Seoul said Thursday it had deployed a warship to Libya in an apparent show of force to secure the release of a South Korean national kidnapped along with three Filipinos in the North African country. The 4,000-tonne vessel, Munmu the Great, which takes part in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, was now on its way to Libya, officials said. In addition to “carrying out its duty of protec...

WASHINGTON -- Two bipartisan United States senators have been chosen to co-chair a congressional study group on Korea, becoming the first members of the Senate to join the body. Sens. Brian Schatz and Dan Sullivan will lead the Congressional Study Group on Korea launched in February by the Association of Former Members of Congress, a bipartisan nonprofit. Dan Sullivan (AP) "The Republic of Kor...

South Korea’s human rights watchdog said Sunday it plans to conduct a probe into a group defection by North Korean restaurant workers in 2016 amid allegations that some of them were duped into coming to the South. The National Human Rights Commission said it has decided to investigate the case to determine if they came to the South voluntarily or if a state agency was illegally involved in the d...

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AFP) -- China has donated 6.86 million euros ($7.95 million) to Cameroon‘s army to boost its “peacekeeping and security operations”, state radio reported Thursday. The donation was made on Wednesday by China’s ambassador to the central African country, Wang Ying Wu, in a meeting with Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo, CRTV reported. The ambassador told state radio that th...

PATNA, India (AP) -- Security forces killed eight Maoist insurgents, including four women, in an exchange of gunfire early Thursday in their stronghold in central India, a police officer said. The two-hour gunbattle took place in a forest in Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh state after security forces encircled the rebel hideout, police officer D.M. Awasthy said. Security forces found t...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says while he finds Holocaust denial “deeply offensive,” he doesn‘t believe that such content should be banned from Facebook. Speaking with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said in an interview published Wednesday that he thinks there are things “that different people get wrong.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Yonhap) He added tha...

JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel‘s parliament on Thursday adopted a law defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people, provoking fears it could lead to blatant discrimination against Arab citizens. Arab lawmakers and Palestinians called the law “racist” and said it legalised “apartheid” following a tumultuous debate in parliament. Others said it neglects to specify equality and Israe...

Another elderly Korean victim of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery has died, the Ministry of Gender Equality announced Sunday. The death of Kim Bok-deuk, 99, puts the number of known surviving victims at 27. This year alone, four other victims have died, including Choi Duk-nye, who passed away in late April. Kim was born in 1918 in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and was forcibly taken by ...

WASHINGTON (Yonhap) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday discussed the importance of fully implementing sanctions on North Korea in a phone call with his Chinese counterpart. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Yonhap Pompeo spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and exchanged views on ongoing efforts to achieve the "shared goal of the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denucle...

GENEVA, June 29, 2018 (AFP) - Member states of the United Nations migration agency on Friday rejected President Donald Trump‘s nominee for director general, repudiating historic American control of the organisation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) had been led by an American throughout the agency’s 67-year history with one exception from 1961 to 1969. But Trump‘s pick Ken Isa...

VATICAN CITY (AFP) -- French President Emmanuel Macron made his first official visit to the Vatican on Tuesday where he held an unusually long meeting with Pope Francis. The tete-a-tete between the Argentine pontiff and Macron in the Vatican‘s ornate library lasted 57 minutes -- the longest between Francis and a head of state. Past talks between the pope and a president have never exceeded 50...

HANOI (AFP) -- Flash floods and landslides killed 15 people in Vietnam‘s mountainous north, officials said Tuesday, after storms ravaged homes and wiped out crops and infrastructure. At least 12 people are still missing after the weekend floods, and hundreds of police and soldiers have been deployed to help clean-up efforts. Vietnam is frequently lashed by harsh weather in the rainy season be...

A Korean Air plane carrying 176 passengers and 13 crew members made an emergency landing at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport Saturday night. No injuries were reported, according to Kyodo News. The Boeing 777-200 heading from Seoul’s Gimpo Airport to Tokyo was forced to land 25 minutes ahead of schedule at 8:40 p.m. Saturday after a fire alarm went off in the cockpit. There was no actual fire on the plane...

Four South Koreans have died and four others have been injured in a traffic accident in Oregon, the United States, Seoul's foreign ministry said Saturday. According to the ministry, a minivan carrying the eight people collided with a pickup truck in Oregon's Clatsop County at around 11:00 a.m. on Friday (local time). (Reuters) The four people taken to hospitals sustained injuries that are not ...

The foreign ministry said Sunday that there are no reports of South Korean passengers on a plane that crashed in Cuba. "The South Korean Embassy in Mexico confirmed through the Cuban government that there were no South Korean passengers," said an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Rescue teams search through the wreckage site of a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a cassava field with mo...