other important headlines_Oct 23

- Samsung mobile phone’s up-market strategy turns out to take off with a 17 per cent increase in sales in the third quarter. The company’s ultra edition has been sold over 3m in the quarter.

- Lee Sung-tae, governor of BoK, said this morning “the growth rate next year will be below this year’s 5 per cent,” and “we will manage a monetary policy with that in mind.” “But the situation is not something to worry much about,” he added.

- Pantech Group, a handset maker, is having a hard time to survive. Park Byung-yeop, vice president of the company, said “there have been two to three very difficult times in my 15 years of work. I will do my utmost to revive the company with a mindset of ‘if I fail, I will just disappear.’” The company has started a rigorous restructuring plan of voluntary retirement.

-According to the research of 998 office workers by a job portal site Job Korea find out the biggest stressful factor is low income compared to workload (50.8%), followed by heavy workload (39.5%), and conflict with boss (25.3 %). 69.3 per cent say the level of stress goes up this year compared to last year and 96.6 per cent say they are under stress from work at the time of answering.

- Korean companies become growingly the target of a hedge fund especially after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. A fund manager, asked not to be named, pointed out “Korean companies are financially very stable but it becomes more difficult for them to guard their management control than in the financial crisis.” Lee Min-seop of Lehman Brothers Seoul office said “global hedge funds are looking into Korean companies like they look at the menu.”

- Life expectancy of North Korea is the lowest in the world expect for a few African countries. According to the UN, National Statistical Office, and Bank of Korea, the life expectancy of the regime is on average 64.5 with 61.7 for man and 67.5 for woman, the lowest in Asia except for that of Iraq (59.5 for man and 62.5 for woman). Korea’s average life expectancy is 78.2.

- Getting a certificate designed for an office worker is a boom among elementary students. Seven out of ten applicants for ITQ (Information Technology Qualification), a national test for Excel, Powerpoint, and Word, are elementary school students mainly because some of high schools give extra points for a certificate holder.