- Financial Supervisory Commission says it will cooperate in the investigation into the Samsung slush funds case if necessary. The special prosecutor team sent an official request for the financial watchdog’s help on the matter, saying it was suspected some bank accounts were opened in Samsung Securities under the false names for amassing secret money.

- Kang Man-soo, finance minister appointee, backed down from the six-percent-economic-growth-rate for this year, conceding the government would “do its best to achieve a 6 per cent growth rate, rather than sticking to the position.” The remark came after a few downward readjustments from an ambitious 7 per cent growth rate. He attributed the downward adjustment mainly to the difficult world economic conditions. But he maintained the government would not pursue artificial pump-priming measures.

- LG Electronics is to exchange free of charge its problematic battery for the Z-series notebook which has recently invoked two incidents. “We are investigating into the reason for the incident,’ the company said.

- All sixteen ‘English Towns’ nationwide, run by either the local governments or the education ministry, are reported in the red, despite more than 1 M visitors by the end of last year. Kyungki-do has recently decided to hand the English towns in Yangpyong and Ansan to a private hand due to snowballing budget deficits. However eleven more such towns nationwide are due to open by next year.