Hotel Lotte Co., the operator of South Korea's biggest hotel chain, has opened a hotel in Yangon, Myanmar, as part of its gradual expansion strategy, the company said Sunday. On Friday, Lotte Hotel Yangon began operations in the largest city in the Southeast Asian country as the Korean company's eighth overseas location, Hotel Lotte said in a statement.  Lotte Hotel Yangon, seen here, is Hotel Lotte Co.`s eighth overseas location. (Yonhap)Lotte has expanded its hotel chain overseas as part of ef

Transitioning to solar power as a source of the country's power will require 20 times more land compared with the country's current nuclear energy policy, an opposition lawmaker said Sunday.Rep. Kim Jung-hoon of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party said that data provided by the National Assembly Budget Office shows that building a 1 megawatt reactor requires some 745 square meters of land, which includes cooling and other related infrastructure.He said to get the same output from solar energ

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party is shoring up its push for the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, in a move largely seen as strengthening its political position against the ruling Democratic Party with the controversial proposal.Rep. Kim Kwang-lim, who chairs the party's policy committee, told Yonhap News Agency that a review is under way to include a tactical nuke deployment budget for next year as lawmakers review the government's spending proposal in

Exports of South Korea's agricultural goods to China fell this year as diplomatic rows with its biggest trading partner deepen, a local agricultural agency said Sunday. The value of agricultural exports fell to $860 million in the January-August period from $920 million a year earlier. Exports to China accounted for 14.4 percent of all outbound shipments from 16.6 percent during the same period, according to the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp.The slump came as Chinese consumers opted

South Korea has been training more than 2,300 doctors, nurses, physical therapists and other medical staff on foreign languages, sports psychology counseling and even skiing as they get ready to provide expert care at next year's PyeongChang Winter Olympics, organizers said Sunday. PyeongChang, the northeastern mountainous resort town in Gangwon Province, will host the Winter Olympiad from Feb. 9-25 with more than 6,500 athletes and officials from 95 countries set to attend.PyeongChang 2018 will

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un hailed the latest nuclear test as "a great victory" at a celebration banquet, and praised the officials and experts for their efforts in carrying out the successful experiment, its state media said Sunday.The Central Committee and the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea hosted a feast to mark the North's sixth and the most powerful test conducted last week, according to the Korean Central News Agency.Last Sunday, Pyongyang said it conducted

Hyundai Motor Co. and its sister company Kia Motors Corp. are set to miss this year's sales target as diplomatic rows with China deepen, company officials said Sunday. In the January-July period, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, two key affiliates of South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group, posted a 46 percent on-year slump in sale with total being bought by customers in China standing at 500,964 vehicles from 919,380 units a year earlier. The slump came as Chinese consumers opted to buy fewer South Kore

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party is expected to lift its boycott of the ongoing regular session of the National Assembly next week, the party's spokesman said Saturday.Since Saturday, the LKP has been boycotting all legislative sessions, except security-related ones, arguing the government is attempting to control state-run media. (Yonhap)Last Friday, the prosecution obtained a court warrant to detain Kim Jang-kyom, the incumbent head of public broadcaster MBC, after he failed to answer t

UberEATS, a food delivery service app run by ride-sharing pioneer Uber Technologies Inc., finds big growth potential in South Korea's food delivery market due to its advanced wireless networks and growing orders on mobile phones, a senior company executive said.The US-based business launched its UberEATS service in Seoul a month ago, bringing the service to 112 cities across 28 countries, where it has 60,000 restaurant partners.  "Seoul is a perfect place for UberEATS. We find South Korea's fast

South Korea's super rich, who make up the top 1 percent of the population, own on average 6.5 homes, while half of the people don't own their own houses, government data showed Sunday.The findings submitted by the tax office and ministry of interior to ruling Democratic Party lawmaker Park Kwang-on showed the number of homes the rich owned jumped twofold in the past nine years."The richest 139,000 people owned 906,000 homes last year," the official numbers showed. The total value of th

Preorders for gifts to relatives and acquaintances are surging ahead of this year's very long Chuseok holiday, industry data showed Sunday.The 10-day holiday, the longest in decades, starts on the Sept. 30 weekend, runs through the three-day long Chuseok holiday and ends with Hangeul Day, which commemorates the invention of the Korean alphabet that falls on Oct. 9. The government earlier designated Oct. 2, which is a normal working day as a one-off holiday in the hopes it will spur domestic cons

No South Korean casualties have been reported in a powerful earthquake in Mexico, the foreign ministry in Seoul said Saturday.Mexico was hit by the most powerful earthquake in a century Thursday, leaving more than 60 people dead. Officials check the safety of Korean citizens living in Mexico (Yonhap)South Korea's embassies in Mexico and Guatemala have confirmed there are no South Korean casualties so far, though Korean firms suffered minor property damage, such as cracks in warehouse walls, acco

South Korea's military is watching North Korea closely for signs of provocations, officials said Saturday, amid concern the regime could undertake a missile launch or even another nuclear test on its founding anniversary.The anniversary, which marks the 1948 establishment of the North's communist government, comes about a week after it carried out its sixth nuclear test and claimed the device was a hydrogen bomb designed to fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the Uni