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.

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.

Analysts had predicted net losses of 150 billion won, the Yonhap news agency said.

However, South Korea's leading electronics company's profits were down 72 per cent from 2.19 trillion won year-on-year, as demand for computer memory chips and flat-screen (liquid crystal display LCD) television sets declined.

London, Apr 24 : North Korea has become a full-fledged nuclear power with the capacity to wipe out entire cities in Japan and South Korea, a confidential report prepared by world's intelligence agencies and defence experts states.

This new reality has emerged in off-hand remarks and in single sentences buried in lengthy reports.

Seoul - South Korea's economy unexpectedly grew slightly by 0.1 per ce