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U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen said Wednesday that the U.S. is supportive of South Korea invoking its own right of self-defense to determine which methods to use to respond to North Korea’s provocations.
“South Korea is a sovereign nation that has every right to protect its people and to respond as it sees fit in order to effectively carry out that responsibility,” said Mullen during a press conference at the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul after his meeting with his South Korean counterpart Gen. Han Min-koo.
South Korea and the United States will draw up a new operational plan to respond to a low-intensity provocation by North Korea near land and sea borders, he said.
　　　
West sea island residents to receive gas masks
All residents at western islands and in residential areas close to the border with North Korea will receive gas masks by 2012 for protection from possible chemical weapons attacks from the communist neighbor, the disaster management agency said Thursday.
The intelligence community believes North Korea is one of the world’s largest possessors of chemical and biological weapons with a stockpile of thousands of tons of chemical agents.
(Yonhap News Agency)　

S.Korean workers most hard-working, least efficient
South Korea has the most hard-working but least efficient workforce in the 30 OECD countries, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said in a report Wednesday.
According to the report entitled, “2010 National Competitiveness,” the first one by the South Korean government, South Koreans work the longest hours. But their productivity is less than half of American workers, taking 23rd place in terms of productivity.　　

BOK freezes key interest rate
The　Bank of Korea (BOK) froze the key interest rate on Thursday due to eurozone debt woes and heightened regional tension.
BOK Gov. Kim Choong-soo said that at the BOK’s monetary policy meeting they decided to leave the benchmark seven-day repo rate, dubbed the base rate, unchanged at 2.5 percent, as widely anticipated.
　
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