The recent killing of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half brother with a toxic nerve agent constitutes a serious human rights violation, South Korea's unification minister said Friday."North Korea readily takes human lives in order to maintain power, and that's the reality of North Korea's human rights situation," Hong Yong-pyo told a forum in Seoul on the reclusive country's human rights conditions. (Yonhap)Kim Jong-nam, the first son of late former leader Kim Jong-il, died last month at an

The foreign ministry said Friday that it would be "most regrettable" if China is blocking its nationals from visiting South Korea as part of retaliatory actions against Seoul's move to host an advanced US antimissile system on its soil.On Thursday, media reports said that Beijing has ordered its local travel agencies to stop selling tour products for South Korea in what appears to be the latest action in a series of retaliations against the planned deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area D

South Korea's Bareun Party on Friday criticized the Chinese government for rolling out economic retaliations against Seoul in an apparent response to the scheduled deployment of an advanced US missile defense system.The remark came after China ordered its travel firms to suspend tours to South Korea after Seoul signed a land acquisition deal to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery last month. Rep. Choung Byoung-gug, the head of the Bareun Party (Yonhap)South Korea has been seekin

South Korea and the United States officially kicked off negotiations Thursday to finalize the terms of deploying the advanced American missile defense system THAAD in South Korea, the foreign ministry said. "With regard to the provision of land (for the deployment), a request has been filed to open negotiations between the Ministry of National Defense and the US Forces Korea in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement," foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said in a press briefing. "T

The top diplomats of South Korea and Spain have agreed to work together to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons program, the foreign ministry here said Thursday.The North Korean nuke issue and its human rights violations were among the main topics of discussion when South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfonso Dastis held talks in Madrid on Wednesday.South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se (L) and Spanish Minister of Foreign Aff

The Azerbaijani Embassy in Seoul, together with Korea’s National Assembly and Korea Post, organized a conference on Feb. 14 to mark the silver jubilee of bilateral ties and the 25th anniversary of the Khojaly Massacre. The event at the National Assembly in Seoul comprised two-part exhibitions featuring photos and videos on the massacre that took place in the town of Khojaly in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on Feb. 25-26, 1992, as well as the last 25 years of Azerbaijan’s development and cooperat

With North Korea scaling up its nuclear and missile capabilities, the United States should consider taking higher policy risks to break the security deadlock and tamp down the communist regime’s proliferating threat, according to a former director at the White House’s National Security Council.Victor Cha, speaking at a forum in Seoul on Feb. 17, said the new policy toward North Korea “should entail a higher level of risk acceptance,” as minimizing risk had restricted policy options and allowed P

To stop North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats from fueling a regional arms race, South Korea and its regional security partners should jointly address the issue and the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, a former South Korean foreign minister has said. Song Min-soon, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul and a foreign minister from 2006-8, said at a forum in Seoul on Feb. 15 that “the security of the world in a nuclear age cannot be achieved

A popular South Korean fantasy-romance drama, "Guardian: The Lonely and Great God," has disappeared from China's social media platform Weibo, industry sources said Monday, as it appears to have fallen prey to China's retaliation against Seoul's move to deploy an advanced US missile defense system.The drama's suspension came at a time when China has blocked access to newly updated clips of South Korean music and dramas on the country's online video sharing platforms. This provided image shows a p

The recent killing of the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be a key topic when South Korea, the United States and Japan hold trilateral strategy talks on how to deal with Pyongyang, an official said Sunday.Kim Hong-kyun, Seoul's chief negotiator on the North Korean nuclear issue, made the remark upon arriving in Washington for the trilateral talks with his US and Japanese counterparts Joseph Yun and Kenji Kanasugi, respectively. (Yonhap)The meeting, set for Monday, takes plac

Japan will decide when its top envoy will return to Seoul after seeing whether a statue symbolizing the victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery will be relocated in Busan. The move followed the delivery of an official letter from South Korea's foreign ministry to municipalities asking for the relocation, Japan's public broadcaster NHK said Sunday.South Korea's foreign ministry said Thursday it sent the letter to the Busan regional government, the city's dong ward office and the Busan municipal

China has blocked access to newly updated clips of South Korean music and dramas on the country's online video sharing platforms, sources said Sunday, in an apparent bid to retaliate against Seoul's move to deploy an advanced US missile defense system. The move followed China's decision to prevent South Korean pop stars from appearing on Chinese entertainment programs since October as South Korea decided in July last year to station the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on its soil.(Lov

Senior officials from South Korea, the United States and Japan will meet in Washington next week to coordinate their policies toward North Korea, including the recent assassination of its leader's half brother, according to the foreign ministry Thursday.The three countries' top envoys on the North Korean nuclear issue will sit together on Monday in their first joint meeting since the President Donald Trump administration took office last month. (Yonhap)"The meeting will be taking place very time

South Korea's foreign ministry has sent an official letter to local municipalities in the southeastern city of Busan, asking for cooperation in resolving diplomatic rifts with Japan over a statue symbolizing the victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery, officials said Thursday. In December, civic groups installed the girl statue in front of the Japanese consulate in the nation's second largest city. Japan demanded an immediate removal and recalled its ambassador to South Korea in protest last m

A US senator called Wednesday for adding North Korea back to the State Department list of states sponsoring terrorism, saying the regime's recent assassination of its leader's half brother shows its "brutality."Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), a leading voice in Congress for greater pressure on Pyongyang, made the comments to Yonhap News Agency after Malaysian police identified two additional North Koreans, including a diplomat, as suspects in the killing of Kim Jong-nam, the leader's estranged brother