South Korea’s National Assembly on Friday voted to discard a set of bills aimed at giving the state broadcasting regulator more power in choosing heads of public broadcasters. The bills were vetoed by President Yoon Suk Yeol and sent back to the Assembly for a revote. They were initially proposed by the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, which controls the parliamentary majority. The ruling People Power Party protested the bills as having the potential to increase government influe

Politics Dec. 8, 2023

South Korea’s ruling party on Friday announced a fresh batch of recruits to run in the 2024 general election. Among the five recruits disclosed by the People Power Party’s parliamentary recruitment committee is Park Chung-kwon, a North Korean defector who worked in intercontinental ballistic missile research at the National Defense University in Pyongyang. The 37-year-old has been a researcher at Hyundai Steel since he escaped from North Korea in 2009. The committee said Park was &ld

Politics Dec. 8, 2023

The South Korean national inspection service concluded Thursday that the previous Moon Jae-in administration attempted to cover up North Korea’s killing of a South Korean government official in 2020, after failing to make rescue efforts while the official was in North Korean captivity. In its final report, the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea accused the preceding administration of mishandling the events leading to and after the death of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries official.

Politics Dec. 7, 2023

The high court in Seoul on Wednesday ruled against Apple in a damages suit filed by consumers here over allegations the US tech giant purposefully degraded the performance of older iPhones in a controversy that came to be known as “batterygate.” The Seoul high court on this day called on Apple to pay 70,000 won ($53) each to seven iPhone owners who were part of the lawsuit that accused the company of slowing down the devices through software updates. The owners then alleged that the

Politics Dec. 6, 2023

The head of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kim Myung-soo, on Tuesday visited the Capital Defense Command to assess readiness against enemy uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, infiltrating Seoul's airspace. The JCS chairman called for thorough preparations for countering possible enemy threats that could arise in Seoul and nearby areas, especially in the skies. Over his visit to the command force in the capital, he said close coordination among the military, police and government

Politics Dec. 5, 2023

The descendant of a veteran who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War was tapped on Monday to head the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office nominated Kang Jung-ai, a 66-year-old business professor and the former president of Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, to replace Park Min-shik, who has been handling affairs related to veterans and their families since 2022. If her appointment is confirmed, she would be the second to lead the government age

Politics Dec. 4, 2023

Prosecutors searched an office in Gyeonggi Province on Monday as part of a criminal investigation surrounding the province's former governor and the current chairperson of the Democratic Party of Korea, Rep. Lee Jae-myung. The main opposition chief’s spouse, Kim Hye-kyung, and at least one of his close aides are accused of having misappropriated the province’s public funds while he was serving as governor. Prosecutors in Suwon in Gyeonggi Province said they seized records of pay

Politics Dec. 4, 2023

South Korea’s ruling party is seeking an amendment to laws that punish employers for serious industrial accidents that would give workplaces with fewer than 50 employees an exemption for another two years. In a statement issued after a high-level meeting with the concerned ministries on Sunday, the People Power Party said that smaller workplaces were not yet prepared to keep up with the laws enacted in January 2021. The party said that applying the laws indiscriminately could lead to closu

Politics Dec. 3, 2023

North Korea said Sunday a clash and even war with South Korea was only a “matter of time,” about a day after Seoul’s first military reconnaissance satellite was launched into orbit. The satellite, the first of the five South Korea is planning to send into space by 2025, lifted off from the US Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX rocket at 10:19 a.m. Friday and reached orbit soon after, according to the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul. The National Defense Ministry s

North Korea Dec. 3, 2023

Hanwha Ocean is leading a government research project on defense and security technology for building stealthy warships, according to the company on Wednesday. The 50-year-old shipbuilding company, acquired this year by Hanwha Group, said in a press release it signed the contract with the government’s Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement. The project, which is to be completed by May 2028 under the contract, aims to design new demagnetizing equipment for

Defense Nov. 29, 2023

Adding to renewed tensions between the two Koreas, North Korean soldiers guarding the truce village appeared armed Tuesday, as Seoul expressed its willingness to reciprocate Pyongyang’s redeployment of surveillance posts and heavy weapons along the shared border. Reports said Tuesday that North Korean soldiers stationed in the Joint Security Area were armed with pistols, in the latest in a string of moves by Pyongyang to resume military activities paused by the 2018 inter-Korean agreement

Politics Nov. 28, 2023

South Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Park Jin is to meet with his Japanese and Chinese counterparts in Busan on Sunday. The upcoming meeting in the South Korean port city will mark the first gathering of the top diplomats of the three countries in four years and three months. The Foreign Ministry in Seoul said in a release Friday that Park will be speaking with Tokyo’s Yoko Kamikawa and Beijing’s Wang Yi over the weekend to discuss a possible trilateral summit of the count

Politics Nov. 24, 2023

Another South Korean government-run online service suffered an outage Friday, marking the fourth such failure within the past week. A website and mobile applications providing online ID services went down, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety. Friday’s breakdown in the government’s e-ID service comes a day after a website run by the Ministry of Economy and Finance-affiliated Public Procurement Service crashed on Thursday. The PPS website used by all government institution

Politics Nov. 24, 2023

North Korea said Thursday it would step away from an inter-Korean military agreement reached on Sept. 19, 2018, vowing to deploy new and more advanced weapons along the shared border. In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Thursday, North Korea’s Defense Ministry said its forces “will not be bound by” the agreement that created a buffer zone around the fortified border, and that all military measures “will be restored immediately” in a

Politics Nov. 23, 2023

Waleed Siam, the non-resident ambassador of Palestine to South Korea, said Monday that there was no connection between Hamas and North Korea, amid continued speculations of the Palestinian militant group’s alleged ties with the rogue country. “I can say in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian authorities that there is no contact between Hamas and North Korea,” the permanent general mission of Palestine said in an interview with The Korea Herald in

Politics Nov. 21, 2023