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.

The March surplus was the biggest recorded for Asia's fourth-largest economy since the Bank of Korea started keeping such statistics in 1980.

Seoul - Shares finished nearly 3 per cent higher Wednesday on the Seoul stock exchange on bargain hunt

Seoul - Share

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 plans to double its stockpile of the antiviral Tamiflu and other influenza drugs, health officials said Monday, responding to the outbreak of the swine influenza (H1N1) in Mexico and the United States.

Currently, the state-run Korea Center for Disease Control holds enough reserves of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to treat up to 2.5 million people, around 5 per cent of the population, director Lee Jong Koo said.

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.