BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- The youngest son and heir apparent of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il appears to have fathered a daughter last year with his reported wife, an informed source here said Wednesday.Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, has cemented his status as leader-in-waiting sin

South Korea will set up a fund as early as this year to begin raising up to 55 trillion won ($50 billion) to pay for its eventual reunification with North Korea. Individual Koreans at home and abroad will be able to make donations to the fund and the government in Seoul may earmark money including budget surpluses, Unification Minister Yu Woo Ik said in his first interview since being sworn in on Sept. 19. While foreigners will also be allowed to donate, there is no plan to ask overseas governme

More than 120 diplomats who formerly served as South Korean ambassadors released a statement calling on China to stop sending North Koreans back against their will, a civic group here said Tuesday. A total of 127 ex-ambassadors accused the Chinese government of violating international law by sending back the refugees.“It is the international society’s unchangeable custom to protect and shelter refugees,” the diplomats said in the statement released during a press conference here. The statement c

A group of South Korean Protestant church leaders will make a rare visit this week to North Korea, a local council of churches said Tuesday, in another sign of thawing tensions between the two Koreas.The group is scheduled to visit Pyongyang from Wednesday to Saturday where they will hold a joint pr

South Korea’s chief of North Korean affairs will visit the United States this week to discuss Seoul’s recent policies on Pyongyang and pending regional issues, the Unification Ministry here said Monday. The visit will be first to the U.S. by South Korean Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik, who took over the post from his hardline predecessor last month. President Lee Myung-bak’s appointment of Yu has been seen as an indication of Seoul’s softening stance toward North Korea.Yu has repeated a willingn

North Korea on Saturday denounced large-scale military exercises under way in South Korea as a “very dangerous preliminary war for invasion,” demanding the South halt the drills immediately or face “catastrophic consequences.”South Korea launched the Hoguk exercises across the country on Thursday for a nine-day run. On Friday, thousands of troops conducted maneuvers off the country’s northernmost island of Baengnyeong near the tense western sea border with North Korea. The exercises “are a very

With just one year left before the 2012 deadline set by which North Korea says it will become a "strong and prosperous state," the Pyongyang regime is focused on securing U.S. dollars and gold, a source said Sunday."North Korea is putting all its energies on setting aside finances necessary for larg

Russia is optimistic about North Korea’s recent talks with the South and the United States over its nuclear weapons programs, Seoul’s top nuclear envoy said Saturday. Returning from his three-day visit to Russia, Lim Sung-nam said, “Russia is viewing the two rounds of South-North and North-U.S. talks positively,” in a phone interview with the Yonhap news agency.Lim left for Russia earlier this week as part of policy coordination efforts with member nations of six-party talks on ending North Kore

The number of overseas-based websites glorifying the North Korean regime has been increasing rapidly, a police report here showed Sunday. With their servers based in foreign countries, South Korean authorities have faced difficulties in dealing with the Korean-language websites legally. Police detected 58 such sites from 2007 until September of this year, and blocked South Korean Internet users’ access to 37 of such websites, according to documents submitted by the National Police Agency to an o

A North Korean defector asked South Korean prosecutors to investigate a government-affiliated organization for its alleged leaking of personal information on defectors like himself, investigators said Sunday. The unnamed leader of a defectors’ group has accused the North Korean Refugees Foundation of handing over personal information on about 4,100 North Korea defectors to a private research institute for about a year from last August, according to Seoul Jongno Police Station. Police are current

South Korea’s top nuclear envoy left for Russia Wednesday to coordinate their joint strategy on how to revive the stalled six-party talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. The three-day visit by Lim Sung-nam to Moscow came a day after North Korea and the United States concluded two days of “very positive” talks in Geneva, but no agreement to restart the six-nation negotiations, involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, was reached. The Geneva talks followed up

TRIPOLI, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has banned its citizens in Libya from returning home in an apparent attempt to prevent the popular uprisings in the Arab world from reaching the isolated regime, a source said Wednesday.The development illustrated the North's concern about possible social unr

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (Yonhap) -- After two days of high-level talks in Geneva, North Korea and the United States said Tuesday that there was some progress but no concrete deal.The North's chief delegate said the meetings produced "big progress," but U.S. officials chose more diplomatic and careful wo

GENEVA/SEOUL -- North Korean and U.S. diplomats on Tuesday began a second day of talks during which Washington wants to see whether the North is indeed prepared to take concrete steps toward denuclearization before the stalled six-nation talks can resume.North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gw

An online global network of activists called on the international community Tuesday to stage simultaneous protests and hunger strikes against North Korea’s human rights abuses to mark the anniversary of a United Nations genocide convention in December.In an e-mail to journalists and other North Korea watchers, the N.K. Liberation Prayer Network urged readers to take part in its Worldwide Demonstration for North Korean Liberation and Human Rights on Dec. 9. The date marks the 63rd anniversary sin