Results

The government yesterday revised down next year’s economic growth target to 3 percent, 1 percentage point lower than the previously projected 4 percent, citing a worse-than-expected global economy.
In its 2009 economic policy report to President Lee Myung-bak, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said it will try to prevent a rapid deceleration of economic growth [...]

The government plans to spend 100 trillion won ($72.6 billion) over five years to develop local economies, revitalize major rivers and boost welfare for provincial residents.
A presidential committee on local development announced a set of measures covering finance, infrastructure, investment, tax, education and industrial zoning.
President Lee Myung-bak during the committee’s meeting ordered a prompt implementation [...]

The United States has said that it will suspend fuel aid shipments to energy-strapped North Korea until Pyongyang agrees to a written plan to verify its nuclear disarmament.
The announcement on Friday follows the US’s earlier threat to place the shipments “under review” after the latest round of six-country negotiations collapsed in Beijing.
“Future fuel shipments will [...]

The leaders of Japan, South Korea and China have called for a regional crisis fund to be set up to help tackle the effects of the global economic downturn.
The three nations also pledged on Saturday not to create new trade barriers over the next 12 months and called for an urgent capital infusion into [...]

Prosecutors yesterday arrested former President Roh Moo-hyun’s older brother for his alleged role in an illicit lobby scheme involving the 2006 sale of a brokerage house.
“I admit some of the charges, but not all of them. I feel sorry to the people anyway,” Roh Gun-pyeong, 66, told reporters before being taken to a detention center [...]

The government will inject a total of 1.3 trillion won ($890 million) in public funds to buy out bad loans extended by savings banks to finance construction projects, officials said yesterday.
The Financial Services Commission said that the state-run Korea Asset Management Corporation (KAMCO) would spend a total of 1.3 trillion won to take over loans [...]

SEOUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) - South Korea moved on Wednesday to help local banks through a cash crunch gripping the global financial system as central banks around the world were expected to cut interest rates again to support their fast flagging economies.
The Bank of Korea held an emergency meeting to consider buying more bonds off the [...]

Korea’s economy may report its first quarterly contraction in six years in the coming quarters, as recession is spreading to major economies around the world, experts said yesterday.
“There is the possibility that the economy shrinks (on a quarterly basis) in the fourth quarter of this year or the first of next year,” said Huh Chan-guk, [...]

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea made clear on Sunday it will not back down in mounting tensions with North Korea, which has threatened to shut their heavily armed border next week over what it sees as Seoul’s antagonistic approach to relations.
North Korea has responded with relentless diatribes since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in [...]

The North Korean military yesterday threatened that it will “strictly restrict and cut off” all overland passages of the inter-Korean border from Dec. 1 in retaliation to South Korea’s reluctance to implement two summit declarations.
Lt. Gen. Kim Yong-chol, head of the North’s delegation to the inter-Korean military talks, sent the phone message to the South [...]