SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – Lawmakers kicked off the debate to rewrite the Constitution on Thursday amid growing consensus to limit excessive presidential powers acutely brought home to South Koreans by a recent scandal involving President Park Geun-hye. A bipartisan parliamentary committee on the amendment held its first meeting, electing Rep. Lee Ju-young of [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – Sales of imported vehicles dropped significantly from a year earlier in 2015, largely due to a sales ban on Audi and Volkswagen cars following an emissions scandal, data showed Thursday. In 2016, the number of newly registered foreign cars came to 225,279, down 7.6 percent from 243,900 the previous [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea plans to become one of the world’s first countries to put autonomous cars to actual use this year, introducing its first self-driving bus, a government report showed Thursday. According to the report from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the government plans to introduce a self-driving [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – Samsung Heavy Industries Co., a major shipyard here, said Thursday that it has won a US$1.27 billion deal to build an offshore facility, marking the first mega deal of the year for South Korean shipbuilders struggling to bring in new orders. Under the deal with BP Plc, Samsung Heavy [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – Six out of 10 cancer patients with experience of drinking still consume alcohol during treatment, a study showed Thursday. According to the study conducted by Koh Hyun-young of Samsung Medical Center, 546 out of 906 people, or 60.3 percent, said that they have drank alcohol after being diagnosed with [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – A joint study by doctors from the National Cancer Center and Myongji Hospital revealed that longer sleep duration can increase the risks of cognitive decline, resulting in diseases like Alzheimer’s. According to the team, which compared and analyzed ten previous observational epidemiological studies on sleep duration and cognitive functions, [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean actor Son Ji-chang, who recently filed suit against U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors over his sudden acceleration accident, said Wednesday that he will call for the United States’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to look into the accident. Son, residing in California, claimed in the [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Lotte World Tower – a 555-meter, 123-floor skyscraper in Seoul – underwent a fire evacuation drill on Wednesday afternoon, with 2,891 civilians who volunteered for the exercise participating. The drill’s scenario assumed that the fire took place in the tower’s restaurant on the 107th floor, with as many as [...]
JEONJU, South Korea, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Claw machines are back, and arcades offering a dozen, or dozens, of the machines are found on almost every corner of busy neighborhoods in Korean cities. Jeonju, a small city in North Jeolla Province with a little over 650,000 residents, is no exception. Famous for its Hanok [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea will this year launch a special unit tasked with incapacitating North Korea’s wartime leadership, two years ahead of schedule, its defense chief said Wednesday, as it strives to better counter Pyongyang’s evolving military threats. During its New Year policy briefing to Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang [...]