Rival parties continue finger-pointing over cross-border offensive

Agreement sealed 5 years ago in Pyongyang was centerpiece to Moon Jae-in's NK policy

White House officials deny joint exercise that Seoul is not nuclear power, according to reports

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Friday night that the multiple unidentified aircraft flying over the sky was a successful test of its solid-fuel space rocket. The test flight is a follow-up to another launch conducted on March 30. The ministry added that the launch was conducted to strengthen national defense capabilities in areas like independent space-based surveillance and reconnaissance....

South Korea's veterans ministry has chosen a unified Belgium-Luxembourg battalion as next month's Korean War hero for its contribution to key defense operations during the 1950-53 conflict, officials said Friday. The battalion consisted of 700 Belgian troops and 48 Luxembourg soldiers, who were mobilized to fight under the UN banner in support of South Korea. It was credited with blocking enemy ...

President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered South Korean military to protect the peace on the peninsula by preparing overwhelming war capabilities, during a visit to a defense development agency on Thursday in the wake of Pyongyang's airspace invasion. “If we are to achieve peace, we must prepare for war with overwhelming superiority,” Yoon said. “We must clearly realize that a disguised peace cannot protec...

But the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea has continued to denounce Yoon for not taking proper actions against the infiltration of North Korean UAVs or countermeasures during the parliamentary briefing. “Five drones came down, but we were unable to shoot down any of them. The president, as the commander in chief of the country’s armed forces, should have something to say,” Rep. Sul Hoon ...

Despite military’s civil damage concerns, it seems to have no other means left for interception, experts say

South Korea conducted regular military drills earlier this week to enhance the defense of its easternmost islets of Dokdo, an informed source said Friday, following Japan's renewed claims to the East Sea outcroppings in a revised security document. Personnel of the Navy and Coast Guard staged the biannual drills on Thursday after Tokyo renewed its claims to Dokdo in the revised National Security...

South Korea will embark on a 347.7 billion-won ($271.4 million) project Thursday to locally develop a minesweeping helicopter by 2026 for enhanced naval operations, the state arms procurement agency said. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration is set to sign a contract with Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd., the country's sole aircraft maker, to begin the project aimed at bolstering the Na...

The prosecution investigating the preceding government's handling of the killing of a fisheries official by North Korean soldiers has secured testimony that the defense ministry itself had attempted to delete related intelligence reports even before the National Security Council ordered their removal, officials said Wednesday. The official, Lee Dae-jun, was fatally shot by the North Korean coast...

South Korea's military on Tuesday held ceremonies to lay to rest the remains of eight service members killed in the 1950-53 Korean War following their excavation from former battle sites, the Army said. The ceremonies took place at Seoul National Cemetery in the capital and Daejeon National Cemetery in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul. The remains of three of the fallen troops were interre...

South Korea has successfully completed a 180 billion-won ($138 million) project to develop an air-to-ground guided missile to be fitted on a homegrown light armed helicopter, the state arms procurement agency said Monday. The missile, named Cheongeom, passed a combat suitability assessment on Dec. 12, capping more than seven years of development efforts led by the state-run Agency for Defense De...

Navy SEALs of South Korea and the United States recently concluded a two-week bilateral exercise designed to strengthen their interoperability, officials said Sunday. The US Indo-Pacific Command said a West-Coast based SEAL team and the South Korean Naval Special Warfare Flotilla concluded their bilateral session on Dec. 9 On its website, the US command noted that the exercise included static a...

After a two-month long initial inter-agency investigation, the South Korean military announced during a closed-door briefing Thursday the outcome regarding the malfunction of a Hyunmoo 2-C ballistic missile. Further full-scale inspections to determine the precise cause of the accident will occur December to March next year. The military will focus on examining missile navigation, control and gui...