But the statistics suggest the country has not lost its way due to laziness. If you look at the average annual hours worked by each worker, the Greeks seem very hard-working.

Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that the average Greek worker toils away for 2,017 hours per year which is more than any other European country.

Out of the 34 members of the OECD, that is just two places behind the board leaders, South Korea.

On the other hand, the average German worker - normally thought of as the very epitome of industriousness - only manages 1,408 hours a year. Germany is 33rd out of 34 on the OECD list (or 24th out of 25 looking at the European countries alone).

North Korea has moved into place a long-range rocket for a controversial launch later this month - amid reports it is also planning a nuclear test.

Pyongyang says the Unha-3 rocket, which it plans to launch between 12 and 16 April, will put a satellite into orbit.

But opponents of the move fear it is a disguised long-range missile test.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials say new satellite images suggest the North is preparing to carry out a third nuclear test.

The images show piles of earth and sand at the entrance of a tunnel at the Punggye-ri site, where tests of a nuclear bomb were previously carried out in 2006 and 2009, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.

China and the US have agreed to co-ordinate their response to any “potential provocation” if North Korea goes ahead with a planned rocket launch, the White House says.

North Korea says the long-range rocket will carry a satellite. The US says any launch would violate UN resolutions and be a missile test.

US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao met on the margins of a nuclear summit in South Korea.

The launch is scheduled for April.

Its timing - between 12 and 16 April - is intended to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s late Great Leader Kim Il-sung.

US President Barack Obama has warned North Korea that it will “achieve nothing by threats or by provocations”.

The warning comes as Pyongyang prepares to launch a long-range missile which it says will put a satellite in orbit.

Mr Obama was speaking after talks in Seoul with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, ahead of global summit on nuclear security.

The two leaders said North Korea risked further sanctions and isolation if it did not cancel its launch plans.

Mr Obama said Washington and Seoul were “absolutely united” that “bad behaviour” by North Korea would not be rewarded.

“North Korea knows its obligations and it must take irreversible steps to meet those obligations,” he said.

The launch will contravene an agreement Pyongyang reached last month which would have seen it receive food aid in exchange for a partial freeze on nuclear activities and an end to ballistics tests.

Mr Lee, who spoke alongside Mr Obama, said their countries had “agreed to respond sternly to any provocations and threats by the North and to continually enhance the firm South Korea-US defence readiness”.

But he said the international community stood ready to help North Korea improve the lives of its citizens if it chose a path of peace.

Mr Obama also criticised China, saying its refusal to challenge North Korea on the nuclear issue was not working as a policy.

The long-delayed free trade agreement between South Korea and the US has come into effect, amid protests in Seoul.

The deal, signed five years ago, is the biggest such agreement for the US in 16 years and comes as Seoul is trying to open its markets to other trading partners.

US President Barack Obama spoke with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the phone to mark the launch.

But many South Koreans expressed scepticism about who will benefit.

First signed in 2007, the deal was approved by the US Congress and ratified by the South Korean parliament last year.

Under the deal, tariffs on 80% of products traded between the two countries will disappear immediately, with 95% of trade being covered within five years.

During a 10-minute phone call with Mr Obama, Mr Lee said he believes the agreement is a good model for global free trade, Mr Lee’s office said in a statement.

Mr Obama thanked Mr Lee for South Korea’s “cooperation in getting the deal implemented”, according to a press statement from the White House.

Officials in South Korea hope the agreement with the US will create more than 300,000 jobs over the next 10 years and boost economic growth.

But not everyone is happy with the deal, reports the BBC’s Lucy Williamson, in Seoul. Farmers and small business owners say that they will end up paying the price for a rise in car and electronic exports by South Korea’s big companies.

Activists also say they will continue to protest against the deal, with a number staging a rally in Seoul on Wednesday, calling for the deal to be scrapped.

Aside from the US, South Korea also has a free-trade agreement with the European Union and is in talks with China about negotiating a similar deal.

North Korea has agreed to suspend its nuclear development in return for food aid . The country suffers from chronic food shortages and periodic famine, even though neighbors China and South Korea haven’t had such problems for many years. Why are the North Koreans always going hungry?

