Seoul - A South Korean activist Friday admitted to espionage activities uncovered by Pyongyang, but rejected accusations of a plot to murder North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, a news report said.

Choi Sung-yong, head of the Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, a South Korean NGO, said a North Korean man arrested by the North's State Security Agency on Thursday had been hired by him to gather information on the Communist state the Yonhap news agency reported.

Seoul  - South Korea's 621-troop deployment to Iraq is completing its withdrawal after four years assisting the US war effort, the military said Wednesday.

The troops engaged in reconstruction work are to be received upon returning home Friday by Defence Minister Lee Sang Hee and attend a ceremony hosted by Prime Minister Han Seung Soo after getting a medical checkup, officials said.

"The ceremony will mark the official disbandment of the Iraqi mission that was launched in September 2004," Defence Ministry spokesman Won Tae Jae said.

The contingent consists of the Zaytun Unit, currently stationed in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, and its Kuwait-based air support unit.

Seoul  - South Koreans married to members of the country's 1-million-strong foreign population generally said they are happily wed, a survey conducted by a non-governmental organization showed.

South Koreans are more happily married than their foreign spouses, the Seoul Women Family Foundation found in their survey of 842 foreigners married to Koreans and
177 South Koreans married to foreigners.

According to the survey, 59.3 per cent of the South Koreans interviewed said were satisfied with their marriage while 40.3 per cent of the foreigners said so.

Foreign spouses from the Philippines showed the highest satisfaction at 49.5 per cent while Cambodians ranked the lowest at 29.2 per cent.

Seoul - In a country known as the world's most guarded safe haven for domestically produced phones, South Korean mobile phone carriers said they are ready to launch overseas-made handsets from Apple, RIM and Nokia.

Carriers are already in the final stages of getting non-Korean phones into the domestic market for consumers who have been anxiously waiting for trendy headsets like Apple's iPhone, after regulators lifted a rule requiring headsets to include include local software, which effectively closed the market to foreign producers.

South Korean regulators last week announced that of April 1, 2009, the mandatory Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability will be discontinued.

Tokyo - Japan and South Korea pledged greater cooperation to overcome the global financial crisis ahead of a summit with China in the Japanese city of Fukuoka on Saturday.

Seoul - South Korea's central bank said on Friday that it has arranged new deals to expand its bilateral currency swap facilities with Japan and China.

Under the new won-yen swap deals, South Korea can secure access to a total of 30 billion US dollars in a credit line from the Bank of Japan (BOJ).

South Korea can access about 28 billion US dollars in credit from the People's Bank of China.

Under a May 2005 arrangements already in place, South Korea can access a 13-billion-US-dollar credit line from the BOJ and 4 billion US dollars from the People's Bank of China.