Seoul says will discuss the matter with US; experts say invitation entails opportunity and risk

North Korea is actively seeking to enlist the country's sacred Mount Paekdu as a UNESCO global geopark, state media reported Sunday. "Scientists in relevant fields of the DPRK made scientific proof of its geological features and world value through scores of years-long survey and research," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said, stressing the mountain's rich biodiversity and geological significance. DPRK stands for the North's official name, Democratic People's Republ

Eight facilities designated as high risk for COVID-19 obligated to implement digitized visitor registry

President Moon Jae-in replaced seven presidential secretaries on Sunday, including naming a former Cheong Wa Dae staffer known as one of Moon's closest aides as his new protocol secretary. Park Kyung-mee, a former ruling party lawmaker, has been named secretary for education, with Tak Hyun-min, a former Cheong Wa Dae staffer, appointed as new protocol secretary, according to Cheong Wa Dae. Park was a professor of mathematics education at Hongik University and lawmaker with the Democratic Part

South Korea reported 27 new cases of the coronavirus Sunday, the lowest since a logistics center-linked cluster infection brought the daily new cases to nearly a two-month high last week, as health officials kept up efforts to prevent similar collective infections. The new cases, 15 of them local infections, raised South Korea's total coronavirus caseload to 11,468, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). It marks the first time in five days that the daily n

WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump said Saturday that he plans to invite South Korea to a Group of Seven summit in September. South Korea is not a member of the G7, which comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the United States, but the country has drawn widespread praise from around the world for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. "We want Australia. We want India. We want South Korea. And what do we have? That's a nice group of countries right there,&q

Two American soldiers newly assigned to South Korea have tested positive for the coronavirus, United States Forces Korea (USFK) said Saturday, bringing the total number of infections among its population to 30. The service members arrived here on Wednesday on a US government-arranged charter flight and were in mandatory quarantine at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, some 70 kilometers south of Seoul, according to USFK. After testing positive, the soldiers were moved to other places inside the ba

South Koreans celebrated the Buddha's birthday Saturday after a one-month delay caused by the new coronavirus outbreaks, with many praying for the Buddha's wisdom to help weather the pandemic. Congregants held celebrations at more than 20,000 temples across the nation to mark the Buddha's 2,564th birthday after a monthlong session to pray for the world to quickly emerge from the COVID-19 scourge. At the Jogye Temple, the headquarters of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism in central Seoul, so

A North Korean newspaper carried a report Saturday on the 2018 death of a senior military officer who led an Army corps linked to the deadly artillery shelling of a South Korean border island a decade ago. The Rodong Sinmun, the daily of the North's ruling Workers' Party, reported that Ri Song-guk, who led the 4th Corps in charge of defending the areas near the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea, the inter-Korean maritime boundary, died in October 2018. He was 52. Ri, who took command of th

A spokesperson of North Korea's foreign ministry backed China's controversial security legislation for Hong Kong Saturday, calling it a "legitimate step" and voicing opposition to "outside interference." In an answer to a question from the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the spokesperson also said that any country has no right to "say this or that" about the issue concerning the semiautonomous Chinese territory. On Thursday, China's legislatur

South Korea's daily number of new coronavirus cases dropped below 40 Saturday, amid a stepped-up push to contain cluster infections traced to a distribution center just west of Seoul and fend off a potential virus resurgence. The country logged 39 additional COVID-19 cases, down 19 from the previous day, bringing the total caseload to 11,441, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). The latest tally marked a drop from the nearly two-month high of 79 on Thursda

North Korea on Friday lashed out at the United States for issuing an advisory last month over the communist regime's cyber threats. "To put it clearly, our state has nothing to do at all with what is claimed by the US to be a cyber threat," Pyongyang's foreign ministry said in an English statement on its website. "The US should be clearly aware that worthless and worn-out plots and fabrications invented continuously by themselves will no longer work against the international c