Today on The Korea Times Podcast: North Korea says no to talks with the US and Korea's Fair Trade Commission allegedly shows biased against foreign companies. Plus 40% of Korea's elderly could still be working in 2050 and the opposition party looks to reform the nation's constitution.
North Korea's National Defense Commission stressed Pyongyang is not interested in talks with Washington, which it claims is bent on bringing down the communist regime.
"Now that the gangster-like U.S. imperialists' military strategy towards the DPRK is inching close to the stage of igniting a war of aggression, the just counteraction of the army and people of the DPRK will be focused on inflicting the bitterest disasters upon the United States of America," it said in a English-language statement.
It also strongly criticized President Barack Obama for introducing a set of additional sanctions on Pyongyang and stating the isolated nation is doomed to collapse.
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is accused of being biased and vindictive toward foreign companies, making them reluctant to invest more in Korea. Executives from foreign investment companies argue that the regulator often appears to have reached its own conclusions before it begins any investigations.
In a survey released last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Korea was ranked 133rd out of 144 countries in the category of transparency within government decision-making.
As many as four out of ten elderly people will be working in 2050, according to a report from a state-run research institute this week. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs said some 7.34 million, or 40.8 percent of elderly people aged 65 or older, will still be working in 2050 to support themselves and their families. In 2010, 1.81 million elderly people, or 33.1 percent, worked.
The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) proposed this week that a national referendum be held on whether the current presidential term of five years should be changed to two terms of four years by constitutional reform next year.
“The most important thing to do is to devise a great political system and now is the most opportune time to reform the Constitution,” said floor leader Rep. Woo Yoon-keun in an address to the National Assembly.
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