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News

• The Korean summit's big mystery -- where is Kim's wife?

  SEOUL (AFP) - Paging Mrs. Kim Jong-Il. For all the light that this week's landmark inter-Korean summit may shed on Pyongyang a

  nd Kim's secretive regime, one enduring mystery remains: where is the wife of the Dear Leader?

  Kim, 65, has been reported to have lived with four women, none of whom has ever shown up in public -- raising intense speculation about the succession in the world's only communist dynasty.

  President Roh Moo-Hyun is paying the second visit by a South Korean leader to Pyongyang, but while Kim made a surprise appearance Tuesday to greet Roh on arrival, South Korean First Lady Kwon Yang-suk had no counterpart, depriving eager media of a first glimpse of Kim's wife.

  Kwon instead toured reading and lecture rooms in Pyongyang's imposing Grand People's Study House and "had a talk with women from all walks of life in the North," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

  Kim has appeared on his own at all diplomatic occasions, including at the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, even though then-South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung also brought his wife.

  "It's a bit odd in terms of international diplomacy but North Korea always does its own thing," said Michael Breen, the author of the biography, "Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader."

  "The private lives of their leaders are kept very private. We probably know more about Kim Jong-Il than North Koreans do," he said.

  South Korean media last year reported that Kim had taken a new wife: Kim Ok, a musician turned secretary.

  Kim is said to have banned public talk about succession, despite frequent reports overseas that he suffers health problems from years of heavy drinking, smoking and overeating.

  But he is known to have three sons: Jong-Nam, 36, Jong-Chul, who is around 26, and Jong-Woon, believed to be 23.

  By tradition, the first in line for succession would be the eldest son: Jong-Nam, whose mother Sung Hae-Rim was an actress who reportedly died of an unspecified disease at a Moscow hospital in 2002.

  But Jong-Nam embarrassed his father when he was arrested on a fake passport and deported in 2001 in Japan, where he apparently wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

  Jong-Nam has since spent his time overseas, living a plush life in Macau, the gambling haven in southern China.

  But South Korea's best-selling Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported in August that Jong-Nam was back in the power race and had taken a key job in the North Korean communist party.

  Jong-Nam's two half-brothers, also seen as potential successors, were born to Ko Yong-Hui, a former dancer who died of lung cancer in 2004.

  Kim Jong-Il inherited power from his father, Kim Il-Sung, who founded the North in 1948 and died in 1994 -- creating the world's first communist dynasty.

  ...(more) - 10 3 2007 1:43PM

• LG Electronics investing heavily in smartphones

  WASHINGTON (Reuters) – LG Electronics Inc is investing heavily in developing its smartphone business as it faces increasi

  ng global competition, the chief executive of the South Korean company said on Tuesday.

  LG CEO Yong Nam told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that his company no longer sees Nokia Corp and Sony Ericsson as its main competition.

  Instead, it now views the competition as Apple Inc, maker of the popular iPhone; Canada's Research In Motion Ltd, which makes the BlackBerry handsets; and Palm Inc, he said.

  He declined to provide estimates of LG's smartphone sales for 2010.

  But Nam, speaking in English without a translator, told the audience that "we are investing heavily" at the moment in smartphones. "We're not yet there but we'll get there."

  In February, Microsoft Corp signed a deal with LG Electronics, under which the Korean company will use Windows software in most of its smartphones.

  LG is the world's third-largest cellphone maker, but it is not among top vendors of smartphones.

  The smartphone market has been one of the rare bright spots of the shrinking cellphone market this year, with volumes rising 4 percent from a year ago in the third quarter, according to research firm Canalys.

  Nam said there is "fierce" global competition in the electronic products business and the company has been investing in training employees and hiring during the global economic downturn. He said about two-thirds of the company's employees work outside Korea.

  He said he is keen on increasing the number of non-Korean managers throughout LG's operations and wants to make English the standard business language for the corporation.

  "We are progressing," he said.

  When asked several times about how the company is dealing with North Korea, Nam said LG has no direct relationship with North Korea and does not plan to build any factories there.

  However, he said, the company has contingency plans in case the North Korean situation takes a dramatic turn, such as the death of its leader Kim Jong-il, but he did not provide details.

  "I don't need a factory there," he said, adding that LG has plants throughout Asia. "There is too much risk there."

  (Additional reporting by Tarmo Virki in Helsinki)

  (Reporting by John Poirier; editing by Andre Grenon and Tim Dobbyn)

  ...(more) - 11 6 2009 12:07AM