Seoul  - In a country like South Korea, a craze for coffee is not the only explanation for the unusual success that Starbucks Corporation is now enjoying there.

The success of Starbucks in South Korea can also be put down to the free internet access in its many outlets. People are now flocking to the chain stores not only to drink coffee, but to study and chat as well.

Seoul  - Shares surged 3.2 per ce

Seoul - Pyongyang on Tuesday reopened its border to hundreds of South Koreans stranded at a joint industrial complex, one day after it cut inter-Korean communications amid rising tension over US and South Korean military exercises.

Border traffic to and from the Kaesong industrial park in North Korea returned to normal, South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Yonhap news agency.

Tokyo  - A South Korean freighter and its crew went missing Tuesday off the central Japanese Izu-Oshima island after it collided with a Panama-registered vessel, Japanese media reports said.

The 4,255-ton Orchid Pia of South Korea and the 10,833-ton Cygnus Ace of Panama collided early Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean, about 120 kilometres south of Tokyo, the Japan Coast Guard said.

The search continued after the coast guard lost contact with the Orchid Pia, which has seven South Korean and nine Indonesian crew members.

Hanoi  - The captain of a South Korean freighter anchored off the Vietnamese coast killed his chief mechanic in a fight before committing suicide, news reports said Monday.

Sailors told the Vietnamese Coast Guard that the ship's captain Hong Dong Kwon, 45, had killed mechanic Heo Seong Kyu, 45, during a fight with several sailors. After Heo died, the sailors confined Hong in his own cabin.

Seoul  - South Korea on Friday condemned North Korea for "a military threat" and "an inhumane act," a day after Pyongyang said it could not guarantee the safety of South Korean civilian aircraft flying in or near its airspace.

"A military threat to the normal operations of civil airplanes not only violates international rules but is also an inhumane act that can never be justified," the Unification Ministry in Seoul said.