Poor growing conditions, fertilizer shortages, and general mismanagement. On the most basic level, the terrain and climate in North Korea aren’t great for farming. The country is mountainous, and the growing seasons are short. (North Korea is at approximately the same latitude as New England, but prevailing air currents make it even colder.) In defiance of nature, North Korea’s isolationist leaders decided in the 1950s that domestic farmers had to fulfill all the country’s food needs. They instituted intensive agricultural practices to maximize yield from their limited arable land, relying on heavy irrigation and copious pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. They scraped by for decades with only occasional famines, but the system totally collapsed in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union cut the supply of subsidized fossil fuels, from which many of the DPRK’s agricultural chemicals are derived .

When crop yields declined, the government tried to plug the gap by increasing acreage. They stripped hillsides of all natural vegetation and tried terraced agriculture. It worked for a little while, but heavy seasonal rains eventually eroded the new farms and filled the nation’s rivers, reservoirs, and irrigation canals with silt. Eventually, the land was no longer able to absorb the water from annual monsoons, and flooding became a chronic problem.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the military to launch a “powerful retaliatory strike” if provoked by the South, the North’s state-run media reported on Sunday.

Mr. Kim’s statement, issued during a visit to military units on the country’s southern coast that faces a string of islands manned by South Korean marines, comes a day before the United States and South Korea are scheduled to begin a massive joint military exercise.

North Korea on Thursday issued a long list of strident demands, including the cancellation of joint American-South Korean military exercises, that it said South Korea should meet before ties could improve between the two Koreas.

By repeating demands that the South has already rejected, North Korea appeared to shift the blame to Seoul one day after an American assistant secretary of state, Kurt M. Campbell, urged it to improve ties with the government in Seoul before expecting a better relationship with Washington.

The Policy Department of the North’s influential National Defense Commission issued the nine demands in the form of a questionnaire.

The Associated Press news agency has formally opened a news bureau in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

It is the first major Western news organisation to do so, although agencies such as China’s Xinhua also have a presence there.

AP president Tom Curley said the bureau would operate under the same standards as other bureaux worldwide.

All media outlets in North Korea are state-run. Most citizens have no access to the internet or foreign media.

Visits by most foreign journalists are severely restricted and, if granted a visa, reporters are accompanied by government minders to carefully selected locations.

AP said that the bureau would have two permanent North Korean reporters and would be supervised by two Seoul-based US journalists who would make regular visits.

The news agency first established a presence in Pyongyang in 2006, when it opened a video bureau.

The US and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic ties. But the president of state-run KCNA news agency, Kim Pyong-ho, said the two sides had “been able to find a way to understand one another and to cooperate closely enough to open an AP bureau”.

The move comes a month after the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. His third son, Kim Jong-un, has been installed as his successor.

President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea vowed on Monday to “deal strongly with any provocations” from the North, predicting a “big change” on the divided Korean Peninsula following the death of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il , and his untested young son’s rise to power.

In his nationally televised New Year’s speech, Mr. Lee did not elaborate on what change he foresaw. But policy-makers and analysts in the region are closely watching whether the designated successor in the North, Kim Jong-un , who is believed to be in his 20s, can consolidate his grip on power or will depend on caretakers and even regents to run the country, and how that might affect the country’s external policies, especially its nuclear weapons programs.

“A big change is expected in the situation on the Korean Peninsula and northeast Asia following the death of Chairman Kim Jong-il,” Mr. Lee said. “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is now entering a new turning point. But there should be a new opportunity amid changes and uncertainty.”

North Korea on Sunday vowed an all-out push to improve the economic life of its impoverished people, criticized South Korea and rallied internal support for Kim Jong-un in a New Year’s statement that revealed the challenges the young new leader faces.

“The whole party, the entire army and all the people should possess a firm conviction that they will become human bulwarks and human shields in defending Kim Jong-un unto death,” said a joint editorial carried by the official newspapers of the party, the Korean People’s Army and the socialist youth league.

Outside analysts scrutinize the North’s annual joint New Year’s editorial, which is roughly the equivalent of the State of the Union speech in the United States. This year’s was Pyongyang’s first since Mr. Kim took the helm of the regime after the Dec. 17 death of his father, the long-time dictator, Kim Jong-il. Analysts looked for clues on where the regime was headed during this sensitive transfer of power to the relatively inexperienced leader.

‘‘Rather than offering a new policy, North Korea is sticking to its old policy line under the pretext of honoring the dying wishes of Kim Jong-il,’’ the Unification Ministry, a South Korean government agency in charge of relations with North Korea, said in a report analyzing the North Korean editorial. ‘‘It focuses on reviving the economy and building solidarity around Kim Jong-un.’’

