China is apparently dragging its feet in punishing those involved in the sinking of a South Korean Coast Guard vessel which took place during a crackdown on illegal fishing, Seoul officials and observers said Tuesday. In early October, the 4.5-ton speed boat that was engaged in an operation to capture fishing boats operating illegally in waters off the country's west coast sank when a larger Chi...

US President-elect Donald Trump will hold a "private meeting" with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday evening, the transition team said. "This evening, the president-elect will be meeting, it will be a private meeting, with Japanese Prime Minister Abe," said Jason Miller, communications director of the transition team, during a daily conference call briefing. "To be clear, we recogni...

Some Korean-Americans supported Donald Trump's surprise election as US president and are expected to be given roles in the incoming government. Most representative of them are Lisa Shin, an eye doctor living in New Mexico; Michelle Park Steel, vice chair of California's Orange County Board of Supervisors; RNC Asian and Pacific Islander Communications Director Jason Chung; and Marcia Lee Kelly, d...

Donald Trump is heading toward a surprise victory in Tuesday's US presidential election, winning one battleground state after another in what would be one of the biggest upsets in American election history. Trump has so far picked up 232 electoral votes against Hillary Clinton's 209. The billionaire real-estate tycoon won such key states as Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, and was leading in W...

The US Embassy in South Korea said Thursday that it will hold an event next week where its officials and experts along with local college students can enjoy a live broadcast of the presidential election and the ensuing vote count together. In time for the US presidential election slated for Tuesday (local time), the 2016 US Election Watch event will be held in a hotel in central Seoul on Wednesd...

A South Korean official has been elected as a member of the executive board at the International Monetary Fund, the finance ministry here said Wednesday. The IMF appointed 24 directors who are elected by 189 member countries, including Choi Hee-nam, former deputy finance minister of South Korea, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. The executive board, in which the 24 directors re...

The Philippines is seeking to set up a new contact point linking the country's police with foreign embassies inside the country in a bid to better protect foreign tourists and expatriates, a senior official at the Phillippine foreign affairs department said. "Right now, we have a plan to set up a contact point which would be the main contact point whenever there are any incidents involving forei...

A South Korean married couple living in the Philippines have been missing for months, the foreign ministry here said Monday, adding that it is working in cooperation with local authorities to discover their whereabouts. The couple was last seen in April when they took a ship leaving from Samar Island located near the Philippines' southern island of Mindanao, according to the ministry. They are ...

The United States is campaigning hard against a proposed UN General Assembly resolution banning nuclear weapons, pressuring treaty allies like South Korea, Japan and NATO members to vote against the resolution, a new report said. The resolution, led by Austria, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, calls for the formal launch of negotiations on a nuclear ban in 2017. The UN General Assembly is expect...

South Korea provided the United Nations with $192.85 million worth of goods and services in 2015, accounting for only around 1 percent of the global body's total procurement of the year, an official report showed Sunday. The figure marks an 8.9 percent increase from the volume of the UN's procurement from South Korea, according to an annual statistical report by the UN Office for Project Service...

South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Friday expressed her "deep" condolences to Thailand over the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, saying his leadership for the Southeast Asian country's harmony will always be remembered. The king, the world's longest-reigning monarch, died peacefully at a hospital in the Thai capital of Bangkok on Thursday, according to a statement from the country's royal ...

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused South Korea of "laughing at how stupid we are," as he renewed the wrong-headed claims that the free trade pact with the Asian ally ended up hurting the US Trump has long blamed free trade deals as a key cause of American economic problems in an attempt to rally support from voters struggling with economic woes and criticize his Democr...