South Korea is seeking to set up a contingency team to improve its consular service for South Koreans traveling overseas, the ambassador for consular affairs said Tuesday."(We) plan to establish an emergency situation room at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to respond in a timely manner to overseas accidents, including terrorist attacks or earthquakes," Ambassador for Overseas Koreans and Consular Affairs Han Dong-man said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency.The situation room can i

A South Korean Foreign Ministry official has summoned a senior official from the Taipei Mission in Seoul to lodge a protest against the sexual assault of two South Korean tourists by a taxi driver in Taipei, the ministry said Monday.Chung Jin-kyu, an official at the ministry's Overseas Koreans and Consular Affairs Bureau, met with the deputy head of the Taipei Mission and demanded that Taiwan punish the taxi driver and ensure that similar accidents do not recur. It was not immediately clear how

The popularity of Chinese President Xi Jinping plunged among South Koreans recently as Beijing has taken a series of retaliatory measures against Seoul over a plan to deploy an advanced US missile defense system here, a poll showed Monday.In January, Xi received 4.25 points on a scale of 1 to 10, designed to gauge the level of the Chinese president's likability among South Koreans, according to the poll by the private-run Asan Institute for Policy Studies. A month earlier, the number was 4.16.It

The Georgian Embassy in Seoul honored a scholar last week for translating a literary masterpiece and smoothing cultural exchanges between Georgia and Korea. Georgian Ambassador to Korea Nikoloz Apkhazava bestowed Thursday the Presidential Order of Honor to Cho Ju-kwan, a professor of Russian language and literature at Yonsei University. Cho adapted into Korean “The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin,” a national treasure written in the 12th century by Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli.Rustaveli was a pre-em

One of the first things Indonesian Ambassador John Aristianto Prasetio did upon starting his post in Korea was streamlining the visa application process at the embassy. Prasetio also talked to his government to make it easy for Korean banks to open branches in Indonesia. “As a businessman, I like competition,” he told The Korea Herald. “These are some of the small steps I have taken as a new ambassador, but which would have big impacts down the road.” Indonesian Ambassador John Aristianto Praset

Marking the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year, the ASEAN-Korea Center in Seoul sent a mission to Singapore and Indonesia last week to strengthen cooperation in tourism and smart city development. Under the theme of “Shaping our tourism journey together,” the event in Singapore from Jan. 16 to Friday brought together tourism professionals, ministers and bureaucrats, as well as dialogue partners from Korea, Japan, China and Russia. Since it was launched in 20

Time is of the essence in dealing with geopolitical and security challenges facing the Northeast Asian region, the outgoing top US envoy to South Korea said Friday, adding that the current situation warrants more efforts by Washington and Seoul to strengthen their alliance.Ambassador Mark Lippert noted that he remains optimistic about the future of the two allies, citing a strong foundation and mechanisms that will help them iron out any differences of opinions taking place under any administrat

Tokyo has complained to Seoul about a reference to Dokdo as South Korean territory on the latter's Olympic website, a report said Friday.Citing multiple sources, Kyodo News said the Japanese foreign ministry has asked South Korea to stop referring to the islets as South Korean territory on the website of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.Dokdo, which lies closer to South Korea in the East Sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, has long been a source of tension between the neighbors. This

South Korea's foreign ministry is pushing to hold high-level talks with the United States "as soon as possible" after Donald Trump takes office and the meetings could come as early as next month, a ministry official said Friday.Negotiations are underway to arrange meetings between Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and the secretaries of state and defense under the Trump administration, according to the official. Trump is to take office on Friday (local time)."(We) are having close communication with

The United States is prepared for any North Korean missile launch, including the possibility of shooting it down if it were coming toward the USor allies, the Pentagon said Thursday.Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook made the remark after the US and South Korea picked up signs that the North has readied two new ballistic missiles with an intercontinental range for possible test-firing from mobile launchers.The move suggests the North could carry out a threatened ICBM test earlier than expected.

South Korea will speed up high-level talks with the new US administration in a bid to keep the bilateral alliance strong, the foreign ministry said Thursday."Following the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump as US president, the South Korean government plans to seek consultations and coordination between Seoul and Washington in a speedy manner at the minister level as well as higher-ranking policymakers," Cho June-hyuck, spokesman at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a briefing. "Through

South Korea's foreign ministry said on Thursday that it is "not desirable" to link the current diplomatic friction over a girl statue symbolizing Japan's wartime sexual slavery with the issue of Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo which are claimed by Tokyo. "We would like to point out that the two issues are completely different in that the girl statue is a universal human rights issue related to comfort women victimized by Japan's military, while Dokdo is a matter associated with our territori

South Korea's foreign ministry said Thursday that it will hold a meeting of diplomats in charge of more than a dozen of its overseas missions this week to discuss the country's multilateral diplomatic strategies and policy direction.Top envoys of 16 overseas missions, including the permanent mission to the United Nations, the permanent delegation to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and embassies in the Netherlands and Thailand, will gather in New York on Friday (local t