The military used antiseptics containing toxic substances over the past two years a government report said on Thursday. According to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, a public contractor had supplied the DAPA with antiseptics that were 7 to 40 percent industrial methanol, for two years, claiming it was produced with ethanol. The report submitted to the National Assembly’s National...

SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Yonhap) -- The military will place female officers in more combat duties that have so far been closed to them, a senior official said Thursday. Boo Jae-won, head of the personnel planning bureau at the defense ministry, said 12 combat branches will be open to female soldiers from 2012 to 2014. "We will open up artillery and armor branches of the Army to women," Boo said. "Our p...

SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Thursday proposed holding talks with Japan to discuss the issue of Tokyo's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, an issue that has long been one of the thorns in relations between the two nations. The Foreign Ministry called in Nobukatsu Kanehara, Japan's deputy chief of mission in Seoul, earlier in the day and delivered the proposal t...

A former chief of the national tax agency was cleared on Friday of charges that he offered an expensive painting to his boss while he tried to secure the top post before taking the helm. The Seoul Central District Court found former National Tax Service chief Han Sang-yool not guilty of bribing Jeon Goon-pyo with an abstract painting worth some 15 million won (US$13,537). Han had been indicted ...

PARIS (AFP) - A rattling good laugh with friends will help you deal with pain thanks to opiate-like chemicals that flood the brain, according to a British study released on Wednesday. Researchers carried out lab experiments in which volunteers watched either comedy clips from "Mr Bean" or "Friends," or non-humorous items such as golf or wildlife programmes, while their resistance to mild pain wa...

Several rockets fell near the South Korean embassy in Afghanistan this week, but no casualties were reported, a foreign ministry official said Thursday. Three or four rounds of rocket-propelled grenades landed close to the embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday, but they did not appear to be aimed at the building, the official said on the condition of anonymity. "The rockets were fired ...

The U.S. is poised to start flying a spy plane near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to acquire further intelligence on North Korea, a report said. In an article dated Monday, the Stars and Stripes, a U.S. military newspaper, quoted U.S. Air Force officials as saying the U.S. was negotiating with South Korea to fly Global Hawk spy aircraft near the DMZ and the deal was "very close" to being done. "...

MOSCOW (AFP) -- Russia will most likely write off North Korea's Soviet-era 11 billion-dollar-debt to clear the way for closer economic cooperation, Izvestia newspaper said on Wednesday. Moscow and Pyongyang discussed closer energy cooperation and the outstanding debt when North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong-Il travelled to eastern Siberia for rare talks with President Dmitry Medvedev last mo...

The presidential office has drawn up a list of unethical practices considered common in bureaucracy, such as personal use of official credit cards, and sent it to ministries and agencies as part of efforts to tighten discipline in officialdom, an official said Wednesday. “There are practices that ministries and agencies have long engaged in from the past but are problematic from the people’s vie...

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― A group of American scholars and dignitaries said Tuesday that they will launch a fresh campaign this week to boost the slow-moving efforts to construct the first formal Korean War museum in the United States. Dozens of former U.S. ambassadors to Seoul, scholars and others interested in Korea affairs have been seeking to build the Korean War National Museum since 1997....