The military and related public agencies have provided a range of favors to defense companies and failed to properly manage them, leading to pervasive corruption and a huge waste of budget, the state auditor said Tuesday.Announcing the results of a three-month probe from May, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said the authorities designated defense goods without proper demand analysis and gave preferences to large defense companies for their production, which led to a waste of more than 60

President Park Geun-hye called on the military Thursday to maintain its readiness, saying robust security is a must to lay the groundwork for potential unification with North Korea.   "We should end the history of division by putting an end to the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula," Park said in a New Year's message to the country's 650,000-strong military.   The Korean Peninsula was divided into the capitalistic South and communist North after its liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.  

South Korea's first indigenous salvage ship at the center of a corruption scandal was delivered to the Navy on Tuesday after passing an operational capability test, military officials said.   The 3,500-ton Tongyeong has been at the center of a major controversy following allegations that a number of military officers took bribes from a local company that supplied faulty parts to the ship.   The vessel, built in 2012, could not be deployed for rescue operations in the aftermath of April's ferry s

South Korea, the United States and Japan have signed a military pact on sharing sensitive information on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs amid the communist country’s growing security threats to the region, Seoul’s defense ministry said Monday.The pact went into effect Monday after a memorandum of understanding signed last week by South Korean Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo and his counterparts Robert Work and Masanori Nishi was delivered to the U.S. side earlier in the day, the

South Korea plans to conduct its first missile defense drill in the first half of next year to test the effectiveness of locally developed defense programs in the face of North Korea's missile and nuclear threats, a government source said Monday.   South Korea has been developing its own Kill-Chain and Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) systems to better detect and respond to military provocations from the North.   "Military authorities are planning our first independent Korean Peninsula miss

Three construction workers at a nuclear power plant in Ulsan died Friday after inhaling toxic gas, officials said.A decontamination team was dispatched to the Shin-Kori nuclear power plant following the accident at 5:18 p.m.The incident came some days after a group of hackers threatened to “destroy reactors” unless the government shut down three nuclear reactors at the Kori and Wolseong nuclear power plants by Christmas Day. They also told residents near the facilities to leave. The government c

South Korea, the United States and Japan will sign a pact next week on sharing their military intelligence about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs in the face of Pyongyang's evolving security threats, officials here said Friday.   The three counties have been discussing the signing of a memorandum of understanding on sharing military secrets since May when they agreed on the need for such an agreement during their defense ministers' talks in Singapore. The conclusion comes two years aft

North Korea has increased the number of its air force troops by 10,000, while reducing that of army soldiers by the same amount, a South Korean government data showed Thursday.   The total number of the North's armed forces stood at 1.19 million as of the end of 2013, according to the defense ministry's update of its assessment of the communist nation's military power.   "There seems to be no change in the general size of the North Korean military. But it transferred some aviation units in the a

South Korean relief troops stationed in the Philippines have returned home after completing their one-year mission to help rebuild the country hit hard by a typhoon last year, the Army said Tuesday.The 297 service personnel of the Araw Unit returned home on Monday from Tacloban after providing medical services and working to prevent the outbreak of epidemics in the city since December last year that was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan the previous month.Their initial six-month mission was extended

South Korea's presidential jet will be fitted with anti-missile gear by 2016 under a new project expected to cost more than 30 billion won (US$27 million), government and military officials said Sunday.Under a renewed contract with the nation's flagship carrier, Korean Air Lines Co., a Boeing 747-400 aircraft will be on lease to the presidential office until 2020."Until now, the presidential jet hasn't had its own antimissile gear, but the new jet is expected to be fitted with such gear as the m