Nearly 70 percent of ordinary Korean citizens regard society here as corrupt, with the largest number of them citing politicians as the main culprits, a poll showed Friday.According to the survey of 1,400 ordinary citizens, 1,400 civil servants, 700 business executives and 630 opinion leaders, 65.4 percent of the general public said society is corrupt as a whole. The number was a large jump from 51.6 percent holding the view a year earlier.While the corrupt image of the society was shared by nea

BRUSSELS (AFP) ― Eurozone leaders will seek a bigger financial “bazooka” to battle the debt crisis and mull radical steps towards deeper union with treaty change at a game-changing EU summit opening Thursday.“Markets don’t give a hoot about treaty change as it’s all long-term,” said an EU source close to backroom talks ahead of the two-day meeting. “Money is all they care about and we need to convince.”With the entire 17-nation area, even powerhouse Germany, under threat of a ratings downgrade a

The main opposition Democratic Party agreed Thursday to end its boycott of parliament and handle next year’s budget and other urgent bills before year’s end, officials said.DP floor leader Kim Jin-pyo reached the agreement in talks with his ruling Grand National Party (GNP) counterpart Hwang Woo-yea.The sides agreed to call the National Assembly into an extraordinary session Monday and start working on the budget and other key bills, their spokesmen said.The DP began boycotting parliament in pro

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the country’s second case of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease Thursday.The first was reported Nov. 29, after the patient had died.Authorities said that the disease is not ordinarily transmittable and assured that the public was generally safe from contraction.According to the KCDC, the patient is a 48-year-old man diagnosed with iCJD on Wednesday. He is believed to have contracted the disease after he received a dura mater graft

No high-ranking official involved in DDoS attack on election watchdog: policeA former secretary to Grand National Party lawmaker Choi Ku-sik confessed Thursday to the cyber attack on the website of the national election watchdog on Oct. 26 during the by-elections.According to the police, Gong confessed to the charges during an interrogation in the early hours of the day, saying he was acting independently. Gong had up to that point denied involvement in the cyber attacks. Police have tentatively

The high-speed fourth-generation network service appears to be literally a “long-term evolution” for KT Corp., the nation’s No. 2 telecom carrier. KT was scheduled to halt its second-generation mobile service and to announce the beginning of the long-awaited LTE service at a press conference on Thursday. A Seoul court, however, scuppered KT’s plan on Wednesday, saying “Irreversible damages are expected to the remaining 2G users.”Under a plan to start the faster LTE service in the 1.8 GHz band th

South Korea, China and Japan will hold their final joint study meeting next week on the feasibility of a free trade agreement between the three Northeast Asian countries, the Trade Ministry in Seoul said Thursday.The meeting, the seventh of its kind, will be held in Pyeongchang, some 180 kilometers east of Seoul, from Wednesday to Friday, according to the ministry. During the meeting, the three nations will discuss a draft covering commodities trade and other issues, such as service and investme

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest TV supplier, said Thursday it set a new record in monthly flat-screen TV sales in November, thanks to a demand spike during the holiday season in the United States. The company sold 5.7 million units of TVs in global markets last month, it said in a statement.The monthly sales record was largely driven by robust demand in the United States during the Thanksgiving holidays, Samsung said. The company saw more than a 40 percent surge in TV sales on Black

South Korean conglomerates expect export conditions to worsen in 2012 mainly due to eurozone debt woes and a U.S. economic slowdown, a poll showed Thursday.The Federation of Korean Industries survey showed that of 22 major businesses polled, 15, or 68.2 percent, expected next year’s export environment to be less favorable than in 2011.The data also showed that 63.6 percent of the conglomerates, including Samsung, Hyundai Motor Co., LG and SK, are bracing for financing-related difficulties in the