Maintaining sanctions against North Korea is necessary to get it back to the negotiation table, a former US ambassador to Seoul has said, stressing the need for working-level talks to learn exactly what Pyongyang is willing to trade for sanctions relief.Negotiations on North Korea's nuclear programs have been stalled since February, when the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi broke down due to their failure to narrow gaps over the scope o

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed strong confidence Wednesday that the agreements he reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin in April will bear "rich fruit," and further advance their strategic and traditional relations, Pyongyang's state media reported. In a message of greeting sent to Putin on the occasion of Russia's national day, Kim also said that it is the two countries' "common responsibility" to "put the precious centuries-old tradition of friendshi

A ranking Democratic congressman on Tuesday expressed doubt that the inter-Korean industrial complex in North Korea will reopen before the regime's denuclearization.Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, met with a group of South Korean businessmen who used to operate factories at the Kaesong industrial park. The eight-member delegation was in the US to seek public and government support for the reopening of the complex that was shuttered in Februar

A North Korean fishing boat was found adrift in South Korean waters off the East Coast on Tuesday and was sent back to its country on humanitarian grounds, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.The boat carrying six crewmen was spotted by a South Korean naval vessel in waters some 5 kilometers south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the East Sea, or some 161 km northeast of the country's eastern port city of Sokcho, at around 1:15 p.m. due to an engine problem, according to the JCS. As

The question of how North Korea will respond to the death of former first lady Lee Hee-ho, who along with her late husband, President Kim Dae-jung, devoted her life to improving inter-Korean relations, is the focus of attention as Pyongyang has been lukewarm for months toward Seoul’s offers of cross-border cooperation. 　The Unification Ministry said Tuesday it had delivered the news of Lee’s death to the North in the morning through the inter-Korean liaison office in the North’

North Korea will hold elections next month to choose new deputies for local assemblies of provinces, cities and counties across the country, Pyongyang's state media reported Tuesday.The elections will be held July 21, the Korean Central News Agency reported.In the previous elections in July 2015, 28,452 deputies were elected for a four-year term. Elections in North Korea are considered a formality. The official voter turnaround in 2015 was 99.9 percent, with 100 percent voting for their candidat

North Korean defectors seek to return help they received; South Koreans raise awareness as neighbors

Tens of thousands of young North Koreans have been forced to join work brigades to build a huge resort complex in Wonsan, with leader Kim Jong-un harboring ambitions of transforming the port city into a source of foreign currency, British paper the Times reported Sunday. Located on the southeastern coast of North Korea, the Wonsan region has been the focus of the North Korean regime’s tourism push, with an aim to complete the project by October 2020.  After a rare trip by Western medi

Vice Unification Minister Suh Ho is expected to visit a joint inter-Korean liaison office later this week for the first time since he was appointed the new South Korean head of the office last week, the ministry said Monday.Suh was appointed Friday as the South Korean chief of the liaison office located in North Korea's border town of Kaesong. The appointment came after he replaced Chun Hae-sung last month as vice unification minister, who also serves as Seoul's liaison office chief. "He ne

A body, believed to be of a United Nations soldier who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War, has been found during excavation work inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the border with North Korea, Seoul's defense ministry said Sunday.Bone fragments were found on Wednesday during an excavation and demining project on Arrowhead Ridge, a former battle site inside the DMZ that separates the two Koreas, the ministry said.The ministry said it marks the first time that the remains of a U.N. soldier have

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Sunday that the government is making a concerted effort to restart talks between the United States and North Korea at the earliest possible date.“Following the meeting in Hanoi, restarting the US-North Korea summit has become very crucial. From that perspective, President Moon Jae-in proposed holding an inter-Korean summit (in order to support the US-North Korea talks),” Kim said on a KBS television show. As US President Donald Trump will

While the trade war between the United States and China is reshaping the global economy, it is also leaving little room for South and North Korea to move the denuclearization process forward, according to John Park, director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. “If the US and China have a truce or suspend the application of tariffs, that could provide political space for South Korea’s diplomatic role to increase. But, in this environment, South Korea’s impact is

A North Korean propaganda outlet on Sunday slammed South Korea's recent civilian-military exercise, calling it tantamount to a hostile act against the North.   Following up on its military agreement with Pyongyang last year, Seoul abolished its annual springtime joint military exercises with the US armed forces, the Ulchi Freedom Guardian, to launch the Ulchi Taegeuk exercise this year.  Around 480,000 South Korean civilians, government officials and armed service members joined t

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump could meet for a third summit later this year even without much progress toward dismantling the regime's nuclear weapons program, analysts here said.At their earlier summits, the first of which took place a year ago on June 12 in Singapore, Kim and Trump sought to strike a deal that would lead to the dismantlement of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction programs in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions on the regime. Ex

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said her country and the United States determined that North Korea‘s short-range missile launches in May did not “deserve” suspending talks with the regime.　Speaking Friday at a security forum in Bratislava, Slovakia, Kang said South Korea and the US analyzed the launches in early May and “decided to take a cool headed approach about this.”　“We said this doesn’t deserve breaking the momentum