Today's headlines_Jan. 11

- Though the labor reform bill passed at the end of last year and takes effective in six months, companies haven’t prepared for changes since the guidelines of the changed law haven’t been issued yet. Korea Employers Federation projected a W42.6 tr additional expenses to be required for big companies in dealing with raising wages for non-regular workers.

- Labor Minister Lee Sang-su’s remark yesterday that the ministry should consider changing non-regular status of KTX female crews into regular one is causing lots of controversy. KTX female crews have been on strike more than a year demanding to be directly hired by Korea Railroad.

- Civic pension fund reforms aimed at lowering returns in line with the public pension fund were revealed yesterday.

- The BOK froze its call rate at 4.5% as expected.

- The police said it caught 893 cases of illegal prostitution for two weeks from December 22 2006 to January 4 2007, double the number of 433 during two weeks from December 27 2005 to January 9 2006.

- The number of people who got hired last year totaled 23.15 m, 1.3 per cent up or 295,000 from 2005, which was far less-than-expected. At early 2005, the target number for job creation was 400,000. 236,000 job-seekers aged over 50 found a work but for young people in their 20s, the number of jobs dwindled by 146,000.

- Despite the 'Hwang Woo-seok’ scandal, Korea’s biological engineering researchers produce more research results and had their journals issued in international academic magazines. BRIC, an association of young Korean scientists, said 333 Korean journals have been on prominent scientific journals, 5 per cent increase from a year ago. Cell magazine, a very acclaimed science biweekly magazine, issued 17 journals from Korean researchers, up by 7 from 2005. On Nature Medicine, 8 journals appeared in 2006 (in 2005, there was only one)

- The Ministry of Budget and Planning predicts the national referendum on constitutional reform to change president’ service-term to cost W90-100bn. Ban Jang-sik of the Fiscal Management Office said “the National Election Commission predicts it will cost about W90-100bn … but the necessary budget will change according to additional expenses.”