Seoul's Today Headlines_Feb 20

- Amid big companies increasing hiring of awardees from ‘industrial skills contests,’ many industrial high school students are working hard to polish their skills to join various contests. Samsung Electronics last year struck a deal with the labor ministry to employ all awardees from the national industrial skills contest.

- Despite government’s encouragement to use credit card, the government itself does not accept card payment for various taxes. Credit card payment is only possible for only 10 among about 30 taxes.

- The ruling and opposition parties agreed to revive the interest ceiling law which went abolished in 1998, in order to stop outrageous interest rates by some usurious moneylenders.

- A survey by the paper shows the presidents of the four big banks including KB, Shinhan, Woori, and Hana expect the property market to stabilize within this year.

- Hyundai Motor is to build a plant in Brazil, the first such move made by a local carmaker, to make inroads into the South American market.

- The Government has introduced property cooling measures 12 times since February 2003 but the overall housing prices studied by Kookmin Bank shows prices has gone up 20.8% nationwide during the period.

- Three main determinants of the next president of the Federation of Korean will be ‘Kyunggi High School alumni,’ ‘Lee Kun-hee’s opinion,’ and ‘this year’s presidential election.’
- The Fair Trade Commission is to launch an investigation, possibly within next month, into unfair business practices of big internet portal sites using their market controlling positions.

- National Intelligence Service is believed to have reported to the National Assembly that it concluded the leaked document regarding the Korea-US FTA negotiations belongs to Rep. Choi Jae-chun, who has recently left the Uri Party.

- The International Red Cross revealed that about 3,000 North Koreans have caught the measles since last November and four died of the disease.