North Korea’s real focus this year appears to be on building “a Stalinist monolithic dictatorial system” with Kim Jong-un as a new leader, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at Sejong Institute, after studying the editorial. “With an intense workload at home, the regime is unlikely to try to improve ties with South Korea or the external world.”

Mr. Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, took over as North Korea entered a year in which it will mark the centenary of the April 15 birth of Kim Il-sung, the national founder, Mr. Kim’s grandfather and a god-like figure among North Koreans. Before his death, Kim Jong-il had promised that in 2012, North Korea would enter a new era as a “great and prosperous nation.”

Kim Jong-il had sought to justify his family’s dynastic rule by stirring a nationalistic pride with his development of nuclear weapons . But his goal of improving the living standards for people in the country had eluded him, partly because the nuclear weapons and long-range missile tests brought a wave of international sanctions.

North Korea announced on Friday that there would be no change in its policy under its new leader, Kim Jong-un , striking a characteristically hostile posture with a threat to punish President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea for “unforgivable sins.”

The statement from the National Defense Commission, North Korea’s highest decision-making body, marked the country’s first official pronouncement to the outside world since the regime upheld Mr. Kim as its supreme leader on Thursday. His elevation came a day after the state funeral of his father, the long-time dictator Kim Jong-il .

“We declare solemnly and confidently that the foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet group in South Korea, should not expect any change from us,” said the statement. “We will never deal with the traitor group of Lee Myung-bak.”

The commission said it was “entrusted by the party, state and military” to issue the “principled stance.” The statement was carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the regime’s official mouthpiece to the outside world.

It directed its wrath at President Lee, whose government refused to express official condolences to North Korea and allowed only two private delegations to visit Pyongyang during “the great funeral of the nation.” It also criticized South Korea’s move to place its military on heightened vigilance and conservative South Korean activists’ launching of balloons that carried leaflets into the North.

By returning swiftly to its more typical bellicose form after two weeks of mourning, North Korea appeared to demonstrate a confidence that the transition of power in Pyongyang was going smoothly. But the strident rhetoric was also a sign that the regime, as it often has, was using perceived tensions with the outside world to rally its military and people behind the new leader during a sensitive transition.

“By taking a confrontational stance with the external world, North Korea seeks to solidify its internal cohesion as it tries to establish Kim Jong-un as leader,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul. “At the same time, it is pressuring the South to change its policy.”

Kim Jong-un , the new leader of North Korea , met Monday with a private delegation of prominent South Koreans, his first face-to-face encounter with any visitors from the estranged South since assuming the top spot a week ago when his father’s death was announced.

The meeting, scrutinized for any hint of Mr. Kim’s intentions toward South Korea, came as the official North Korean news media announced he had been appointed to the top post of the ruling party, another step in what appeared to be a choreographed sequence of events meant to show that he was assuming all the key positions held by his father, Kim Jong-il , the longtime ruler of the isolated, nuclear-armed North.

South Korea had said it would send no official mourners to Kim Jong-il’s funeral, which angered North Korea as a sign of disrespect. But Kim Jong-un’s meeting with the private delegation of mourners, which included the former first lady of South Korea and a top businesswoman, appeared to be cordial.

Kim Jong-un’s visit to the Kumsusan mausoleum, where the body was lying in state, was his first public appearance since his father’s death on Saturday pushed him to the forefront of the North Korean leadership, whose inner workings and power struggles remain a mystery to the outside world.

Televised images and photographs from North Korea showing streams of weeping soldiers and citizens who filled plazas in Pyongyang to mourn the death of Kim Jong-il. Combined with an outpouring of effusive praise for the son, the official coverage of the mourning seemed to reflect a calculated propaganda message meant to depict a smooth transition.

The son was inheriting not only the mantle of power but also a cult of personality from his father: the media began calling him “another leader sent from the heaven,” a description until now reserved for his father.

The North announced the death on Monday. The outside world, caught off guard, scrambled to figure out where a regime with a food crisis and nuclear weapons would be headed under a young and inexperienced leader, whose command of loyalty among hard-line generals and Workers’ Party officials — all veterans of bloody power games — remains untested.

“Comrade Kim paid his respect with a grief-stricken heart,” the North’s official news agency, K.C.N.A., said in a brief dispatch.

