South Korean president-elect Lee Myung-bak is facing a rebellion in his party that could set back his plans for economic reform, with members saying yesterday they might break away because of a dispute over nominees for an April vote.
"Since the party is trying to kick me out, I may have to leave the party," Kim Moo-sung, a senior lawmaker with the conservative Grand National Party (GNP), was quoted as saying by an aide.
With the liberals in shambles after the landslide loss to Lee in the Dec. 19 election, analysts said a united GNP would be able to alter the country's political landscape with a sweeping win in the April 9 parliamentary vote.
Lee's camp wants to set up ethics standards for nominees for the April vote, but that could remove several old guard members who have been convicted of corruption but still kept their seats.
Kim is leading a block of 35 lawmakers upset with the standards and who are thinking of forming a new group with Lee's main GNP rival Park Geun-hye.
Lee has outlined an ambitious set of policy initiatives for when he takes office on Feb. 25 that call for streamlining government and rolling back regulations he feels stifle business. He wants Asia's fourth-largest economy to grow 6 percent per year.
NORTH KOREA
Meanwhile, North and South Korea will cut rail cargo traffic across their densely armed border, an official said yesterday, barely one month after the resumption of what was held up as a milestone in ending their Cold War divide.
The first regular freight train service in more than 50 years started in December but the reclusive North said there was too little cargo to justify a large number of freight cars.
"The number of freight cars which run on the train will be flexible, depending on the amount of cargo," said an official with the South's Unification Ministry.
The reopened 20km route runs between the South and the Kaesong industrial enclave it operates just inside North Korea and where its companies have access to cheap land and labor.
South Korean rail officials said most companies in the industrial park still prefer road transport to and from Kaesong, which is seen as a model of future economic cooperation between the two Koreas.
SPY PLANE
In related news, an unmanned South Korean spy plane crashed yesterday near the border with North Korea during a routine training mission, military authorities said.
The unmanned aerial vehicle slammed into an uninhabited lot near a plant in Pocheon, 50km north of Seoul, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
"An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash," he said, adding that no casualties were reported.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, which are remote-controlled, are vulnerable to bad weather and mechanical defects, he said.
The spokesman declined to elaborate but Yonhap news agency said the crash involved an Israeli-made craft called Searcher.
North Korea frequently complains that South Korea and the US operate spy flights over its territory.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS