South Korea

In many ways, South Korea is on an upswing. Gross domestic product has jumped 8 percent this year. Local politics are fairly stable. And stock prices have rallied more than 25 percent since a slump early in the year caused in part by concern about North Korea's nuclear capability.So why are the closed-end country funds that buy Korean stocks suffering, with some now trading in New York for less than they are worth?Consider the pending liberalization of local securities laws. The changes could prove a boon to U.S. investors, particularly the three newest Korea funds, which operate at a disadvantage to the fourth, the 10-year-old Korea Fund.

Over the past three days, Jeong H. Kim has come to learn a simple truth: When one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world pays $1 billion for your start-up firm, everyone takes notice.On Monday, Kim, the 37-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Yurie Systems Inc., sold the Landover-based telecommunications equipment company he founded to Lucent Technologies Inc. Lucent paid a premium for the rapidly rising Yurie, pushing the value of Kim's share to more than $500 million.

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea further delayed a decision yesterday on where in Iraq to dispatch more than 3,000 troops, waiting for formal approval from local Iraqi leaders, news reports said. A government plan to send more than 3,000 troops to Iraq was approved by South Korea's parliament in February on condition that the deployment focus on rehabilitation in the war-torn country. But deteriorating security in Iraq forced the government to drop an initial plan to send the troops to the northern town of Kirkuk as early as April, switching to the Kurdish-controlled northern towns of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah.

UNRAVELING IN SOUTH KOREA is scandal on a grand scale -- a Watergate involving presidential criminality and financial corruption of S&L proportions. Former President Roh Tae Woo is in jail, facing indictment for operating a $650 million slush fund fed by bribes he took from industrial magnates. He might soon be joined by some of the CEOs deeply involved in a government-business network that, through fair means or foul, has propelled South Korea into eleventh ranking among the world's economies.

PRESIDENT KIM YOUNG SAM of South Korea has consolidated enough legitimacy to put on trial an entire era of military rule, spanning the years from 1979 to 1993. The effort tears at South Korea's fabric of prosperity and confidence, yet confirms it as well.Last July, prosecutors refused to press charges against the former presidents Chun Doo Hwan (1981-8) and Roh Tae Woo (1988-93), citing the need for national unity as North Korea remains a mystery and menace. But in late November, President Kim instructed the ruling Liberal Democratic parliamentarians to enact a law making the two presidents liable for crimes dating to 1979, and prosecutors named new investigators.

SEOUL, South Korea - In the highest-level meeting between North and South Korea in almost a year, the North agreed yesterday to discuss economic cooperation with the South and to allow another round of reunions of families divided by the Korean War, but it balked at setting a date for key military talks that would allow construction of road and rail links across the highly militarized border. The talks, part of a flurry of diplomacy with the United States, Japan and South Korea, come after the impoverished communist nation has come under pressure from all sides.

CONCERTED EFFORTS by the U.S, Japan and South Korea this week to provide North Korea with $15 million in desperately needed food aid can be justified on security as well as humanitarian grounds. All three nations have reason to fear that a collapse of the Pyongyang regime could be accompanied by a military strike southward that would cause staggering casualties and physical damage. It might bring a peace of reunification in its aftermath, but one far more burdensome than that seen in Germany.

After the final whistle blew in the Germany-South Korea World Cup soccer match yesterday morning, it was hard to tell if the bleary eyes were from exhaustion or despair. As they had for the past several weeks, fans gathered during overnight hours in the Lotte Plaza market off U.S. 40 in Ellicott City to watch South Korea's improbable run on live television, drawn by the market crowds, Korean cable and the hope that their team could win the tournament. But their hopes for the cup ended with yesterday's loss, meaning that fans can sleep more, but dream less.

SEOUL, South Korea - Roh Moo-hyun, a liberal lawyer who campaigned urging continued engagement with North Korea and greater autonomy from the United States, narrowly won the South Korean presidential election yesterday after a tumultuous campaign. The victory of Roh, the candidate of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, sets South Korea and the United States on the most divergent diplomatic paths they have followed in a half-century of close military and economic alliance. With about 86 percent of the votes counted, Roh held a lead of 48.9 percent to 46.6 percent over Lee Hoi-chang, a staunchly conservative ex-supreme court justice who lost even more narrowly to the departing President Kim Dae Jung five years ago. The Bush administration has spent the past three months pressing traditional friends such as Japan and newer ones, such as Russia and China, to increase pressure on North Korea to force that country to abandon its nuclear weapons program and to end its missile sales in the Middle East and elsewhere.

SEOUL, South Korea - The turbulent, year-old presidency of South Korea's Roh Moo Hyun was hit with its most serious political challenge to date yesterday when the two main opposition parties initiated impeachment proceedings in Parliament. The motion to impeach the president, unprecedented in South Korea, follows a series of corruption scandals and Roh's messy divorce from his political party. In the incident that prompted the impeachment proceedings, opponents complained that the plainspoken labor lawyer was trying to manipulate parliamentary elections scheduled for next month.