Seoul’s Unification Ministry said Thursday it was considering legislative measures to ban the contentious anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaign, just hours after North Korea threatened to scrap a bilateral military pact, saying the campaign raises hostilities prohibited by their prior agreement. “We were already looking into ways to prevent tension hikes at the border. Plans for legislative change had...

South Korea is seeking to revise a law on inter-Korean affairs to allow North Korean-run businesses in its territory, in spite of international sanctions currently placed on the North, the Unification Ministry said Monday. The revised South-North Exchange and Cooperation Act would also allow local municipalities to run businesses with the North without an intermediary while giving greater freedo...

A total of 25,000 masks will be delivered to Korean independence fighters who engaged in military and diplomatic campaigns against Japan’s 1910-45 occupation of the Korean Peninsula, to help them combat the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry of Patriots and War Veterans said Monday. About 500 fighters and bereaved families in 15 countries will receive the supplies with a letter of gratitude from...

US President Donald Trump’s surprise invitation Saturday to South Korea to the expanded Group of 7 summit in September, along with three other countries, hints at Korea’s elevated status, and is also a double-edged sword amid the deepening rivalry between the US and China, experts here said Sunday. They called on Seoul to draw up a strategy so as not to risk upsetting its security alliance with ...

“A different US government might take a different view,” he said, adding that the US was assisting poor countries through a COVID-19 relief plan. Nye dismissed the idea that globalization was nearing its end as an “exaggeration.” He advocated “ecological globalization,” which would include strategies to fight pandemics and climate change. He highlighted the need for institutions to cope with tra...

South Korea should make sure that inter-Korean exchanges proceed in parallel with North Korea’s denuclearization, the US State Department said Tuesday, reiterating its earlier stance made public several times. The department, asked by Voice of America about Seoul’s latest decision to ease restrictions on engagement with Pyongyang, said Washington supports inter-Korean cooperation, but that it sh...

Both Koreas breached their armistice agreement when they exchanged gunfire at the border on May 3, the United National Command said Tuesday, after a weeklong investigation by its multinational team. The UN Command, which administers the Demilitarized Zone separating both Koreas and enforces the armistice that halted the 1950-53 Korean War, said it could not definitively determine whether North K...

South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and US Defense Secretary Mark Esper will discuss cost sharing for the upkeep of 28,500 American troops stationed here at a teleconference next month, Seoul’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. “The date and agenda haven’t been finalized yet. We’re in the middle of consultations with the US,” ministry spokesperson Choi Hyun-soo told a press briefing. ...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s message Sunday that he would bolster nuclear capabilities sparked fresh speculation in Seoul over Pyongyang’s intentions, with some analysts here suggesting a new missile launch while others weigh in on less drastic approaches. Presiding over a key military meeting, his first public appearance in three weeks, Kim vowed to ramp up his country’s “nuclear war deter...

Sixty South Koreans who were stranded in Africa due to suspended air travel amid the coronavirus pandemic returned home late Friday on a charter flight. South Korea’s military ran the flight Monday to rotate a batch of troops for the Hanbit Unit stationed in South Sudan, and on the way home, Korean residents in Africa boarded the plane in adjoining Ethiopia. Thirty-six had come from Ghana, 13 f...

The United Nations Human Rights Committee said Wednesday a group of North Korean workers who defected to South Korea in 2016 are not being detained against their will, as claimed by lawyers who submitted a complaint to the UN body on behalf of the defector’s self-proclaimed families. In 2016, 13 North Korean restaurant workers in China defected to South Korea. A year later, one of them, the mana...

Lew Byong-hun, the first deputy commander of the Combined Forces Command jointly operated by South Korea and the United States, died Thursday at age 96, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a press release. A former four-star Army general, Lew was one of the joint command’s founding members in 1978. After leaving the command a year later, he went on to serve as chairman of Korea’s JCS unt...

North Koreans remain vulnerable to the novel coronavirus pandemic, despite Pyongyang’s repeated claims that it has no infections, the US State Department said Wednesday. The department, asked by Radio Free Asia on Wednesday for comment on the COVID-19 situation in the North, said the country was still underprepared to deal with the disease, noting its stance on the matter remains unchanged after...

The United States is closely monitoring risks to global supply chains from cyberattacks by North Korea and other countries amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, US Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said Tuesday. “I talked a lot about nation state threats, and how those manifest in different ways whether it’s China, Iran, or everything in between, North Korea. From a cyber perspectiv...

Pyongyang has yet to respond to Seoul’s offer of cooperation on efforts to contain COVID-19, but Seoul should keep floating the proposal despite the prolonged silence, according to Hwang, who added that successful nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang would usher in inter-Korean exchanges. “Resuming large-scale inter-Korean projects like the joint Kaesong plants or Kumgangsan tours woul...