2013 08 16 1800 News

early edition 1800 this is the transcript for arirang news that aired on 16 aug 2013- 1800 kst. title headlines tonight on early edition at six. amid signs that icy inter-korean relations are thawing a bit south korea proposes that reunions for families separated by the korean war take place as early as september 19th . but how will north korea respond the former chiefs of the national intelligence service and the seoul metropolitan police are grilled at the national assembly over their alleged involvement in a scandal surrounding last year's presidential election. but the two refuse to testify under oath. more than 6-hundred pro-morsy activists were killed by security forces in egypt. in response supporters and members of mor sy's muslim brotherhood set fire to a government building near cairo. for these and more stay with us. title early edition at 18 title title welcome to early edition at six... i'm han da-eun filling in for moon conn-young. and i'm daniel choy. possibly more cause for celebrations on thanksgiving day for separated families in both koreas . title s. korea proposes talks on resuming family reunions next week south korea has proposed fresh talks with the north next week on resuming reunions for families separated by the korean war. seoul's unification ministry wants to hold the reunions around the korean thanksgiving holiday next month but said the government would not be tied down to any deadlines... as it is more important to make sure the reunion s are well-prepared. hwang sung-hee starts us off. seoul's unification ministry said friday that it has offered to meet with the north for red cross talks next friday on the south korean side of the tr uce village of panmunjom to discuss a range of humanitarian issues including the resumption of family reunions. the proposal comes after south korean president park geun-hye expressed hopes on thursday that reunions for the divided families could happen sometime around the korean thanksgiving holiday which falls on september 19th this year. millions of koreans were left separated during the korean war in the 1950s and the unification ministry says that more than 80 percent of the 73-thousand registered separated family members in the south are over the age of 70 . the last round of reunions took place in 2010 . meanwhile the unification ministry said it will begin discussions with the north next week on forming a joint committee that will manage their jointly-run gaeseong industrial complex. the draft proposal which has already been written and is currently under review will be delivered to the north through the inter -korean hotline. the ministry said that a team of 30 maintenance men will visit the factory zone on saturday to inspect the conditions of the facilities there. once they are done with their inspections gaeseong resident companies will be allowed into the border town to individually check their factories. hwang sung-hee arirang news. title gaeseong breakthrough may play positive role in resuming six-party nuclear talks experts seoul and pyongyang's recent agreement to reopen their joint gaeseong factory zone is also raising hopes for a possible resumption of the six-party nuclear talks which have been stalled for nearly five years. ji myung-kil reports. experts predict that with the recent progress in inter-korean talks ... north korea may show willingness to come back to the negoti ating table to discuss achieving denuclear ization on the korean peninsula. such positive signs they say may create an environment in which involved countries are able to reopen the stalled six-party talks . promoting further talks between south and north korea will likely help open communication channels between north korea and the u.s. china which has been the chair to six-party talks may undergo negotiations behind doors to bring north korea back to the table. experts speculate china may make this move when the annual ulchi freedom guardian military exercise between south korea and the u.s. ends on august 30th. the multilateral nuclear talks were created after north korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 2003. however the five coutries aside from north korea show clear differences with pyongyang on how to resolve its nuclear issues and the success of the six-party talks will hinge upon whether the communist state will be willing to scrap its nuclear programs. north korea has been insisting on opening nuclear arms reduction talks under the premise that the communist state be recognized as a nuclear power. meanwhile south korea and the u.s. have been demanding that the north suspend its uranium enrichment program declare a moratorium on nuclear and missile testing and allow nuclear inspectors back into the reclusive state. ji myung-kil arirang news. title lawmakers question former nis chief ex-seoul police chief at the national assembly lawmakers question ed two former public officials accused of abusing their authority to meddle in last year's presidential election. former spy agency director won sei-hoon and former seoul police chief kim yong-pan denied the charges against them. kim yeon-ji reports. former national intelligence service director won sei-hoon and former seoul metropolitan police chief kim yong-pan took the witness stand friday. the two men refused to testify under oath as witnesses at the hearing saying that doing so could negatively influence their trial s. former spy agency chief won was indicted for ordering a smear campaign online to sway public opinion in favor of then-ruling party presidential candidate park geun-hye before the december election. in his testimony the former spy agency director said he did not violate election law in any way... and denied that he ordered agents to post political comments online before the election. he said... the nis under his rule was most concerned about north korea's cyber threat . as nis chief i focused on monitoring and keeping an eye on the pro-north korea faction in south korea because north korea's cyber attacks against seoul began to strengthen in 2009. former seoul police chief kim who is awaiting trial on charges of