Seoul Archive

Seoul, Nov 3 (DPA) South Korea Tuesday raised the swine flu alert level to its highest status due to the rapid spread of the viral disease in the country, officials said.

The red alert level, the highest on South Korea’s four-level scale, means that government authorities would be mobilised to fight the virus and restrictions on travel and public events could be put in place more quickly.

The red alert was put in place primarily to control the spread of the H1N1 strain of the flu, said Park Ha Jeong, a deputy minister for public health.

The next four to five weeks could show whether South Korea hits the peak of its flu infections, he said.

The health, welfare and family affairs ministry said the numbers of H1N1 infections has risen rapidly with the onset of cold weather. An average of 8,857 new swine-flu cases per day were recorded last week, double the tally from the week before.

Since mid-August, 42 people have died in South Korea from swine-flu infections.

Seoul, Oct 26 (DPA) South Korea’s economy grew at its fastest pace in seven years in the third quarter, rising 2.9 percent from the quarter before, the central bank said Monday.

The third-straight quarterly growth for Asia’s fourth-largest economy was better than analysts had expected and beat second-quarter growth in the gross domestic product (GDP), which was 2.6 percent.

In comparison to the same quarter a year ago, GDP growth registered 0.6 percent, the Bank of Korea said in releasing preliminary economic figures. It was the first year-on-year growth in a year after a 2.2 percent contraction in the second quarter.

South Korea’s export-dependent economy saw a big jump in manufacturing of 8.7 percent from the second to the third quarters, led by automakers and the information technology sector, particularly chipmakers and the producers of electronic products.

Exports were up 5.1 percent after growth of 14.7 percent in the second quarter while private consumption rose 1.4 percent and capital spending jumped 8.9 percent.

South Korea has weathered the worldwide economic crisis better than most countries, thanks to government stimulus spending, low interest rates and a low won, which makes South Korean exports cheaper abroad.

It narrowly avoided sliding into recession with 0.1 percent growth in the first quarter after registering a 5.1 percent contraction in the final quarter of 2008.

A country is technically regarded to be in a recession when the GDP declines two consecutive quarters compared to the previous quarter.

However, Bank of Korea Governor Lee Seong Tae forecast in mid-October that South Korea’s economy would shrink slightly this year, by less than 1 percent after seeing growth of 2.2 percent in 2008.

Seoul, Oct 26 (DPA) South Korea Monday offered North Korea its first food aid in nearly two years as part of a recent cautious rapprochement between the two neighbours.

South Korea made the offer through its Red Cross, which said it would send North Korea a small shipment consisting of 10,000 tons of corn, 20 tons of milk power and medicine.

The aid was being offered purely on humanitarian grounds and no further shipments were planned, the Unification Ministry in Seoul said.

If accepted, the food aid would be the first to be sent to the impoverished, communist North Korea since conservative South Korean President Lee Myung Bak took office in February last year.

Lee took a harder line toward the North than his liberal predecessors, halting aid and insisting it would be linked to Pyongyang’s progress toward denuclearisation.

Before Lee came to office, South Korea had been among the largest of North Korea’s donors. Every year, it shipped hundreds of thousands of tons of rice and fertiliser to its neighbour.

Already strained relations with Lee’s government further deteriorated in the first half of this year as North Korea carried out its second nuclear test, a series of missile launches and made repeated threats against the South.

In August, however, Pyongyang made overtures to Seoul, including agreeing to resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and relaxing restrictions on cross-border transport.

Seoul, Oct 24 – South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae-young has told lawmakers that the government is preparing for its reconstruction work in Afghanistan, WAM news agency reported Saturday.

Kim said the government is reviewing its contributions, including financial support, expansion of civilian-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) and personnel to protect PRT members.

South Korea had withdrawn its 200-member construction and medical units from Afghanistan in 2007. It has since dispatched about two dozens civilian workers to help reconstruction of the war-torn country.

Seoul said it would increase the number of PRT workers to about 90 by the end of this year, and build a hospital and a job-training centre at the US Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

He said the US has not directly requested Seoul for troops in Afghanistan.

Seoul, Oct 23 – South Korean state-run oil company Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) has bought Canada’s Harvest Energy company at a cost of $3.95 billion, WAM news agency reported.

The move will boost South Korea’s total oil and gas reserves from the current 2.80 billion barrels to about 3.02 billion barrels.

The Calgary-based Harvest Energy currently produces 53,400 barrels of crude and gas per day. Currently, the KNOC owned oil and gas fields produce about 188,000 barrels per day. The latest deal raises that figure to 241,400 barrels.

Harvest has stakes in oil fields, coal beds, methane and oil sand deposits, with operational fields in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

The acquisition is also expected to push up South Korea’s self-sufficiency in oil and gas to 8.1 percent of the total domestic demand from the current 6.3 percent. Seoul originally wanted to push up self-sufficiency levels to 7.4 percent by year’s end.

‘The purchase is significant since it not only improves self-sufficiency but gives KNOC a firm foothold in North America that can help pave the way for further mergers and acquisitions down the road,’ Kim Jung-gwan, South Korea’s deputy energy minister said Thursday.

Most of the oil developed there will be sold in the local market, although this can be shipped to South Korea in case of an emergency, he added.

Seoul is pushing to transform the national oil company into a more significant player in the global market and has pledged to inject 4.1 trillion won (about $3 billion) by 2012 to increase its output capabilities by buying foreign oil companies and investing in oil and gas fields.