SK Telecom, the nation’s top mobile carrier, submitted its final bid on Thursday to take over Hynix Semiconductor, becoming a sole bidder, creditors said.Credit Suisse, one of the co-sale brokers for the deal, received SKT’s bid to acquire a 15 percent stake in the world’s No. 2 memory chip maker, said officials at Korea Exchange Bank, the main creditor.The creditors plan to select a preferred bidder on Friday and conduct price negotiations with the selected company. SKT tendered the last-minute

A prolonged labor dispute at Hanjin Heavy shipyard finally came to an end on Thursday, after workers approved a deal reached a day earlier between union leaders and the management. In a unanimous decision, unionized workers of Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction Co. approved the compromise deal, which calls for the company to rehire 94 laid-off workers within a year. Following the endorsement, labor activist and former Hanjin worker Kim Jin-suk came down from a giant tower crane at the compan

North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeongdo last year left its residents shocked and in fear. But the four doctors and two nurses at the public health care center on the island have had no time to give in to anxiety.Lim Yeon-jeong, an administrative nurse at the center, and her colleague Jung Yi-sun were at the center when the shelling broke out. Lim and a doctor were looking after a patient who needed stitching. It was just Jung’s second month into her work on the island. Neither had expected anythi

More than 690,000 high school students and graduates took the state-administered annual college entrance exam on Thursday, a crucial test seen as a deciding factor in an applicant’s choice of college and subsequent career.The number of test takers dropped 2.6 percent from last year to 693,634, of which about three-quarters were high school students and 22 percent were graduates, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said. The test were administered at 1,207 centers nationwide.The sta

South Korean banks’ household loans grew by the most in four months in October on a rise in mortgage lending, the central bank said Thursday, complicating the government’s efforts to curb growing household debt.Local banks’ household loans, including home-backed and credit loans, reached 451.8 trillion won ($398 billion) as of the end of October, up 3.2 trillion won from the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea.The October monthly growth marked the largest expansion since such loans in

In these luminous days of high skies and fat horses, as Koreans describe their crisp autumn season, I feel I have come home ― to a place I hardly recognize.Forty-one years ago I left Korea, after working here for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English at a women’s college. Recently, as I stood in Gwanghwamun Plaza, gawking at the skyscrapers soaring above the renovated heart of this ancient Joseon capital, the techno-bling of the new century looked more like Abu Dhabi than the Se

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Arab leaders are privately telling the United States that they have offered Syrian President Bashar Assad asylum in a bid to get him to step down, a top U.S. diplomat told lawmakers on Wednesday.“Some Arab leaders already have begun to offer Assad safe-haven in an effort to encourage him to leave peaceably and quickly,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.“Almost all the Arab leaders say the same thing: Assad’s rule is coming to an end. C

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ― Repression by Congo’s government ahead of this month’s critical presidential election could lead to even more violence in the Central African nation struggling after decades of dictatorship and civil war, the United Nations warned Wednesday.The report from the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office in Geneva said people have been beaten and arrested just for wearing opposition party T-shirts. One man has been jailed since March for selling a newspaper that questioned President Joseph

DUBAI (AP) ― With Iran angrily defiant about a U.N. report accusing it of developing nuclear weapons, Western powers and allies faced complicated questions Wednesday on how to further tighten pressure on the oil giant without shaking the fragile world economy.The path toward possible new sanctions also quickly confronted a huge roadblock as Iranian ally Russia said it would oppose any new measures in the U.N. Security Council and rejected any military options as risking “grave consequences” to g

MEXICO CITY (AP) ― Israel Arzate Melendez said soldiers snatched him off the street, gave him electric shocks, asphyxiated him and threatened that his wife would be raped and killed unless he admitted to a role in one of Mexico’s most infamous cases of drug violence.When Arzate told a judge he was tortured into falsely confessing to a role in the 2010 massacre of 15 teens at a party in Ciudad Juarez, she responded that his account was too detailed to be fabricated.Arzate’s case was among dozens