whitewashing a police probe into the nis scandal before the election was adamant about his innocence. i deny the prosecutors' written statement in its entirety. specifically kim is accused of releasing the results of an internal police investigation that concluded no political comments posted by an nis agent were found. prosecutors say kim knew at the time that was false. the results were released at 11 p.m. on december 16th... just as the final televised debate between presidential candidates was ending ... only three days before the presidential election. ruling party lawmakers say that the two witness es did not break any election laws while opposition lawmakers believe won and kim used their authority to influence the outcome of the presidential election in favor of the ruling party. the parliamentary committee will have two additional sessions to question additional witnesses next week. kim yeon-ji arirang news. title prosecutors begin searching national archives of korea in search for missing summit transcript prosecutors began searching the national archives of korea... as part of an investigation into the missing transcript of the 2007 inter- korean summit. the prosecutors will first search the offline library ... which consists of books and cds and a system called pams... that permanent ly stores presidential documents. should the prosecutors fail to find the summit transcript they will redirect their investigation into whether the former roh moon-hyun... or lee myung-bak administration misplaced the transcript. the transcript has become a political hot potato after the ruling party claimed... former president roh agreed in 2007 to give up the de facto maritime border during summit talks with then-north korean leader kim jong-il . title s. korea u.s. to hold new round talks next week on defense cost-sharing south korea and the united states are scheduled to hold a third round of military negotiation s next thursday and friday in seoul. the two sides will attempt to narrow their differences over how to divide the cost of u.s. troops stationed in the south. seoul and washington were far apart in their last round of talks in july. south korea currently picks up 40 percent of the bill for the nearly 29-thousand u.s. troops stationed here. but the u.s. wants seoul to pay a larger portion ... reportedly up to half the total expenses . the agreement that lays out south korea's financial obligations for u.s. forces korea ... expires at the end of this year. title korea's producer prices fall for 10th straight month in july korea's producer prices fell for the 10th straight month in july... another sign of weak inflation. the bank of korea said friday... that last month's producer prices dropped point-9 percent from the same period a year earlier. the central bank said a dramatic 10 percent drop in metal products led the overall contraction in producer prices last month. korea's consumer prices meanwhile... remain ed in the one-percent range for the ninth straight month in july... running far below the central bank's two-and-a-half to three -and-a-half percent target band. title in the spotlight bridge title naver under fire for abusing its dominant market position president park geun-hye continues her push to promote fair competition as part of her so-called economic democratization. korea's number one internet company naver has been coming under fire for allegedly a busing its power. yoo li-an reports. this service called memo this allows users to stick a memo on any website . take for instance this youtube page that shows an ad for apple's iphone a user can post a video of samsung's galaxy ad as a memo right next to it.. so when other memo this users visit the page... they can directly compare the two. the startup company that developed this service says they got off to a good start in 2009 after acquiring a number of patents abroad . but naver korea's major portal website shut down the service on its website back in 2011 ... saying only that it disrupted naver's business model. there's no point in coming up with an innovative service if there's no way to reach the consumer s. we've been stripped of our chance to compete fairly. naver can have this effect on companies... because of its dominance over the web in korea . ever since naver operator nhn was established back in 1999 the company has grown at an exponential speed... with annual profits spiking to over two billion u.s. dollars last year. naver now holds over 70 percent of the search engine marketshare in the country. . but lately the company has become the center of public scrutiny... after being accused of abusing its power. under president park geun-hye's drive to foster a fairer business environment for smaller businesses the fair trade commission launched an investigation into naver for anti-competitive practices... and the ruling saenuri party is to introduce a regulation law for naver next month. nhn declined repeated requests for an interview ... only reiterating what ceo kim sang-hun said earlier this week. he vowed to continue to work closely with related government official s.. but also said he hopes the government does not rush to create regulations that could limit the company from competing globally . yoo li-an arirang news. title continuing on with the topic... google holds the title as the world's predominant search engine... with a global market share of nearly 70 percent. but a majority of koreans when given the opportunity seem to prefer using homegrown naver.com for their search needs. for an in-depth discussion on naver's dominance in the korean market and what it means... we're joined by professor yi sang-seung... of department of economics at seoul national university. good to have you with us. so clearly naver is the favorite among internet users in korea. but could we also say that there's something unique about the korean market naver has been accused of having a monopoly and engaging in illegal business practice s. what are some of the criticisms against naver the government is looking into adopting a so-called naver regulation law... to curb the expanding company. how does an online monopoly differ from one that exists offline what's the government trying to achieve with the legislation and what will change on the naver site could this law possibly give more leeway for google to expand its marketshare in korea ... while maybe holding naver back from becoming a global company thank you dr. for sharing your insights with us today. title morsy supporters call for renewed prote sts more than 600 killed in egypt violence supporters of ousted president mohamed mor sy called for renewed protests on friday... a warning of more violence to come in egypt . the country already saw more than 6-hundred killed and some 4-thousand injured earlier this week. kim ji-yeon has the latest. the eyes of the international community are focused on egypt after government forces stormed civilian camp s with armored bulldozers. in the latest violence thursday supporters and members of morsy's muslim brotherhood set fire to a government building near ca iro...while funerals were being held by families and friends of the fallen. this comes a day after at least 6-hundred -38 people were killed as security forces were given the green light to use live ammunition to break up the camps of pro-morsy activist s. the protesters had been staging sit-ins for weeks demanding the reinstatement of over thrown president mohamed morsy...who was ou sted by the army last month. a friend of my brother passed away and i came to visit him and to help him in as far as legal paper work for processing the body. he was told that they can't release the body unless he signs that he died of natural of causes and of course he is unwilling to do that because he was shot in the chest yesterday . u.s. president barack obama condemned the latest violence in egypt and canceled a joint military exercise that was to be held between the two countries. the u.s. state department also says it will review aid to egypt in all forms which includes the 1-point-3 billion u.s. dollars worth of aid washington sends to egypt every year. we've sustained our commitment to egypt and its people. but while we want to sustain our relationship with egypt our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back. morsy egypt's first democratically elected president has been held in detention since his ousting on july 3rd. kim ji-yeon arirang news. title u.s. unemployment drops inflation data supports tapering of fed bond-buying program positive economic data out of the united states is raising speculation that the federal reserve may be one step closer to tapering off its massive bond-buying program. the u.s. labor department says first-time applications for state unemployment benefits dropped 15-thousand to 320-thousand last month the lowest level since october 2007. the jobless rate now stands at a four-and -a-half year low of 7-point-4 percent. the department's consumer price index a key indicator of inflation also advanced 2 percent on-year in july. the fed has said it plans to taper off its monetary stimulus program when the job market improves and inflation picks up steam. title korean green technologies at center of washington conference korea boasts a diverse set of homegrown energy -efficient technologies... and the world is taking note. to increase its share of the spotlight... and to give a boost to collaborative efforts worldwide... a korean institute hosted an energy conference in washington earlier this month. our park ji-won reports. state-of-the-art carbon capture storage technology... innovative energy production using a renewable energy resource map and concentrated solar power ... and a power storage system that uses flow -electrode deionization technology. these were just some of the korea-developed energy-efficient technologies that took center stage at a seminar in washington earlier this month. the korea institute of energy research organized the clean energy conference... with the hopes of strengthening international collaboration in green energy field... and building a bridge between korea's energy enterprises and the global market. some 70 people including u.s. government official s and energy experts... participated in the event. korea's clean energy policy is going in the right direction. there's a national goal plus feed-in turfs that are helping certain technologies so in terms of whether korea's moving forward in the right direction it certainly is and i think there's a lot of opportunity for the u.s. to collaborate and be active in energy goal. " korea aims to have renewable energy provide for about 10 percent of the country's energy needs by 2030... and organizers of the conference say... korea's achievements in the green energy field have much to offer the global market. park ji-won arirang news. title stocks title weather title weather title title heat wave continues under mostly sunny skies let's now get a check on the weather with our hanna kim. hanna welcome back to the studio thanks daniel. it's good to be back and i'm glad it's friday. but i'm sure many people took the day off today as well making it a four-day weekend for some lucky individual s. right because of the work day sandwiched in between a national holiday and the weekend . but hanna please do tell us that this heat will ease up a bit i'm sorry daeun but the heat wave will continue over the weekend as well. we've had similar conditions all week a lot of sunshine and hot temperatures due to a high pressure front from the north pacific. tomorrow will be no different although there may be more clouds in the morning. if we take a closer look at the forecast... temperatures will also be similar... seoul will start off the morning at 26 and reach 34 in the afternoon. meanwhile temperature s in the south will soar close to the 40s as daegu and gwangju peak at 37 and 35 degrees respectively. down on jeju you'll have partly cloudy skies in the daytime. daejeon will hit 34 while dokdo and mount geumgang jump to 33. well that's all i have for you today. i'm hanna kim. have a wonderful evening title that's all from us for this hour. thank you for watching. this has been daniel choi. and i'm han da-eun thanks as always for being here with us. title 141618 ending title