The leadership of North Korea moved swiftly on Wednesday to portray Kim Jong-un , thrust into the international spotlight after the death of his father, as the country’s unchallenged ruler.

With the military’s allegiance a central question to the new leader’s success in consolidating power, North Korean television showed senior military leaders saluting the young Mr. Kim on Wednesday as he received mourners at the Kumsusan mausoleum, where his father lay in state inside a glass case for public viewing. State television repeatedly broadcast images of senior military leaders pledging their fealty to the son.

In South Korea, the National Intelligence Service reported to the National Assembly that shortly after Mr. Kim’s death was announced on Monday, North Korean troops canceled their field training and returned to their barracks on high alert, according to lawmakers who attended the agency’s closed-door briefing. The order to return to the barracks was given under the name of Kim Jong-un and was issued before his father’s death was announced, an indication that he was in control of the North’s 1.2 million-strong military, the South’s national news agency, Yonhap, reported Wednesday , quoting an anonymous government source.

The spy agency also told Parliament’s intelligence committee that security had been tightened in major cities across the country. But it also predicted that the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party, to which Kim Jong-un was appointed as vice chairman last year, will serve as “an interim ruling agency” until he consolidates his power. He has yet to assume the two top jobs his father, Kim Jong-il , held: general secretary of the party and chairman of the National Defense Commission.

Analysts said that the rush to establish the young Kim’s leadership, while the nation was still grieving over his father’s death, was a signal of his vulnerability. “When Kim Il-sung died, talking about Kim Jong-il’s succession while the country was gripped in mourning was considered sacrilegious,” said Choi Jin-wook, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

The first thing Kim Jong-il did when he unveiled his youngest son as heir last year was to give him two powerful military titles: four-star general and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party. But his control over the hard-line People’s Army, whose influence has grown under his father’s songun, or “military-first” policy, remains untested, and some fear he might use tensions to establish his leadership credentials. The military was considered the most resistant to the idea of giving away the North’s nuclear weapons in return for outside aid.

If Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his 20s, is not able to consolidate power, he may become the figurehead of a collective leadership where the military and his uncle would emerge as power brokers. Jang Song-thaek, 65, the brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il, grew influential under Mr. Kim’s rule and was often cited as a possible regent for Kim Jong-un.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the United States and South Korea made cautious overtures to the North. Despite longstanding frustrations over the North’s aggressions and its nuclear weapons program, both appeared focused on avoiding provocations during a delicate transition of power, signaling their readiness to engage with the emerging leadership when it was ready. Still, their expressions of sympathy have been directed to the North Korean people, not the government.

Seoul announced Wednesday that private organizations and individuals would be able to mail or fax condolences over the death of Kim Jong-il , the North Korean leader whose death was announced on Monday, including a foundation named after the late President Roh Moo-hyun, who held a summit meeting with Mr. Kim in 2007. That move will fill a diplomatic gap left open by the South’s decision not to send a government delegation to Mr. Kim’s funeral, as will its decision to allow attendance by surviving family members of major South Korean backers of reconciliation with the North: former President Kim Dae-jung and the former Hyundai chairman, Chung Mong-hun.

The State Department said American officials had met North Korean diplomats at the United Nations in New York to continue discussions opened in Beijing last week over possible food aid for the North, though nothing conclusive was expected immediately.

Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman of the State Department, said: “We’re going to have to keep talking about this. And given the mourning period, frankly, we don’t think we’ll be able to have much more clarity and resolve these issues before the new year.”

China, the North’s neighbor and main ally, has also been reaching out to the North. On Tuesday, President Hu Jintao went to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing to express condolences. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and four other members of the ruling Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee followed suit.

South Korea said Monday that it would resume sending aid to the North through Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, which it had halted more than a year ago amid tensions over the sinking of a South Korean warship.

The Unification Ministry, a government agency in charge of relations with North Korea, said that it would send $5.7 million through Unicef programs for medicines, vaccines and nutritional supplements for malnourished North Korean children.

It was the latest sign of easing tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula, with Pyongyang signaling a possible willingness to resume talks on ending its nuclear weapons program and Seoul easing restrictions on nongovernmental aid shipments and exchanges with the North.

The announcement followed appeals from United Nations relief agencies as well as nongovernmental American aid groups for aid for the most vulnerable of the North Korean population, especially its children.

South Korea also said it would help with building a medical clinic and expanding bus stations inside a joint industrial complex South Korea runs in the North Korean town of Kaesong near the inter-Korean border.

South Korea had given North Korea $29.5 million in aid through Unicef from 1996 until it halted the donations amid tensions created by the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors in the sinking of the warship in March of last year, for which South Korea blamed North Korea.

The South Korean minister for unification, Yu Woo-ik, had recently said that the government would consider sending aid to the North through the United Nations. Last month, it authorized the World Health Organization to resume distribution of about $7 million in Seoul-funded medical aid to North Korea. That money had also been frozen amid inter-Korean tensions.

North Korea’s harvests this fall were expected to increase by 8.5 percent compared with a year ago, but the most vulnerable segments of the population, especially young children, still urgently need international aid, two United Nations agencies said Friday.

The country will need to import 739,000 tons of grain, the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report after an on-site assessment of the North’s food situation. But North Korea, constrained by high global food prices, is planning to import only 325,000 tons.

“The situation remains precarious,” Arif Husain of the World Food Program said in a statement.

The report was the latest in a series of appeals from international relief agencies for food aid for North Korean children.

South Korea and the United States officially deny linking humanitarian aid to political issues. But North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, military tension with South Korea and fears that the North might divert food aid to its military have helped curtail contributions from potential donors.

South Korea on Tuesday authorized the World Health Organization to resume the distribution of medical aid to North Korea, financed by the South Korean government, amid growing international calls for assistance for malnourished North Korean children.

The United States has put preliminary anti-dumping duties on some fridge freezers from South Korea and Mexico.

The US Commerce Department said it would apply duties of up to 37% on bottom-mount refrigerators - those with freezers below the fridge - made by Samsung and LG in those countries.

The US imported $880m (£550m; 622m euros) of refrigerators from South Korea in 2010 and $2.31bn from Mexico.

The duties were prompted by a complaint by US fridge giant Whirlpool.

Whirlpool, which employs 23,000 in the US, said in a statement: "When foreign companies like Samsung and LG violate trade laws, they destroy the ability of United States producers to invest, innovate and create jobs here in America."

In September, under the flags of North Korea and China, North Korean workers began digging at Haesan, a hilly town near the Chinese border, kicking off one of several joint mining ventures. On Oct. 13, a Russian train chugged across the border to celebrate the restoration of a dilapidated Soviet-era rail link between the Russian city of Khasan and the North Korean town of Rajin.

At Haesan, China acquires copper, one of the many abundant mineral reserves lying next door waiting to be exploited. At Rajin, Russia wins access to an ice-free port to export Siberian coal and take in Asian goods it wants to transport to Europe. From both projects, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, counts cash.

These and other similar deals North Korea is striking with its two Cold War-era allies, especially China, are creating a predicament for the South Korean government.

Under its conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, South Korea has been trying to teach North Korea a lesson, one he proudly reaffirmed with President Barack Obama during their meeting in Washington this month: Pyongyang must not be rewarded for its misconduct.

By antagonizing the North, however, Seoul is also pushing it deeper into the embrace of Russia and particularly China, whose intentions Koreans have always regarded with suspicion. As Mr. Lee approaches his final year in office, a question that troubles many South Koreans is whether they have “lost North Korea.”

For a visiting head of state, the carpet does not get any redder than that, and it suggests that there may be something mysterious and powerful at play between Mr. Obama and Mr. Lee: Call it a presidential man-crush.

In some respects, South Korea’s leader has had the kind of presidency Mr. Obama would like to have. With less strangling government debt and a society driven to transform itself, Mr. Lee has been able to pursue much of the “win the future” agenda that Mr. Obama has advocated.

South Korea, as Mr. Obama likes to point out, has a high-speed broadband network that reaches more than 90 percent of its people, compared with only 65 percent of Americans. A larger percentage of South Koreans than Americans graduate from college. At a time when financially struggling school districts here are laying off teachers, South Korea is hiring them to satisfy demanding parents.

Indeed, Mr. Obama cites Mr. Lee’s views on education in virtually every speech he gives these days, including one in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, holding up the hard-working Asian country as an example of what the United States needs to do.

The two men have also built a personal bond, with Mr. Lee being among a small number of leaders — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey are two others — who seem to have pierced the president’s reserve. At a lunch in Seoul in November 2009, which aides said left a lasting impression on Mr. Obama, the two spent much of the time discussing education, not least the role of parents in schooling their children.

