Local paper headlines_September 22

1. Chosun Ilbo

- Jung Sang-myung, Prosecutor General, expressed regret over the remark made by Lee Young-hoon, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Lee’s remark is interpreted by many prosecutors and lawyers as being groundlessly denouncing their role. The bar association openly demands that Lee step down.

- The IMF said in its report of ‘2006 Asian Pacific Regional Outlook’ that the reason behind Korea’s relatively weak economic performance was due to unstable job market, and the Korean economy lost capability to create permanent salaried employment.

- Song Min-soon, the President’s chief secretary for national security, is increasingly gaining more power in matters of security and diplomacy than Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok. Song is the mastermind behind the common extensive measure in dealing with North Korea which has been mutually adopted by the leaders of Korea and the US. Meanwhile the work of Lee Jong-seok is getting scaled down to mainly North Korean issues.

- Japanese Asahi TV obtained a footage in which a North Korean female worker is executed by a firing squad. The woman is reported to have been arrested after she stole 10kg of corn from her neighbor and during the process killed the daughter of the neighbor.

- Financial Supervisory Service found out that some of management of KE Card manipulated stock price of the company during the sell-out process of the card company to the KEB.

2. Maeil Business Daily

- Japanese Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Shotaro Yachi said “the leader of Liberal Democratic Party Shinzo Abe considers the relations between Japan and Korea as very important and the summit meeting between the two countries should be held as soon as possible.”

- The National Statistical Office said the number of people who went to overseas for a long term has increased 14 per cent to 672,000 from a year earlier and among them young people aged from 20-39 make up 55.7 per cent. And 100,000 young people went to foreign countries to study last year.

-Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo returned home yesterday from his five-day business trip to India. He said, “I will aggressively look for another markets as well,” showing his firm determination for ‘global management.’