A wartime letter written by a Japanese national has confirmed that Japan had "forced" Korean women to become sex slaves for the Japanese army during World War II, in a rare documentary evidence that could prove Tokyo's culpability for its wartime atrocities, according to the letter released by China on Monday.Historians say up to 200,000 women from Korea, China and some Asian nations were coerced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese brothels during the war. Those sex slaves were euphemis

Serbia marks Monday the 15th anniversary since NATO launched an air war to stop the crackdown on independence-seeking Kosovo by the regime of strongman Slobodan Milosevic.The 11-week operation was the Atlantic alliance's first-ever major air campaign in Europe and still remains etched deep in Serbia's public memory despite recent efforts by the government to move on.On March 24 1999, NATO launched the attack -- without UN Security Council backing -- after Milosevic spurned a call to end repressi

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's No. 1 carmaker, launched its all-new Sonata on Monday as part of efforts to expand its presence in the global mid-size sedan market.The company said the car features "refined styling" thanks to the Fluidic Sculpture 2.0 design language, has much greater driving characteristics than the outgoing model and incorporates top notch safety.Hyundai said that the sedan, which should reach consumers within the month in its home market, emphasizes a "return to basics.""The

South Korea's nuclear safety commission on Friday approved restarting a nuclear reactor that was shut down last week due to what has been determined as a technical problem in one of its control cards."The investigation confirmed a control card that regulates the level of output of the reactor had been damaged, triggering the safety shutdown system that halted the reactor's operation," the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said in a press release.The reactor at Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant,

The latest round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement between South Korea and China came to a close on Friday with the two countries merely confirming what officials here called "large differences" on key issues."The two sides each requested market liberalization in areas of their own interests, but their discussions could not progress significantly as their differences remained tightly locked," the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said in a press release.Their main differe

South Korea's bourse operator, the Korea Exchange, said Friday that it will launch a gold trading platform early next week as scheduled, after a three-week trial period.Last year, the country's financial authorities unveiled a plan to set up a gold trading platform in line with the government's efforts to bring the underground economy into the open and squeeze taxes out of the market where tax evasion is rampant and dominated by illegal transactions.According to the exchange, 1 gram units of bul

The main opposition Democratic Party took a swipe at President Park Geun-hye Friday for her campaign to remove excessive regulations on business activity, saying "indiscriminate" deregulation could be disastrous.Park held a marathon meeting with government regulators and businesses on Thursday in a move demonstrating her commitment to root out non-essential regulations she has denounced as South Korea's "archenemy" and "a lump of cancer."During the nationally televised meeting, Park said she bel