“They were discussing the place that teachers occupy in society,” said Daniel R. Russel, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser on Asia at the National Security Council, who attended the lunch. “It was very human, and it’s not that common at those rarefied heights of leadership to have a real conversation in which the two people can speak openly about an issue they both care deeply about.”

Mr. Obama, Mr. Russel said, also admires Mr. Lee for his determination to thrust South Korea into the front rank of world powers and his approach to his erratic neighbor, North Korea. While he has taken a tougher line than his predecessors toward the government in Pyongyang, he has also stopped short of military action in response to a string of belligerent acts, including the torpedoing of a Navy ship and the shelling of a South Korean island.

US lawmakers have approved a long-delayed free trade agreement with South Korea, calling it the most significant in 16 years.

Both houses of Congress voted in quick succession on Wednesday to approve the agreement, as well as pacts with Panama and Colombia.

It will now go to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

The agreement is expected to increase US exports to the Asian economy by as much as $10bn (£6.5bn).

The free-trade deal with South Korea is the largest US trade pact since it signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

The free trade agreement between the US and South Korea has cleared the first hurdle four years after the deal was first agreed.

The House Ways and Means Committee has voted to advance US free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama to the full House.

The push for a swift approval of the deals comes amid a slowdown in the US economy and high rates of unemployment.

Backers of the deals said they will boost US exports and create jobs.

"With zero jobs created last month and the unemployment rate hovering around nine percent, we must look at all opportunities to create American jobs," said David Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

China has released five South Koreans, including three journalists, who were detained while on a reporting trip along China’s border with North Korea last week, a spokesman for the reporters’ newspaper said on Thursday.

Meetings between the chief nuclear envoys of North and South Korea were “constructive,” negotiators said, even though the talks did not produce any breakthroughs on the longstanding impasse over the North’s refusal to give up its nuclear program.

The talks on Wednesday, held at a private club in Beijing, were the second meeting of the two sides since 2009, when North Korea walked away from six-party disarmament talks that also involved the United States, Russia, Japan and China.

Although he did not elaborate on what was discussed, Wi Sung-lac, the South Korean envoy, expressed guarded satisfaction. “We will continue to make these efforts in the future,” he told reporters, according to the Yonhap news agency.

North Korea wants the six-way talks to resume immediately without preconditions. South Korea, backed by the United States, insists that the North suspend its uranium-enrichment program, halt missile testing and allow international inspectors to return before the talks resume.

The South has also demanded that the North acknowledge responsibility for the torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the shelling of an island last year, killing a total of 50 people.

The North angrily abandoned the six-party talks in April 2009 after a United Nations rebuke over its launch of a long-range missile. A month later, it detonated a nuclear device underground, prompting a round of international sanctions that have sapped the North’s already anemic economy.

Although relations between the Koreas have deteriorated since then, experts believe that the North is desperate for food aid and an easing of the sanctions, and thus is eager for talks to resume.

China, the host of the talks and North Korea’s most steadfast ally, said on Wednesday that the North Korean prime minister, Choe Yong-rim, would visit Beijing on Sept. 26.

Samsung may be planning more aggressive tactics against its number one customer, Apple, after legal setbacks in Germany and The Netherlands. The Korean-based company will move to have Apple's next-generation iPhone banned from sale in Korea following EU-wide injunctions issued against Samsung's tablets and smartphones in those countries.

"Just after the arrival of the iPhone 5 here, Samsung plans to take Apple to court here for its violation of Samsung's wireless technology related patents, an unnamed senior executive from Samsung Electronics told The Korea Times. "For as long as Apple does not drop mobile telecommunications functions, it would be impossible for it to sell its i-branded products without using our patents. We will stick to a strong stance against Apple during the lingering legal fights."

Apple won an injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Germany, which was recently upheld after an appeal hearing. Samsung recently had to pull its Galalxy Tab 7.7 device from its official unveiling at the IFA conference in Berlin after Apple moved to have that device covered by a similar injunction. Apple also won an EU-wide injunction against Samsung's Galaxy S, Galaxy SII, and Ace handsets in The Netherlands. Additionally, Samsung has delayed the release of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia as a similar injunction proceeding is in progress in that country.

