South Korea announced a package of measures Monday to support the renewable energy industry, pledging to expand export financing for companies, boost investment in research and development and relax regulations.The Presidential Committee on Green Growth unveiled the measures during a meeting presided over by President Lee Myung-bak, saying South Korea should increase government support for the sector to strengthen its position in the global renewable energy industry.Under the plan, the governmen

Vice defense ministers of South Korea and Japan will hold talks in Seoul on Tuesday to discuss regional security and ways to enhance bilateral defense cooperation.South Korean Vice Defense Minister Lee Young-geol and his Japanese counterpart Kimito Nakae are also expected to exchange views on issues concerning North Korean military threats.Their talks were arranged after the defense chiefs of the two countries agreed in January to hold a vice-minister-level meeting on a regular basis as part of

Private personal information is readily available online a month after a revision of the personal information protection law took effect, leaving much of the population here at risk.According to Internet security experts on Monday, private information including resident registration numbers of Grand National Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won, who ran for Seoul mayor, civil servants and people with disabilities can be found online.Na’s resident registration number, for instance, was first discovered on

Pharmaceutical firms vow to defy measure designed to reduce insurance expendituresThe government plans to slash the price of about half the drugs on the market by an average of 14 percent, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Monday. The price cuts, if approved by the Prime Minister’s Office in December, will be the largest since the government took away drug sales rights from doctors and gave them exclusively to pharmacists in 1999.The move, designed to reduce national health insurance expen

Police apprehended several Chinese students studying here for using cameras, mics and other devices to cheat on the state-administered Korean language test.According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency, officers have arrested a 22-year-old Chinese national surnamed Ma, along with two others for helping Chinese students here on study abroad programs cheat on the Korean Language Proficiency Test.Police have also booked Yang, 23, a Chinese student and 18 others without detention, for cheating

President Lee Myung-bak is set to leave for St. Petersburg Tuesday to hold summit talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev before heading to Cannes to attend the G20 Summit.At the summit with Medvedev on Wednesday, Lee will discuss bilateral cooperation while talks are underway between the Korea Gas Corp. and Russia’s Gazprom, as well as between Gazprom and its North Korean counterpart on piping Siberian gas to South Korea via North Korea.Lee will fly over to Cannes, France, later Wednesday

Following the defeat in the Seoul mayoral by-election last week, key figures of the ruling Grand National Party are looking to reach out to the public, especially young voters.Former chairwoman and presidential hopeful Rep. Park Geun-hye is to present on Tuesday a complex policy model, suggesting that welfare should be realized through employment and self-support, according to officials.She will also claim that the government’s job training systems should be reinforced especially for the underpr

Four military personnel were arrested this month on charges of hacking into e-mails of a professor at Chosun University in the southeastern city of Gwangju, military investigators said Monday.The Criminal Investigation Command under the Defense Ministry said that security operatives broke into the e-mails of Gi Gwang-seo, political science professor at the university, and downloaded nearly 700 documents in early September.This incident has drawn attention as speculation has risen that military s

The South Korean consul general in Irkutsk, Russia, has been called home to explain his conduct at a dinner with Russian government officials, a foreign ministry official here said Saturday.“We have summoned him earlier this week,” said the ministry official. “This is the first time to summon a head of an overseas mission for misbehavior.”The consul general to Irkutsk, whose name was withheld, has been under fire for disorderly conduct while under the influence of alcohol while at a dinner with

North Korea on Saturday denounced large-scale military exercises under way in South Korea as a “very dangerous preliminary war for invasion,” demanding the South halt the drills immediately or face “catastrophic consequences.”South Korea launched the Hoguk exercises across the country on Thursday for a nine-day run. On Friday, thousands of troops conducted maneuvers off the country’s northernmost island of Baengnyeong near the tense western sea border with North Korea. The exercises “are a very