Seoul - South Korean authorities were investigating a possible case of a swine-flu infection Tuesday.
An influenza infection was detected in a 51-year-old South Korean woman who returned from a trip to Mexico on the weekend, the Korean Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The centre was testing whether the woman contracted the mutated H1N1 virus, the strain identified in the swine-flu outbreak in Mexico, which may have cost up to 149 lives so far. Test results are expected in one or two days, the centre said.
Seoul - South Korea recorded a record current account surplus in March as imports weakened more than the country's falling exports, the central bank said Wednesday. The surplus hit 6.65 billion dollars, nearly double the surplus seen in February of 3.56 billion dollars, the Bank of Korea said, adding that it expected another surplus this month as a decline in exports caused by the global economic crisis slows.
Seoul - North Korea's communist leader Kim Jong-il has promoted his youngest son to a key post, in a possible sign of grooming him as a successor, South Korean media reports said Sunday. The secretive family dynasty has ruled the nuclear-armed north of the peninsula since 1948, with increasing speculation at the health of the 67-year old Kim Jong-il, who is believed to have suffered a stroke.
Seoul - North Korea said Saturday it has started again to reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods to produce weapons-grade plutonium. "The reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power plant began as declared in the Foreign Ministry statement dated April 14," the state-run Korean Central News Agency cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman, who referred to work at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility.
Seoul - Samsung Electronics Co Friday reported net profits of 619 billion won (458 million dollars) for the first three months of 2009, following losses of 20 billion won in the previous quarter.
