The presidential office on Wednesday denied rumors that South Korea offered to give up its bid to host the 2030 Expo in exchange for a contract for Saudi Arabia's $500 billion Neom city project, calling it "fake news produced by the opposition party." “Currently, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and the office of future strategy and planning in the presidential office are touring the world in a fierc...

President Yoon Suk-yeol agreed to co-host the second Democracy Summit with the US President Biden on March 29-30, the presidential office said Tuesday. The US, which held the first Democracy Summit virtually in December 2021, decided to co-host the second summit with South Korea, the Netherlands, Zambia and Costa Rica. The Korean government will preside over the Indo-Pacific regional meeting of...

A few days after taking office, President Yoon Suk-yeol made a surprise visit to the press room and casually reminded reporters of his promise to treat them to kimchi stew as a gesture of his desire to communicate with the media. Soon after, Yoon became the first president to hold morning interviews in the lobby of the presidential office, taking questions on contentious matters. At a press con...

President Yoon Suk-yeol announced South Korea’s space economy road map with goals of landing on the moon and Mars in about two decades. The plan includes developing an independent projectile engine that can fly toward the moon within five years, “land on the moon in 2032” to start mining resources and “land on Mars in 2045," he said at a ceremony held to mark the government's new space plan. Th...

Reporters Without Borders called on President Yoon Suk-yeol to reverse his decision to bar journalists with public broadcaster MBC from the presidential plane and also called for the reinstatement of the president’s daily meetings with the press. “Even the highest elected representative should not decide which media can report on them or which questions are suitable to be asked,'' said the RSF E...

President Yoon Suk-yeol has vowed to actively support defense exports, touting the sector as a "future new growth engine” and “driving force for high-tech industries” during his visit to the nation’s leading arms firms on Thursday. South Korea, which has boosted its defense capabilities to curb threats from the North, has now become the No. 8 weapon seller, according to the Stockholm Internation...

President Yoon Suk-yeol has asked Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla & SpaceX, to make significant investments in South Korea, including building a production facility for electric vehicles here, during a meeting held via videoconference Wednesday morning, the presidential office said. Initially, Yoon was scheduled to meet with Musk face-to-face at the B-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. However, the meeting w...

Truckers in South Korea on Tuesday decided to push ahead with a strike, rejecting a government plan that would agree to some of their demands. The strike, if prolonged, will take a heavy toll on the car and steel industries that already suffered from a strike in June. The Cargo Truckers Solidarity of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the largest union organizations in South Korea,...

President Yoon Seok-yeol's unedifying dispute with local news outlet MBC fell into a deeper quagmire Monday, with journalists and opposition parties blasting the presidential office's decision to suspend Yoon's daily morning interviews and erecting a wall between the press room and the main entrance of the building, which critics say is to tame the media as a whole. The Journalists Association o...

The K-Green Foundation and Jeski Social Campaign, which hosted an exhibition along with the message "The Climate Has No Borders," said responsibility for the climate crisis is a task for mankind and it does not belong to a specific country. Through the exhibition, they are asking delegates from each country who participated in COP27 to ask themselves "why they gathered here" and "what they shoul...

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte agreed on Thursday to upgrade the bilateral relationship between the two nations to a strategic partnership and expand cooperation in advanced technologies, including chips, nuclear power plants and renewable energy. This is the second summit between the two leaders since they met on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Spain in June. Th...

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Seoul on Thursday to hold talks with President Yoon Suk-yeol and top business leaders, initiating a slew of agreements worth an estimated $30 billion between the two countries. The crown prince’s trip to Seoul is his first in three years. In a closed meeting held earlier in the day, Yoon and the crown prince agreed to...

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed on "positive and active cooperation" on the issue of forced labor, a key issue in improving bilateral relations, at the Korea-Japan summit, South Korea's presidential office said Wednesday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior presidential official who attended the Korea-Japan summit, told reporters that Yoon and Ki...

The first Seoul-Beijing summit in three years laid bare the differences in the two sides' approach to North Korea, experts say. President Yoon Suk-yeol and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a 25-minute talk in Indonesia during the G20 Summit on Tuesday. It has been three years since the last Korea-China summit was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, during the former Moon Jae-in gov...

President Yoon Suk-yeol expressed caution against protectionism and vowed Korea's support for the G-20's cooperation in the food and energy sectors as well as contributions to international solidarity in the health sector, at the G-20 Summit on Tuesday. On the sidelines of the summit, Yoon had a bilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the evening to discuss China's role in resolvin...