Seoul  - The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan, Yu Myung Hwan and Hirofumi Nakasone, Wednesday urged communist North Korea to stop its belligerent posturing to defuse international tensions.

The latest in Pyongyang's series of sharply worded threats had created new tension and was not helpful, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement after a meeting between Yu and Nakasone in Seoul.

Hanoi  - Police in Ho Chi Minh City have broken up an illegal marriage brokerage that matched Vietnamese women and South Korean men, Vietnamese press reported Wednesday.

Police Monday raided a house where a marriage broker was parading 31 Vietnamese women before two South Korean men and arrested three people, Huynh Van Khai, Nguyen Van Hoa and Do Thi Kim Van, on charges of organizing the presentation.

When the police appeared, the 31 women were jammed into a tiny 20-square-metre house that served as an office for the illegal marriage agency.

Seoul - South Korea's economy, Asia's fourth-largest, will shrink 2 per cent this year on falling exports and dwindling domestic demand, the government forecast Tuesday, reversing its earlier predictions of growth.

About 200,000 people were expected to lose their jobs because of the effects of the global economic downturn on South Korea's economy, Finance Minister Yoon Jeung Hyun added.

Only in December, the government had predicted growth of 3 per cent.

Seoul  - South Korean President Lee Myung Bak's nominee for national police chief withdrew his nomination Tuesday because of criticism over a deadly police raid in January.

Kim Seok Ki also resigned from his present post as Seoul's police chief, saying he held himself "morally responsible" for the January 20 operation in the capital in which six people died.

Seoul  - A South Korean appeals court on Tuesday confirmed a lower court verdict allowing ending life-prolonging measures for a 76-year-old coma patient, making it the first time mercy killing has been formally permitted in the Asian nation.

In November, a court ruled in favour of ending life-prolonging measures for the woman at the request of her family but without the patient's consent.

Seoul - In the gloom of South Korea's economic problems, a flash of hope and joy has come from the skating queen Kim Yu-Na, 19, who unseated the reigning champion, Mao Asada of Japan, and won the Four Continents figure stating championship in Vancouver last Friday.

Yu-Na owes her stardom to her graceful presence and calm confidence, which did not leave her even when she fell down during her performance of a triple loop jump.

She quickly rose from the ice and went on to display her grace and confidence in a masterly performance that charmed the audience.