A senior official of the global rating agency Standard & Poor's on Wednesday said the South Korean economy could grow at an average rate of 2.9 percent per year until 2019.Kim Eng Tan, senior director of Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings at S&P, made the assessment of Asia's fourth-largest economy, citing South Korea has globally competitive companies and its industrial sector is properly distributed.He said South Korea's expected average annual growth rate between 2016 and 2019 is higher than thos

The organizers of an international martial arts event here said Wednesday seven athletes and one coach from three countries are still missing as the competition is coming to an end.The organizers of the World Martial Arts Masterships in Cheongju, some 130 kilometers south of Seoul in North Chungcheong Province, said that three jujitsu fighters from Sri Lanka, four belt wrestling athletes from Tajikistan and a wushu coach for Uganda have gone missing. The masterships will wrap up its seven-day ru

GM Korea Co., the South Korean unit of US automaker General Motors Co., said Wednesday that it has reached a tentative agreement with labor union leaders on their pay increase this year.The agreement will soon be put to a vote by unionized workers, with the exact date of the vote expected to be decided later in the day, company officials said.The agreement follows 30 long rounds of negotiations that began late April, as well as partial walkouts since mid-August.The company did not disclose the d

The number of North Korean defectors coming to South Korea rose 15 percent on-year in the first eight months of 2016, government data showed Wednesday, as the North's leader is tightening his iron-fisted rule on the country.In the January-August period, 894 North Koreans escaped and arrived in South Korea, compared with 777 the previous year, according to the data by the Ministry of Unification.As of end-August, the total number of North Korean defectors reached 29,688 it showed, with the tally