A Seoul court summoned former chiefs of national defense and maritime police for questioning on Friday, after prosecutors filed for a warrant to arrest them in an investigation into North Korea’s killing of South Korean fisheries official Lee Dae-jun two years ago. Appearing at the Seoul central district court at around 9:40 a.m., Seo Wook, who was minister of national defense at the time, decli...

S. Korea urges China, Russia to stop forcibly repatriating North Korean defectors

The family of Lee Dae-jun, a South Korean fisheries official slain at sea two years ago, talked Thursday about meeting with Seoul’s new North Korea human rights envoy, Lee Shin-wha. Lee Rae-jin, the late official’s brother, said he and the family’s lawyer Kim Ki-yun spoke with the ambassador-at-large on North Korean human rights issues for about an hour on Wednesday. “She said that bickering am...

North Korea has held a Cabinet meeting to assess its economic performance so far this year and called for utmost efforts to achieve its goals in the remaining months, its state media reported Thursday. At the expanded plenary meeting of the Cabinet held the previous day, Vice Premier Pak Jong-gun made a report on the economic performance and plans for the third and fourth quarters of this year a...

Pyongyang fires more than 900 artillery shells into inter-Korean buffer zones since Friday

A key missile defense radar system, emplaced in a southern city last year, went into full-fledged operation earlier this month, Seoul officials said Wednesday amid growing North Korean nuclear and missile threats. The ground-based Green Pine radar in Busan, 390 kilometers south of Seoul, is now running at full capacity. It was delivered to the city late last year, but had to go through testing a...

WASHINGTON -- The United States maintains a whole range of responses it may take when necessary against North Korean provocations, a Department of Defense spokesperson said Tuesday. Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder also said the US continues to closely monitor the recalcitrant country for actions that may warrant such a response. "In terms of how we respond to individual provocations, for example, missile ...

North Korea's military said Wednesday it fired artillery shots overnight into maritime buffer zones near the inter-Korean border as a "serious warning" over South Korea's ongoing military drills. In a statement, a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) said the North's military launched a "threatening and warning" fire as its "powerful military countermeasure" against ...

Seoul prosecutors on Tuesday sought an arrest warrant for former chiefs of national defense and maritime police in an investigation surrounding the killing of South Korean fisheries official Lee Dae-jun by North Korean soldiers two years ago. The Seoul central prosecutors’ office said in a message to reporters that they were seeking an arrest warrant for Seo Wook, who served as minister of natio...

240 combat aircraft including F-35 stealth fighter jets will be mobilized

An attempted cyberattack that occurred during the recent outage of South Korea’s biggest messenger service KakaoTalk may have been the work of North Korean hackers, a news outlet has reported. According to Radio Free Asia, various individuals working in services related to the communist country, along with several North Korean defectors received an email claiming to have been sent by the Kakao t...

Democratic Party lawmakers rally outside Yoon office in protest of investigations

The South Korean military kicked off the annual major Hoguk field training exercise to enhance its combat readiness and joint force capabilities to counter North Korea’s escalating missile and nuclear threats, the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced on Monday. The 12-day Hoguk exercise will continue until Oct. 28 with the participation of the Army, Navy and Air Force and Marine Corps amid simmering ...

Unification Minister Kwon Young-se plans to meet with families of South Koreans detained in North Korea this week and explain the government's commitment to resolving the issue, his office said Monday. Kwon plans to meet with family members of two out of six detainees Friday in a bid to console them and express the government's willingness to win their release, according to Seoul's unification m...

N. Korea expresses confidence in Xi's power consolidation in letter celebrating opening of party congress