North Korea Infrastructure upgrades

“Inside, we are furious,” said Mr. Choi, 46, a government employee who shopped on a recent afternoon at a mall in this city just a few miles from the South’s heavily fortified border with North Korea. “But even with 46 dead, cutting off North Korea is not an option for us.”

Mr. Choi’s views are typical in this affluent nation. Since the government released evidence implicating North Korea in the attack, reactions in South Korea have ranged from anger to betrayal and even disbelief that North Korea would launch a strike against a neighbor that had showered it with fertilizer, investments and food aid.

The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has selected Korean Air as the main developer of an indigenous medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to start missions after 2016, a military source said Sunday.>> Korean Air, the country's largest airline, won the bid over the Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), which has dominated the country's military aircraft programs, the source told The Korea Times.

DAPA will announce the winner next month, he said.>> The national-flag carrier, with the technological help of a foreign defense firm, will develop and integrate the spy plane's fuselage and other related systems, including a ground-control station and mission equipment package (MEP), in cooperation with the state-run Agency for Defense Development (ADD), said the source.

Raytheon Co said Tuesday it had received more than $200 million in contracts related to its Patriot air and missile defense system, including deals involving Kuwait, South Korea and the U.S. Army.

Hundreds of South Korea’s small and midsized exporters have threatened to boycott a number of significant foreign-owned banks after they suffered heavy losses from currency derivative investments.
The exporters held a rally in front of Citibank’s [C 4.17 --- UNCH ] Korean headquarters in Seoul on Thursday, demanding the U.S. bank pull out of the country. The group of 242 companies accused a number of foreign banks for failing to fully brief them of the potential risks of “knock-in, knockout” currency contracts, or kikos.

“These foreign ransackers should be ousted from Korea ... We will implement a nationwide campaign to suspend transactions with overseas banks, beginning with Citibank Korea,” the Association of Kiko Victims said.