Japan's vice foreign minister plans to visit Seoul this week to discuss an array of bilateral and regional issues, Seoul's foreign ministry said Sunday.   Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki will fly to Seoul on Monday for a one-day visit to have talks with his South Korean counterpart, Cho Tae-yong, according to the foreign ministry.   The planned meeting comes as bilateral relations have been at their lowest ebb in recent years due to Japan's attempts to deny its wartime atrocities, s

United States hopes that the ongoing negotiations over revising its nuclear cooperation accord with South Korea can be completed early next year, the U.S.ambassador to Seoul said Sunday.   Seoul and Washington have entered the final stretch of renewing the 1974 accord over Seoul's civilian nuclear energy use, but the two sides are widely expected to miss the year-end target of concluding the talks due to several issues, such as whether to allow Seoul to reprocess spent nuke fuel.   Mark Lippert,

An international commission has asked South Korea's Constitutional Court to provide a translation of its recent ruling to disband a political party accused of exercising pro-North Korean principles, officials said Sunday.The Venice Commission, made up of independent specialists, advises countries on constitutional matters. According to the officials, the commission has asked to see the full ruling statement as soon as possible. South Korea is a member of the 47-state organization.South Korea's C

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thanked South Korean aid officials for joining the global fight against the Ebola virus, saying the contribution is "very meaningful," Seoul's foreign ministry said Sunday.On Saturday, Ban met with a team of three officials from South Korea's foreign and health ministries at a hotel in Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone.The officials arrived in the West African country last week to help a 10-member medical team that South Korea dispatched to the Ebola-h

South Korea called on North Korea Friday to follow Cuba’s footsteps in improving ties with the U.S. and other nations.The U.S. and Cuba announced their decision earlier this week to end five decades of Cold War hostility and revive diplomatic ties.It has effectively made North Korea the only diplomatically isolated nation on the planet. “With this latest decision, (we) expect acceleration of Cuba’s fence-mending with the international community and hope that North Korea would actively join the t

NEW YORK (Yonhap) ― North Korea has recently replaced the deputy chief of its mission to the United Nations in New York, diplomatic sources said Wednesday, a personnel change that followed the recent U.N. passage of a unusually strong human rights resolution against the communist country.“Around two weeks ago, North Korean deputy ambassador to the U.N., Ri Tong-il, was replaced and he returned to the North,” one of the sources, well-versed in U.N. matters, told Yonhap News Agency. “As far as I k

South Korea’s foreign minister left for Jordan on Thursday in a seven-day visit to the Middle East to discuss ways of cooperating and security issues in the region, officials said.The trip will also take Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se to Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, foreign ministry officials said.The move is part of Seoul’s efforts to expand its scope of diplomatic activities to the Middle East where tension between Israel and Palestine has recently intensified and the extremist Islamic S

South Korea called on China on Thursday to take "strong and effective" measures to clamp down on Chinese fishermen's suspected illegal fishing in the waters off South Korea's west coast, Seoul's foreign ministry said.  South Korea made the request during a meeting with China in Shanghai. The two also exchanged views on how to cooperate better in the fishery field, the foreign ministry said.  One of the major topics of the talks was Seoul's consistent concerns about Chinese fishermen's illegal fi

South Korea expressed hopes Thursday that an agreement between the United States and Cuba to restore their diplomatic ties could help create an atmosphere that leads to an improvement in Seoul-Havana relations.   In a surprise move, the U.S. and Cuba announced the agreement Wednesday to restore their diplomatic relations that were severed in 1961. The two countries have harbored ideological animosity toward one another since Fidel Castro seized power through the 1959 revolution and chose to walk

South Korea's foreign minister left for Jordan on Thursday in a seven-day visit to the Middle East to discuss ways of cooperating and security issues in the region, officials said.   The trip will also take Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se to Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, foreign ministry officials said.   The move is part of Seoul's efforts to expand its scope of diplomatic activities to the Middle East where tension between Israel and Palestine has recently intensified and the extremist Isl