North Korea's latest appointment of its foreign minister as a member of the ruling party's politburo appears intended to brace the regime for possible high-level contact with the US and China, a Seoul think tank report said Tuesday. North Korea on Saturday promoted Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho to become a member of the political bureau of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) from an alternative memb...

Cho Jin-ho, head coach of the second-tier South Korean pro football club Busan IPark FC, died of a heart attack Tuesday, team officials said. He was 44. An official with Busan said Cho collapsed near his residence in the morning while on his way to work. Cho was rushed to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead. Cho was one of South Korea's top football prospects in the 1990s. An energetic at...

China's imports of consumer goods from South Korea all shrank except for a handful of products despite a rise in demand for similar goods made in other countries, a report from a trade group said Tuesday. The report from the Beijing office of the Korea International Trade Association said South Korea accounted for 3 percent of all consumer goods imported by China in the January-July period of th...

One out of six South Korean children and youths are obese with the rate increasing every year, government data showed Tuesday. The data by the Ministry of Health and Welfare showed that 16.5 percent of elementary, middle school, and high school students suffered from obesity in 2016, up 0.9 percentage point from a year earlier. The obesity rate increased from 11.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percen...

Head coaches of South Korea's top six pro football clubs on Tuesday asked fans to trust the beleaguered men's national team boss Shin Tae-yong, saying he needs more time and support. South Korea, ranked 51st in the latest FIFA rankings, have yet to collect a victory under Shin, who took over the helm in July following Uli Stielike's exit. Shin managed to guide South Korea to the 2018 FIFA World...

South Korea's finance chief expressed thanks to a Confucian leader Tuesday, following a positive response to the idea of levying taxes on local clergy. Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon delivered his appreciation in Seoul to Kim Young-geun, head of Sung Kyun Kwan, a body that advocates for Confucianism. Sungkyunkwan was a Confucian academy in the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Kim also said he will l...

BIEL/BIENNE, Switzerland -- South Korean football body is set to hire foreign assistants for the men's national team as head coach Shin Tae-yong will meet with job candidates in Germany this week. An official with the Korea Football Association said Monday that Shin will interview applicants for the national team's assistant and fitness coaching positions in Frankfurt, Germany, before the South ...

Coaches of South Korea’s top six soccer clubs said Tuesday they are ready to put in their best efforts to take the league’s championship trophy in the remaining five matches. The K League Classic is operating under the split system, in which the 12 teams are divided into two tiers after their first 33 matches. Starting this weekend, they will play five more matches within their groups to conclud...

Red fire ants found in the southern port of Busan are presumed to be identical to a species in the United States, but further inspection is needed to figure out their exact origin, South Korea's quarantine authority said Tuesday. Twenty-five fire ants were discovered in a storage container at Busan's Gamman port Sept. 28, and a nest capable of accommodating 1,000 was also found, raising alarm th...

South Korean shares traded sharply higher Tuesday, boosted by technology stocks as investors displayed optimism over third-quarter earnings. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index gained 46.54 points, or 1.94 percent, to 2,441.01 as of 11:20 a.m. Top cap Samsung Electronics, scheduled to release its third-quarter earnings guidance later this week, jumped 4.45 percent, and global chipma...

The South Korean government vowed Tuesday to support local companies' bids to export nuclear reactors overseas, in a move to ease concerns that its nuclear phase-out plan could adversely affect efforts to new secure contracts. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy held a meeting with state-run utilities, construction companies and local banks to discuss global market strategy and financial ...

South Korea's unification ministry said Tuesday that North Korea should not unilaterally resume operations at a now-shuttered joint industrial complex, as the move violates the property rights of local firms running factories there. The government said that there are no specific signs that confirm North Korea's reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, though some bus movements and illuminate...

President Moon Jae-in called for additional efforts to speed up government-led social and political reforms Tuesday, dismissing opposition accusations that the move is aimed at retaliating against his political rivals. "Reforms and rooting out the old evils are not aimed at prosecuting but innovating old practices that have been pervasive in all areas, such as the economic and social sectors, an...

US President Donald Trump may travel to the inter-Korean border in early November when he visits South Korea, a defense source said Tuesday. The White House dispatched an advance team of working-level officials in late September to check candidate sites for Trump's "special activity" here, according to the source. "They looked around Panmunjom and Observation Post Ouellette," the source said on...

Popular non-verbal show “Nanta” will close one of its exclusive theaters in central Seoul as the number of Chinese tour groups, its main customers, plummeted due to a diplomatic feud between Seoul and Beijing over a US anti-missile system, its production company said Tuesday. PMC Production said it will close the Chungjeongno theater, one of four “Nanta” theaters in the country, at the end of th...