Seoul - In a country known as the world's most guarded safe haven for domestically produced phones, South Korean mobile phone carriers said they are ready to launch overseas-made handsets from Apple, RIM and Nokia.

Carriers are already in the final stages of getting non-Korean phones into the domestic market for consumers who have been anxiously waiting for trendy headsets like Apple's iPhone, after regulators lifted a rule requiring headsets to include include local software, which effectively closed the market to foreign producers.

South Korean regulators last week announced that of April 1, 2009, the mandatory Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability will be discontinued.

Tokyo - Japan and South Korea pledged greater cooperation to overcome the global financial crisis ahead of a summit with China in the Japanese city of Fukuoka on Saturday.

Seoul - South Korea's central bank said on Friday that it has arranged new deals to expand its bilateral currency swap facilities with Japan and China.

Under the new won-yen swap deals, South Korea can secure access to a total of 30 billion US dollars in a credit line from the Bank of Japan (BOJ).

South Korea can access about 28 billion US dollars in credit from the People's Bank of China.

Under a May 2005 arrangements already in place, South Korea can access a 13-billion-US-dollar credit line from the BOJ and 4 billion US dollars from the People's Bank of China.

Seoul  - Leading shareholders of money-losing Hynix Semiconductor Inc on Friday denied market rumours of a Hynix capital reduction.

Instead, they revealed a possible attempt to raise capital for the world's second-largest manufacturer of computer memory chips after Samsung Electronics Co.

Creditors said that despite the revenue loss, Hynix stands on a risk-free capital base that may invite a capital raise.

"We've never discussed capital reduction," the shareholders' committee said in a statement.

Hynix has been talking with its five top shareholders, who own 36 per cent of its shares, among them the Korea Exchange Bank and the Korea Development Bank.

Seoul - The captain of the oil tanker involved in a collision with a barge off South Korea's coast in late 2007 has been sentenced to a year and a half in jail, the daily The Korea Times reported Wednesday.

The report said the first officer of the Hong Kong-registered tanker Hebei Spirit received an 8-month jail term, with a state court in Taejon finding both having been negligent in carrying out their duties.

The sentencing came in an appeals case after the two men had initially been acquitted last June.

The captain, and Indian national, and the first officer were also each fined 20 million won (14,000 dollars). The owners of the tanker and of the barge were also each fined 30 million won.

Seoul - Shares continued to surge Wednesday on the Seoul stock exchange led by gains in the bank and car sector. South Korea's currency jumped against the dollar.