President Moon Jae-in will make a state visit to Sweden from June 14-15 at the invitation of His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, the Embassy of Sweden in Seoul said. The president will lead a delegation comprising South Korean government ministers and business representatives. First Lady Kim Jung-sook will be joining him on the trip. As a part of his eight-day Nordic visit, which begins June 9, Moon will also visit Finland and Norway.The upcoming trip is “a part of his efforts

Diplomatic Circuit June 3, 2019

South Korea expects the Hungarian authorities to soon begin searching inside the sunken tour boat involved in a collision in the Danube River in Budapest which killed at least seven Korean tourists and left 21 others missing, a Foreign Ministry official said Friday. The sightseeing boat capsized and sank within a matter of few seconds after colliding with larger ship Viking River Cruise in driving rain on Wednesday evening.The ministry official said the Hungarian authorities have been trying to

Social Affairs May 31, 2019

Tough sanctions slapped on North Korea have begun to adversely affect the most vulnerable people there, experts said, stressing the need for swift humanitarian action for millions of hungry and sick people. What has hurt the lives of North Korean people the most are sanctions, and the widespread impact has reached those who already could not afford food, University of North Korean Studies professor Yang Moon-soo said during a roundtable held by the state-run Korea Institute for National Unificat

North Korea May 30, 2019

Relations between South Korea and Japan have deteriorated to what is arguably their worst point to date as they dispute every inch of ground over Tokyo’s responsibility to compensate the Korean victims of forced labor during World War II. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha’s meeting with her Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, in Paris on Friday thwarted hopes that those strained ties would mend anytime soon. The two top envoys wrapped up their meeting having only escalated the tensio

Foreign Affairs May 29, 2019

US President Donald Trump on Sunday downplayed the potential danger of North Korea’s missile launches in early May, just a day after national security adviser John Bolton called the tests a clear breach of UN resolutions. “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me,” Trump tweeted during a four-day state visit to Japan that started Saturday. On May 9, North Korea tested two short-range missiles, which fell into the East S

North Korea May 26, 2019

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said President Donald Trump has firm willingness to implement sanctions against North Korea, in another signal that the country will not pursue sanctions relief in order to resume nuclear talks. “The president is determined that we continue our efforts to enforce both the UN sanctions and the US sanctions against North Korea,” he said at the US House Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday. Mnuchin said sanctions are effective leverage to

North Korea May 23, 2019

The US State Department on Wednesday reaffirmed that UN sanctions against North Korea will remain in place, after Pyongyang publicly criticized Washington’s “extreme hostile policy” regarding the seizure of its cargo ship, escalating tensions between the two countries amid stalled nuclear talks. In a rare press conference at the UN in New York on Tuesday, North Korea’s UN Ambassador Kim Song demanded immediate return of the country’s second-largest cargo ship, the W

North Korea May 22, 2019

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Tuesday that the government’s plans to send food assistance to North Korea will adhere to humanitarian principles and pledged to separate the action from wider political goals. “Providing humanitarian aid is (a matter of) humanitarian principles, no more, no less. The international community’s universal consensus is that humanitarian aid should be separated from politics,” Kim told reporters in his first media briefing since he took office April 8. Unifica

North Korea May 21, 2019

The US should revise its strategy of pressuring North Korea to give up all its nuclear weapons before offering any sanctions relief, said a veteran diplomat, in order to avoid repeating diplomatic events that have ended in failure over the past two decades. “The US needs to take an incremental approach to resolve North Korea’s denuclearization issues. Demanding it to relinquish its entire nuclear arsenal first seems to be another repetition of the history of failure that begun (to be) attempted

North Korea May 21, 2019

The Embassy of Switzerland has opened its new building that reinterprets hanok -- traditional Korean houses -- in central Seoul, in the hope that it will serve as a platform for cooperation between the two countries. “This reconstruction of the embassy is a symbol of our longstanding friendship with the Republic of Korea and of Switzerland’s sincere desire to further expand our excellent and mutually beneficial relations in all fields,” Ambassador Linus von Castelmur said during a media conferen

Diplomatic Circuit May 20, 2019

Rescue efforts by the United Arab Emirates and the Eastern-Libya army played a crucial role in freeing a Korean national held captive for 315 days in western Libya, an official at Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Friday. The 62-year-old Korean hostage, surnamed Joo, and three Filipinos were taken hostage by militants last year while working as civil engineers at a desalination plant in western Libya. The ministry official cited a statement from the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International

Foreign Affairs May 17, 2019

Amid the Seoul government’s efforts to send humanitarian aid to the North, the Unification Ministry on Wednesday shrugged off reports that North Korea might not be facing a severe food crisis given that the price of rice in the country is on a downward trend. The price of rice in the North Korean market, known as jangmadang, had fallen to 4,000 won per kilogram as of April 30, from 5,000 won in November last year, according to a report by Daily NK, which regularly surveys the price. “We recogniz

North Korea May 15, 2019

The South Korean government is considering sending food aid to North Korea before the harvest season at the request of a UN agency that called on the international community to support Pyongyang, which is facing its worst food crisis in 10 years, a ministry official said Tuesday. Citing a recent joint report from the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization on North Korea’s food situation, a Unification Ministry official said May to September would be an appropriate time to p

North Korea May 14, 2019

South Korea will revise the travel warning system for conflict-prone regions in Africa and the Middle East, in a move to prevent recurrence of the recent case of a citizen who was rescued after being held captive by militants in the region for a month, a Foreign Ministry official said Monday. The alert level for the eastern part of Burkina Faso in West Africa will be raised to level three, or red, warning people not to travel there or to leave the country.  Unnamed freed South Korean hostage, le

Foreign Affairs May 13, 2019