President Lee Jae Myung said Tuesday the police will soon wield the greatest power among government agencies, calling for the formation of a government body to be in charge of police reform. The president made the remarks at a Cabinet meeting following the recent passage of a revision to the Criminal Procedure Act, which, when enacted, will completely strip the prosecution of all investigative authority, leaving such power solely to the police.
Seoul shares trimmed earlier losses late Tuesday morning on retail buying as investors awaited major corporate earnings results, including those from U.S. chip giant Nvidia, due this week. After opening 2.4 percent lower, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) pared losses, trading 117.57 points, or 1.76 percent, lower at 6,579.39 as of 11:20 a.m.
Korea's struggle for independence from the Japanese colonial rule was a "lofty cry" for universal values, such as peace and humanitarianism, not merely a nationalist movement, a South Korean historian said. Park Hwan, a scholar who has spent more than four decades researching Korea's independence movement during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule, said the significance of the movement is often viewed too narrowly through a domestic lens.
SK hynix Inc. workers have rejected a tentative wage deal reached after two months of negotiations, industry sources said Tuesday. In the union, 7,535 members, or 50.08 percent, voted against the tentative agreement in an electronic ballot that closed at 9 a.m. Tuesday, they said. The voter turnout was 93.8 percent, with 15,045 of the union's 16,083 members participating.
South Korea's tax agency said Tuesday it has launched tax audits of 50 companies on suspicions their owners and family members used corporate-owned luxury homes for private purposes as part of tax evasion schemes. The National Tax Service (NTS) said the audits came after an earlier review found that owners and their family members had privately used 1,097, or 42 percent, of the 2,639 corporate-owned homes surveyed.
The top diplomats of South Korea and the United States have agreed to continue "close" communication and cooperation to address North Korea's nuclear issue and promote peace on the Korean Peninsula during a call, Seoul's foreign ministry said Tuesday. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held phone talks on Monday (Seoul time), amid concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration could focus less on or shift away from the long-elusive goal of Pyongyang's denuclearization, as Trump hopes to reengage with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this year.
