Veteran spy Gina Haspel will become the first female director of the CIA after six Democrats joined Republicans in a Senate confirmation vote that overrode concerns about her role in the spy agency's harsh interrogation program after 9/11. Thursday's 54-45 vote split both parties, and the margin was the closest for a CIA nominee in the nearly seven decades that a nod from the Senate has been req...

US business leaders on Tuesday said South Koreans may be able to enter the United States without having to stand in long lines or speak with customs officials at airports starting early next year. To sidestep lines, the "difficult and sometimes threatening" interviews when they enter the US, about 1,000 out of seven million Koreans with valid passports have enrolled in the global entry program w...

PARIS (AP) -- The man behind a deadly knife attack in central Paris was born in Chechnya and had been on police radar for radicalism, and his parents have been detained for questioning, French authorities said Sunday. Counterterrorism investigators are working to determine whether the man who stabbed five people in a busy neighborhood in the heart of the French capital Saturday night had any...

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) -- At least nine people were killed and more than 30 injured when militants detonated bombs and stormed a government building Sunday in a continuing attack in an eastern Afghan city, officials said. A thick column of smoke rose into the sky after two explosions near Jalalabad‘s directorate of finance, the Nangarhar provincial governor’s spokesman Attaullah Khogyani ...

A statue honoring Korean women who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II will be displayed at the Capitol Building in Washington next month, according to a New York-based Korean-American group. “The upcoming exhibition of the statue will be a historic moment, just as the moment back in 2007 when the US House of Representatives approved a resolution urging Japan t...

Iran on Saturday welcomed steps towards detente between North and South Korea but warned that the United States was unqualified to play a role since it did not "respect its commitments." The foreign ministry said the meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South's President Moon Jae-in was "a responsible and effective step towards regional and global stability." But ministry spo...

Regional powers welcomed Friday’s Panmunjeom Declaration, but advised caution. US President Donald Trump reacted quickly to the developments with tweets. “After a furious year of missile launches and Nuclear testing, a historic meeting between North and South Korea is now taking place. Good things are happening, but only time will tell!” Trump wrote on Twitter, just over an hour after the decl...

South Korean-born musician Sarah Yunji Moon was at home playing her flute in Saskatoon, Canada, when she first heard the tragic news on Monday -- that at least 10 died after a man drove a van into pedestrians near Yonge and Finch area in Toronto, a district widely considered as a mini Koreatown. The principal flutist at the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra used to live there during her high school...

US intelligence officials appear to be in Pyongyang negotiating preparations for the US-North Korea summit, according to a Japanese media report. Washington is currently arranging a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The meeting, if successfully arranged, is expected to take place by early June, about a month after the inter-Korean summit, which is set for Friday. According to...

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe courted the new American president with a golden driver not long after Donald Trump won the White House. He‘s met with the billionaire businessman more than any other world leader, and he is Trump’s second-most frequent caller. Yet the “bromance” between Trump and Abe has its limits. Trump appeared to be successful Tuesday in reas...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump said that although he‘s looking ahead optimistically to a historic summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un he could still pull out if he feels it’s “not going to be fruitful.” Trump said that CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Kim "got along really well" in their recent secret meeting, and he declared, "We‘ve never been in a position like this"...

For Remia Castor, a Filipina farmer living along the Jalaur, the river is not just a source of water. It is where she and her family have built their lives and culture for generations. Today, the river is in crisis, she says, because of a dam construction project funded by the Korean government as part of its official development assistance in the Philippines. “My ancestors have lived in ...