other important headlines_Nov 13

- The Seoul City Government’s more-than-ten-billion unmanned parking lot project which was introduced six years ago has not been used properly. Most of the machine on the street, made in the US, is either broken or out of power, and people don’t know how to use it.

- A Japanese intelligence source said yesterday the North Korean ship detained by the Indian maritime police on the way to Iran might have tried to import enriched uranium from Iran. He said “I talked to the Indian government and I assume that North Korea’s sending empty ship to the country may be for importing enriched uranium which Iran is believed to have succeeded in producing.”

- The top 100 house owners have on average 155 houses and the number of household owning two houses amounts to 720,000, according to Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Shim Sang-jung. The top 37 people have more than 100 houses.

- According to Korea Consumer Protection, SK Telecom has been receiving the biggest consumer complaints with 4012 cases in the year to June, followed by KTF 2,849, Hanaro Telecom with 2,416 and LG Telecom with 2,092, showing that telecom operators are registered with the most frequent consumer complaints. Automobile companies have also received lots of complaints with Hyundai Motor standing at 12th and Kia at 15th.

- Among 36 first-level officials at Cheong Wa Dae, 17 officials or 47 % turn out to live in a so-called ‘bubble seven area,’ where Cheong Wa Dae designated house prices are most likely to be inflated. On internet, netizens are spreading a document named “the address of Cheong Wa Dae officials who live in ‘bubble seven,’ which contains the information of their name, the exact address, pyong, and price.

- The more educated, the bigger the yearly salary gap between male and female, according to the research by a job portal site of Career. For high school graduators, the gap is on average 2.3m, and for two-year job college graduators, 2.0m, but female university graduators receive on average 4.1m less than their male counterparts do. In the case of females who graduate from graduate schools, they receive 4.96 m less than their male counterparts.

- GNP Rep. Ahn Myung-ok, a member of health and welfare committee, said some of international marriage brokers do not show any respect for human rights of the foreign women who want to marry a Korean guy and do the excessive commercialization of such women. On the websites of such companies, provocative signs such as “never run away” or “bride-quality guaranteed,” are shown. In some advertisement, they divide bride-to-be women into groups according the education level and price them accordingly; W8.8m for under high-school graduator, W9.8m for more than two-year job college education, W15m for female from urban middle-class who can speak English.

- UN secretary-general designate Ban Ki-moon said in an interview with YTN that he would like to visit North Korea to solve the nuclear problems next year. One of the biggest regrets and the thing he felt sorry for the Korean people was that he, as foreign minister, couldn’t solve the nuclear problems, he added.