other important headlines_Oct 20

- Applicants for the so-called ‘god-given jobs’ of state-run banks and government financial institutes due to job security and long working years are busy with study and interview preparation as most of the companies are now hiring new employees. For the Financial Supervisory Service with 40 openings this year, 3,734 people have applied for the job, making the competition rate of 75 to 1. Bank of Korea with the same number of opening, 2,402 people have applied. Korea Exchange has seen the fieriest competition with 100 to 1.

- It is reported that China’s tour service to North Korean has been suspended by Pyongyang due to ‘political reasons.’ A Chinese daily newspaper reported yesterday China’s major tour companies didn’t have North Korea tour programs, but some small ones have been secretly run such programs. Besides the ‘political reasons,’ devastation by flood is assumed to be another reason for the halt.

- President Ron Moo-hyun is reported to have decided to go back to his hometown after resignation. He has bought 8,000 pyong of land and house construction on the site is about to start. The land price is around W150,000 per pyong and the cost for construction will be billed by the president himself.

- Organized crime gangs are most likely seen in Jellabuk-do. According to Kang Chang-il of Uri party revealed that the number of crime organization in the country is 213 with 5,075 members, and 10.3 gangs to every 100,000 people. But in Jellabuk-do, there are 25.3 gangs to every 100,000 people, the highest in the nation.

- One government official is reported to have said yesterday “Korea can make a nuclear weapons within three months,” but declined to offer any ground for the argument. Defense and atomic experts also say “nuclear development technology is not considered high-tech, so it is believed that about 30 countries around the globe have a capability to produce atomic weapons.”

- According to the research by the paper, companies’ intern programs, only except for a few, are not what they claims to be. Interns suffer from low payment and heavy workloads, and their work is usually doing chores such as copying, sending fax, and in some cases even cleaning. Complaints from interns are all over in a bulletin board at job portal sites. Based on date from the Ministry of Labor, 68 per cent of interns among 11,461 people who joined in government’s intern project in 2004, got hired as a regular worker, but it turned out that three quarters quitted the position within two years.

- Ri Chan-bok, the head of North Korea side of Panmunjeom, warned if the US didn’t stop pressing North Korea, a war would be inevitable. In an interview with ABC, he said US President Bush wanted the North to give in to but the North couldn’t do so.