hankyoreh

Following a fresh news report of alleged nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Pakistan, senior U.S. officials tried Thursday to downplay the diplomatic impact on already shaky relations with Islamabad.
“I don’t have anything to say beyond the fact that we take, obviously, North Korea’s nuclear program, you know, very seriously,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about a Washington Post report.
In a front-page article earlier in the day, the newspaper carried a claim by A.K. Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, that the North Korean regime paid $3 million in bribes to Pakistani military officials for sensitive nuclear technology in the late 1990s. Kahn reportedly said he transferred the cash personally.
Khan has been long suspected of having provided Pyongyang with nuclear know-how, including a program to produce highly enriched uranium. But the Post report indicates the involvement of Pakistani authorities in the black-market trade of nuclear arms technology.
(Yonhap News)
　
Government budget for 2012 proposed at 333 tril. won
The Korean government’s budget is expected to grow next year by the most in seven years.
The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Fridat that the government’s budget for 2012 is projected to be 333 trillion won, or about 313 billion dollars.
The proposed spending would be 8 percent more than this year’s, but the ministry added that the final figure could rise to 9 or even 10 percent.
Spending in the research and development sector increased the most, at 14 percent, while the amount of SOC, or Social Overhead Capital went down 14 percent, since the Lee Myung-bak administration’s Four River Restoration project is in its completion phase.
(Arirang News)