hankyoreh

employees at Nonghyup Central Bank discuss measures to address computer failures that interrupted financial transactions on April 13. (Photo by Kim Myoung-jin)

The Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) said the 33-year-old Gori-1 reactor at its plant in Gijang County, northeastern Busan, was temporarily shut down 8:46 p.m. on Tuesday due to a malfunction of an electric circuit.

“There is no problem with the safety of the reactor and no radiation leak,” said the state nuclear power company. “The reactor will resume operations on April 15.”

However, the accident has increased controversy over the extension of its life and accelerated calls for permanent shut down. The operation of the oldest Gori-1 reactor in South Korea was supposed to be stopped in 2007, but it was given a 10-year extension like the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan.

North Korea said Thursday it has detained a U.S. citizen since last November and plans to indict him, as he admitted his “crime,” North Korea’s media reported.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that the American, named Jun Young-su, was arrested in November last year and has since been investigated by officials for committing a crime against North Korea after entering the country.

“He admitted his crime in the course of the investigation,” the KCNA said, without elaborating.

(Yonhap News)

The Bank of Korea Wednesday admitted that inflation is worse than feared and lifted its forecast for consumer price index this year from 3.5 to 3.9 percent.

In its updated 2011 economy outlook, the central bank said the prices will rise 0.7 percent point more than expected due to foot-and-mouth disease and the oil price hike, but the government can lower the CPI by 0.4 percent point through various efforts.

The BOK projected gross domestic product (GDP) to expand 4.5 percent this year, sticking to its previous prediction announced in December. Consumer prices showed a 4.7 percent year-on-year increase in March.

The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (Nonghyup) suffered a significant problem with its online network systems and partially suspended financial transactions for more than 40 hours.

Nonghyup failed to restore some of its core customer services including Internet banking and automated teller machines until Wednesday midnight. The system broke down around 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The incident spread concerns about online banking transactions among the public as it occurred several days after the serious hacking incident at Hyundai Capital last week.