other important headlines_Oct. 12

- The Bank of Korea freezes its call rate at 5% taking into consideration uncertainty in the economy after the nuclear test by North Korea. The market is now interested to know when the bank lowers the rate. Lehman Brothers in it recent report said “given the stable inflation and signs of economic slowdown, the current rate is too high,” suggesting a possibility for a rate lowering.

- Park Byong-won, first vice minister at MOFE, said in his regular briefing “ the ministry sees some short-term impacts of the test on the Korean economy can materialize.” But he assured “any repercussion in the wake of the test is getting disappeared and we think there has been no specific impact on the real economy so far.”

- In an phone interview with a local radio show, Kim Myong-churl, often called as ‘unofficial press secretary for Kim Jong-il,’ said of North Korea’s additional ‘physical response,’ “the North might conduct a bigger nuclear test or hydrogen bomb.” He said a further nuclear test can be bigger in scale.

- Despite a series of government strong measures to stabilize the property market, it is reported that the nation’s land price has been increasing by more than W270000 bn each year since the current government took power.

- The Korean Army turns out that it has been conducting military drills in preparation for a possible nuclear war on the Korean peninsula since February 2005 when North Korea declared it became a nuclear power.

- Kim Jong-il again repeats his old habit of disappearing after a world-shocking stunt. His disappearance has been believed that he feels insecure about the situation surrounding his regime. North Korea media is also very quite compared to the responses by the stunned outside world. The North might have judged if it repeatedly reported on its test, there would be more loss than gain.

- Japanese Yomiuri Simbun quoted a source from Seoul as saying that a train tunnel near a supposed nuclear test site has been collapsed. The Baek-am tunnel is located 50km northwest from the believed test site of Sangpyong-ri, Kinchaek-si in Hamkyungbuk-do.

- North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun strongly called for the US to scrap its plan to establish an air force command center under the Pacific Command, saying that such a move aimed at preemptive strikes against North Korea.