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Society
2,000 truckers go on strike
Some 2,000 unionized truck drivers went on strike Monday, raising fears that the country’s cargo transportation will suffer serious disruption if prolonged. No major disruptions were reported at major ports, but the Korean Cargo Transport Workers’ Union has threatened to block traffic coming in and out of them. The government vowed…
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Social Media and the Arab Spring
[The East-West Wire] SEOUL — Speaking at a pace that mirrored the speed of a Twitter feed, Riyaad Minty, head of social media for Al Jazeera, shared lessons from the Arab Spring with more than 300 journalists at the East-West Center’s 2012 International Media Conference on 22 June at Yonsei…
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Business
Property market swooning
The government has introduced new policies to stimulate the housing market seven times in the past 18 months in an unapologetic display of desperation and kitchen-sink policymaking. But the ongoing dearth of transactions has critics wondering whether officials have been operating on a dead patient. To get across the sorry…
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Business
‘Visible hand’ beaten
Court rules against government measure to regulate large retailers The government is under fire for its hasty measures to limit the operating hours of large retailers in an attempt to protect small stores, as the court has ruled that the new regulation is illegal. The government introduced a series of…
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Business
Blade & Soul gets even with Diablo 3
NCsoft’s new massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Blade & Soul started an open beta test Thursday and was virtually level with Blizzard’s Diablo 3 in popularity over the weekend. According to game research firm Gametrics, as of Sunday morning, Blade & Soul held 17.38 percent for Internet cafe user…
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Politics
US, N. Korea sowed seeds of doubt
Six decades ago, the U.N. forces led by the United States fought against the North on Korea battlefields, not only with guns but also with thought tactics to defeat the enemy with fewer causalities. Psychological warfare such as propaganda leaflets, posters, and radio shows were widely used during the bloody…
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Cargo drivers to go on strike Monday
Truck drivers will go on a nationwide strike at 7 a.m. Monday in protest of the government’s lack of efforts to improve their working conditions. The Korean Cargo Transport Workers’ Union said it has “waited long enough” after 80.6 percent of its 380,000 members approved of the walkout in the…
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130 Korean-Chinese rounded up for false IDs
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said Sunday that it has ferreted out 130 Korean-Chinese immigrants who re-entered the country with forged identities after being deported for crime or staying illegally. The office said it has arrested 11 of them and booked 15 others on charges of violating the immigration…
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Politics
Mohamed Morsy wins Egyptian presidency
Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood was elected president of Egypt with 51.7 percent of last weekend’s run-off vote, the state election committee said on Sunday. Thousands of Brotherhood supporters on Cairo’s Tahrir Square were waving national flags and chanting “Allahu Akbar!” or God is Great, greeting Morsy’s victory. Morsy,…
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Politics
‘N. Korean attacks won’t be tolerated’
Lee marks 62nd anniversary of outbreak of Korean War President Lee Myung-bak said that no future North Korean provocations would be tolerated on the eve of the 62nd anniversary of the communist state invasion that triggered the 1950-1953 Korean War. Meeting Colombian veterans who participated in the fratricidal war during…
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