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The Obama administration said Tuesday it has not yet found enough evidence to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.
“There’s a very specific procedure, though, to designating someone as a state sponsor of terror, with specific criteria that need to be met,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “There’s a legal process to doing that. And I’m not aware that that’s been undertaken.”
Toner was responding to a bipartisan group of congressmen who last week submitted legislation to re-designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism for a series of provocations, including its torpedoing of a South Korean warship and shelling of a South Korean border island that killed 50 people last year.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and eight other congressmen on Friday submitted the bill that calls for the North‘s relisting and prohibits Washington from delisting the North unless Pyongyang apologizes for the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents, pledges not to proliferate nuclear weapons and missile technologies and severs ties with the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
U.S. officials have dismissed calls by hardliners for relisting North Korea for the Cheonan’s sinking, saying the incident is a violation of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, but does not qualify as terrorism.
(Yonhap News)
　　
Tax agency probes Samsung affiliates 　
South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) has launched tax probes into three to four key affiliates of Samsung Group, the NTS and company officials said Tuesday.
The NTS began to conduct a tax probe into Samsung Heavy Industries Co. and Hotel Shilla Co. on the same day April 4. The probe into Samsung C&T Corp. has been conducted in Feb.
The NTS and the companies said the probes are a part of regular investigations into large conglomerates, usually once per five years. But observers suppose the probes are related to Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s remarks last month that the Lee Myung-bak administration’s economic policy “has not necessarily earned a failing grade.”
　
Imported car sales surpass 10,000 units in March　
More than 10,000 imported vehicles were sold in South Korea’s market last month, the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association said Tuesday.
According to the KAIDA, the number of newly registered imported cars in March grew 44.9 percent to 10,290, from 7,102 in 2010. The monthly sale marks the highest since South Korean auto market was open to foreign cars in 1987.
The German brand BMW led the boom by selling 2,982 units, followed by Mercedes-Benz (1,712) and Volkswagen (888).
Mercedes-Benz Korea and BMW Group Korea recorded 1.13 trillion won and 1.09 trillion won in sales last year, respectively. 　
　　　
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