- Meanwhile, South Korea is holding fast to its all-or-nothing position that Google's Android Market (there's an ominous-sounding name) will not be allowed to operate in South Korea if they don't allow ratings of the 4400 game titles they're offering that has so far gone unrated.
- Hyundai Motors is saying that domestic sales of the all-new Sonata are expected to top 100K this month.
- In a reversal of roles, Korean auto parts manufacturers will be exporting car parts to Japan, as Daihatsu imports Korean car parts.
- The service sector accounted for 70 percent of the ROK economy for the second straight month, indicating "advancement of the nation's economic structure." It was a mere 50 percent in 1992.
- South Korea and the EU will hold ministerial level talks over the final stages of the FTA.
- Air Busan begins bookings for its new routes to Jaban (that misbelling was deliberate).
- The economic slowdown has forced corporations to cut entertainment expenses and donations by 20 percent. Why those two categories are lumped together, I'm not really sure. Maybe the slipping of Saimdangs into women's undergarments provides overlap.
- Electricity-powered "green" vessels to be ready for manufacture by 2015.
- The US's special envoy for North Korean human rights, Robert King, says that talks with Pyongyang on human rights will begin after some level of progress toward denuclearization. This, Kushibo says, could mean we never get to it. Oh, have you read my take? (short answer: nothing good will happen on human rights or anything with Pyongyang until China pulls the plug on North Korea and/or the DPRK regime implodes... or the outside possibility of the regime making changes on its own.)
- South Korea will extend by one year the mandate for a provisional organization tasked with dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis.
- South Africa has been using North Korean workers to renovate the stadiums to be used during the World Cup.
- In a bid to fight corruption and increase transparency, school principals will be asked to report their personal assets.
- NPR reviews Mother.
- Seoul is going to look into ways to revise the rules on how City Hall Plaza can be used for rallies without disrupting the crap out of everyone else's lives.
- Low-speed electricity-powered "green" vehicles will be used to tool around leaders during the G20 summit later this year. And while I'm hoping nothing bad happens during the important meeting, one silver lining to such an incident (assuming no one gets hurt) is that it could lead to a James Bond-type chase, but with really slow vehicles, which would be entertaining to watch.
- France's TV5 Monde will soon debut in Korea.
- Eighty-year-old "trot" music superstar Park Chunseok, popular in the 1960s and 1970s, has died.
- After reaching an impasse with Beijing authorities, Google is "99.9% sure" it will shut down its China search engine.
personally, i prefer busan to pusan... more appealing to the eye. the letters scan better. that doesn't make any sense...
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