Wednesday it will back a Palestinian bid for enhanced U.N. status and new global recognition at a General Assembly vote this week."Spain will vote 'yes' tomorrow to the Palestinian request in line with our history," Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told parliament, adding Madrid's support to that of France and several other European countries.Spain believed the Palestinian bid to upgrade its rank from a U.N. General Assembly observer entity to that of a non-member observer

A Seoul prosecutor offered to resign on Wednesday following revelations that he had accidentally sent a text message suggesting that the prosecution's ongoing reform measures aren't sincere. Following a series of scandals involving incumbent prosecutors, Yoon Dae-hae wrote a message on the prosecution's intranet on Sunday, demanding that the prosecution take stern reform measures.The next day, the prosecutor at the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office accidentally sent a text message to a