Meanwhile, as many as 23 separate legal proceedings are currently underway between the two mobile device rivals in France, Italy, UK, US, Japan, and Korea. A hearing on Apple's proposed preliminary injunction against Samsung is set for October 13 here in the US. Most recently, Apple filed for an injunction against Samsung's tablets and smartphones in Japan.

As one of the largest component suppliers for Apple, Samsung has skated a fine line as the legal battle between the two companies has grown increasingly heated. Apple has accused Samsung of "slavishly [copying] Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design." With rumors that Apple may be moving to other suppliers, Samsung may feel stepping up its legal maneuvers is worth the risk.

"Apple is Samsung's biggest customer," Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung told reporters recently. "Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, and Sony were Samsung's previous big clients, however, Apple is now a primary one. From our perspective, we are not entirely happy [about the litigations]," he said.

South Korea said Friday that it would allow a 37-member Buddhist delegation to visit North Korea, a sign that it might be ready to ease restrictions on civilian contacts with the North.

In May 2010, the South Korean government banned all civilian visits to North Korea, except for missions to provide humanitarian aid for children and victims of natural disasters. The restriction was imposed after the South accused North Korea of torpedoing a South Korean warship in March of that year. North Korea denied responsibility for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors.

The Buddhist trip will be the first of its kind since the ban last year. But the Unification Ministry, a government agency in charge of the South’s policies on North Korea, did not clarify whether it would give permission to other civic groups that want to visit the North to promote inter-Korean exchanges.

The South Korean military returned fire on Wednesday after North Korean artillery shells fell in waters near a South Korean island the North attacked last year with a lethal artillery barrage, Defense Ministry officials said.

South Korean marines based on the island, Yeonpyeong, 75 miles west of Seoul, detected three artillery shots from a North Korean island around 1 p.m. Wednesday, the officials said.

The South Korean military’s Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff said it believed that one of the shells landed at the Northern Limit Line, a border drawn by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The South accepts and patrols the line, but the North rejects it, insisting on a border line farther south.

South Korea responded by broadcasting a warning and then firing three artillery shells on the northern line.

At 7:46 p.m., North Korea fired two more shells, one of them hitting the water close to the northern line, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. In response, South Korean marines fired three artillery rounds on that area.

“We fired to warn them,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity. “We are watching the situation carefully and maintain our readiness.”

The South Korean military has maintained high vigilance since North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells at Yeonpyeong last November, killing two marines and two civilians. At the time, South Korea responded with an artillery attack on North Korea.

North Korea must suspend all activities at its nuclear complexes and allow United Nations inspectors to verify a freeze before the six-nation negotiations can resume on economic and other rewards for the country in exchange for ending its nuclear weapons programs, the chief South Korean nuclear negotiator said Friday.

“North Korea should take these presteps to improve six-party talks and make them more effective when they are resumed,” said Wi Sung-lac, who met his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong-ho, last week in Indonesia, referring to previous rounds of negotiations that included the two nations as well as the United States, Japan, Russia and China. “The North Korean reaction was not positive.”

The United States pressed the same demands during two days of talks with North Korean officials in New York that ended inconclusively on Friday. The meetings between Stephen W. Bosworth, the special American envoy on North Korean affairs, and Kim Kye-gwan, the first vice foreign minister of North Korea, were the first between the two sides since Mr. Bosworth visited North Korea in December 2009.

South Korea has blamed Chinese hackers for stealing data from 35 million accounts on a popular social network.

The attacks were directed at the Cyworld website as well as the Nate web portal, both run by SK Communications.

Hackers are believed to have stolen phone numbers, email addresses, names and encrypted information about the sites' many millions of members.

It follows a series of recent cyber attacks directed at South Korea's government and financial firms.

Details of the breach were revealed by the Korean Communications Commission.

It claimed to have traced the source of the incursion back to computer IP addresses based in China.

A North Korean envoy has been invited to the US this week for exploratory talks on resuming international nuclear negotiations, Washington has said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said an invitation had been extended to Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan to visit New York.

There was no immediate comment from the North on the talks offer.

This week North and South Korea's nuclear envoys and foreign ministers held unexpected talks.

The North abandoned the talks on its nuclear programme in 2008.

The secretive communist state, which has technically been at war with the South since the war which split Korea in the 1950s, is gripped by a food crisis and labouring under UN sanctions.

The chief nuclear negotiators for South and North Korea met Friday for the first time since 2008, raising cautious hopes that after months of recriminations the countries were inching toward broader talks on ending the North’s nuclear weapons program.

