Local paper headlines

1. Chosun Ilbo

- US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice urged South Korea to exert leverage in earnest on North Korea in order to get the regime to abandon its nuclear development. She reiterated the US would not talk one-on-one with North Korea except within the framework of the six-party talks.

- Appearing in SBS TV program, “Han Soo-jin’s Sunday Click,” Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok said “I acknowledge that China failed and we also failed (in persuading North Korea).” He added “If North Korea fired missile to intimidate the US, the US failed miserably as well,” implying the US failed because the regime fired the missiles out of frustration that the US flatly rejected North Korea’s invitation of Christopher Hill early last month to Pyongyang.

- Police arrested 58 union leaders who occupied the main office of Posco and led illegal strikes for 8 days. Another 79 union workers were indicted without detention.

- Gen. Burwell B. Bell, commander of US Forces Korea, said it would be preferable for Combined Forces Command to put in place until Korea could build its own independent commands.

2. Maekyung

- Adult PC rooms and adult gambling places are sprawling out in the city as the combined number of the two amounts to 3,800, more that the number of convenient store in Seoul which stands at 2670. According to a research, 42.7 per cent of frequenters of these places have less than W2 m in monthly household earning, indicating low-income family might suffer from illegal gambling.

- Domestic pharmaceutical companies are at the crossroads. They still lack competitiveness and possible Korea-US FTA negotiation further aggravates its competitiveness. Worse yet, it has recently been found out that efficacy of some of generics was manipulated, which greatly tarnished reliability and image of those involved companies.