The southern port city of Busan will soon reach an agreement with the national governing body of professional baseball to build the sport's Hall of Fame, officials said on Saturday.They said Busan, the nation's second-largest city, will sign a deal next month with the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) and the county of Kijang within the city to open the Hall of Fame by 2016.Building the commemorative hall is part of the KBO's project to celebrate more than 100 years of baseball and 30-plus years

A national interest group for tobacco companies said Saturday it was "disappointed" with a public agency's plan to sue cigarette manufacturers, calling the move a misguided attempt to solve budget issues.In an English-language statement, the Korea Tobacco Association (KTA) said the tentative decision by the state-run National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) to file a suit against the tobacco industry "with little legal merit"  wouldn't be in the best interest of taxpayers.The NHIS said on Friday

Google's widely used free email stumbled Friday as some of the Internet giant's services were disrupted by apparent software woes.An online Google Apps dashboard indicated that trouble rippled through Gmail, Google+ and an array of the company's other services.Google did not disclose the extent of the Gmail glitch but the brief outage was believed to have affected millions of people, including those using the service at work.Complaints were posted online from Europe, Canada, the United States an

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Friday resuming long-stalled nuclear talks with North Korea is a matter of great urgency, calling on relevant nations to create "favorable conditions" to reopen the six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear ambition. Wang made the remarks during a joint interview on Friday with some Chinese media organizations on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The interview transcript was posted on the Chinese foreign ministry's w

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday that Japan and China are "inseparable" and urged Beijing to come to the table for "vital" summit talks as he sought to move on from comparisons he drew with World War I.Abe told lawmakers he would not budge on the sovereignty of the Tokyo-administered islands that Beijing claims, but insisted the disagreement should not prevent a meeting between two closely-intertwined countries."Unfortunately, we have not been able to realise summit meetings with China. But

Bending to intense international pressure, Syria's government and the Western-backed opposition agreed Friday to face each other for the first time since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad.After three days of hostile rhetoric and five hours spent assiduously avoiding contact within the United Nations, the two sides will meet “in the same room,” said the U.N. mediator trying to forge an end to the civil war that has left 130,000 people dead since 2011.Mediator Lakhdar Brahim

North Korea's top envoy to the United Nations said Friday his country stands ready to rejoin the six-party talks on its nuclear program."We have long expressed a position for holding the six-way talks," Amb. Sin Son-ho told Yonhap News Agency after a news conference here. He added the timing of resuming the negotiations depends on "those who oppose" them. He was apparently referring to the U.S. and South Korea.The six-party talks, last held in December 2008, also involve China, Russia and Japan.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye left for Switzerland on Saturday after a state visit to India, where she sought to lay the groundwork for boosting trade and other economic exchanges with the world's second-most populous nation.Her summit with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh produced an agreement Thursday to revise the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement -- a free trade pact in place since 2010.The revision, if realized, would allow South Korean firms wider access to the massiv

President Park Geun-hye called for an "airtight" security posture against North Korea from South Korean soldiers and other officials on Saturday, viewing the North's recent charm offensives as a possible prelude to imminent military provocations."In India, Park ordered the (South Korean) defense minister and other security-related ministers to make more efforts to keep an airtight security posture against (potential) provocations at a time North Korea is conducting a flurry of propaganda offensi

North Korea will take the first steps to fulfill its proposal made earlier this week to end inter-Korea tensions, the country's main newspaper said Saturday, calling on Seoul to follow suit."Our will to fulfill the latest important proposal is solid," said the Rodong Sinmun daily, which is run by the governing party. "As we have declared, we will first show our actions to fulfill it," it said. The newspaper article, however, did not elaborate on what specific actions the country will take.The Ro

The South Korean stock market is expected to move sideways next week due to investors' jitters over the fourth-quarter corporate earnings, analysts said Saturday.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) gained 0.9 percent from the previous week to close at 1,944.48 Friday.Earlier this week, Seoul shares gathered ground as the weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data curbed concerns that its central bank may speed up the tapering of its quantitative easing.The U.S. added 74,000 jobs in

The United States and Japan agreed Friday to strengthen cooperation between their top national security bodies in dealing with North Korea and other pending issues, the White House said.National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with her Japanese counterpart, Shotaro Yachi, at her office."During the meeting, they agreed to frequent regular communications between the two National Security Councils," the White House said in a press release. "They also discussed updating our defense partnership and o

President Barack Obama called Friday for the end of his government's control over masses of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans, and promised in a major and long-expected speech that U.S. intelligence would no longer be listening in on the telephone conversations of leaders of nations that are U.S. friends and allies.The existence of the U.S. intelligence program that bugged the phones of leaders like Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, for ex