The negotiators, Wi Sung-lac of South Korea and Ri Yong-ho, a newly appointed North Korean envoy, met on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum being held in Bali, in Indonesia, officials in Seoul said.

Nuclear negotiators from the two Koreas last sat together in late 2008, when delegates from six nations met for nuclear talks. Those talks stalled amid tensions over South Korea’s harder line toward the North, United Nations sanctions imposed on the North after it launched a long-range rocket and staged its second nuclear test in 2009, and military actions by the North, including the shelling of a South Korean island last November.

The need to check the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program gained urgency after the North revealed an industrial-scale plant for enriching uranium in November. The plant showed that the North was gaining a new means to make nuclear bombs — in addition to its existing plutonium program — and, potentially, to proliferate the technology.

South Korea has insisted that the United States, China, Russia and Japan — all parties to the six-nation talks — not give in to what it considers North Korea’s tactic of using military provocations and other tension-raising maneuvers to force the other nations to rejoin the nuclear talks under terms that favor the North.

The South Korean military apologized Monday for shooting at a commercial airplane carrying 119 passengers and crew.

The Asiana Airlines flight was preparing to land Friday morning at Incheon International Airport, 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of Seoul, when two soldiers fired at the aircraft after mistaking it for a North Korean military jet.

The soldiers were on Gyodong Island near the North Korean border. After firing 99 rounds, they reported the incident.

The South Korean military claims the rounds were only warning shots from K-2 rifles, and there was no damage to the aircraft because it was out of range.

South Korea and the US have agreed to hold a joint inquiry into allegations that American soldiers dumped large amounts of Agent Orange on Korean land.

Three US Army veterans said they buried about 250 barrels of the hazardous chemical at a US military base in Chilgok, south-east of Seoul, in 1978.

Seoul said a joint inspection team would be sent to the camp.

The US used Agent Orange in the Vietnam War to clear jungle. Vietnam says it caused millions of birth defects.

Campaigners for US veterans of the Vietnam War also say exposure to the chemical defoliant is associated with higher instances of cancers and other diseases.

The Obama administration said on Monday that it would not seek Congressional approval of free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea until Republicans agree to expand assistance for American workers who might lose jobs as a result.

President Obama has made the three deals a focus of his foreign and economic policy, but the Monday ultimatum reflects the political difficulty of advancing the deals in the face of high unemployment and opposition from parts of the Democratic base.

“This administration believes that just as we should be excited about the prospect of selling more of what we make around the world, we have to be equally firm about keeping faith with America’s workers,” said Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative.

The announcement puts the White House in line with Congressional Democrats who have made expanded benefits a condition of their support for the trade deals, and at loggerheads with Republicans who say the government cannot afford the cost.

Samsung Electronics is suing Apple, claiming its rival violated its patent rights, days after Apple accused Samsung of "slavishly" copying designs of its iPad and iPhone.

The patent lawsuits, filed in South Korea, Japan and Germany, involve infringement of up to five patents, Samsung said in a statement.

Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung last Friday for violating its patents.

It is the latest patent dispute in an increasingly competitive industry.

Computer giant IBM has agreed to pay $10m (£6m) in an out-of-court settlement of bribery allegations.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that IBM had paid large bribes to South Korean and Chinese government officials.

The bribes were channelled through local business partners and travel agents for more than a decade in order to win contracts, according to the SEC.

The SEC said the bribes made IBM some $5m additional profits.

The bribes included overseas trips, gifts such as cameras and laptop computers, and entertainment for Chinese officials.

More than 100 IBM employees had provided such bribes between 2004 and 2009, the SEC said.

During the 1998 to 2003 period, managers at a subsidiary and joint venture paid more than $200,000 in bribes to South Korean officials.

"Deficient internal controls" allowed staff to conceal bribes as "legitimate business expenses", the SEC said.

"At 1900 on Wednesday, officials at the Ministry of Health will turn off all the lights in the building. They want to encourage staff to go home to their families and, well, make bigger ones. They plan to repeat the experiment every month."

"North Korea has agreed to hold talks with South Korea this week, a day after it test-fired short-range missiles. The talks will be on how to avoid cross-border flooding, and arrangements for reunions between family members divided by the Korean War. The agreement to the talks came amid reports that the North may be preparing to launch more short-range missiles."