Under the previous Roh Moo-hyun administration, then-Vice Admiral Song Young-moo was tasked with leading the effort to overhaul the South Korean military by reducing its overreliance on the Army and Korea-US alliance. Song pushed this agenda until he retired as the chief of Naval Operation in 2008 after former President Lee Myung-bak took office. In 2012, Song served as a key security adviser for then-presidential candidate Moon Jae-in and worked alongside Moon until he won the presidential elec

LONDON (AP) -- In the big book of political blunders, Theresa May's decision to hold a snap election to solidify her Brexit mandate will rank among the most memorable _ and the most unnecessary. The British prime minister was cruising along two months ago with a solid majority in Parliament and several years to run on her party's mandate. There was no need for her to put her position on the line, and she had said earlier that an election was not needed.  But her party's huge lead in the opinion

North Korea fired multiple anti-ship cruise missiles, South Korea’s military said Thursday, in an apparent display of advanced defense capacity against US military assets near the peninsula. 　Classified as short-range surface-to-ship cruise missiles, the projectiles lifted off from a launch site in the North’s coastal city of Wonsan and flew at least 200 kilometers with an apogee of 2 kilometers before falling into the East Sea, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.The launch was seen as t

Fired FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that Donald Trump urged him to drop a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, prompting fresh allegations that the US president tried to obstruct justice.　In a bombshell revelation on the eve of his hotly anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill, Comey said Trump had raised the sensitive FBI probe into Russia‘s alleged meddling in the US election in multiple discussions, leaving him deeply uneasy over whether the president was attemp

Fired FBI Director James Comey will testify under oath Thursday that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed him for his "loyalty'' and directly pushed him to "lift the cloud'' of investigation shadowing his White House by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the probe into his campaign's Russia ties.  In this combination photo, President Donald Trump, left, appears in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on May 10, and FBI Director James Comey appears at a news c

In a series of morning tweets, President Donald Trump threw Washington’s relations with Doha into deep crisis on Tuesday and raised doubts about the future of the largest US air base in the Middle East.　Trump publicly accused key regional ally Qatar of funding extremism, while tacitly backing a blockade of the emirate, home to the Al-Udeid Air Base near Doha where around 10,000 US military personnel are stationed.　The base is also the regional headquarters of US special forces and Air Force comm

Kang Kyung-wha, nominated to become South Korea’s first female foreign minister, is considered the embodiment of an “alpha female,” with a resume that includes time as a special policy adviser to the United Nations secretary-general.Still, the country’s most prominent female diplomat faces an uphill confirmation battle. Opposition lawmakers are determined to grill the 62-year-old nominee over allegations of wrongdoing at a hearing Wednesday.  (Yonhap)Even before the parliamentary process opened

Signs of a resurgence of bird flu are rapidly spreading across South Korea, triggering concerns over yet another possible round of the massive slaughter of poultry and ensuing hikes in egg prices. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed Monday that small flocks of farm chickens on the southern island of Jeju have tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N8 virus. The agency also said it will raise the bird flu alert to the highest level.The announcement came in response

Sharp political passions over President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and his links to Russia brought people onto the streets of cities around the globe on Saturday, mostly to condemn but some to praise him. 　They came as Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, ended days of confusion to make clear that “President Trump believes the climate is changing” and that man-made pollutants are partly responsible. 　She insisted in a CNN interview that Trump, who ha

During the previous Park Geun-hye administration, most high-profile decisions about national security were led by two former Army generals: Han Min-koo and Kim Kwan-jin. Kim was first defense minister and then the president’s chief security adviser. Han, two years junior to Kim, took over the minister’s office from Kim. The duo shared many aspects in common. They both graduated from the Korean Military Academy, equivalent to West Point in the US, and climbed up the military ladder much faster th

Chung Yoo-ra, who has enjoyed a wide range of privileges on the back of her once-influential mother Choi Soon-sil, returned to South Korea on Wednesday to face questioning about the corruption scandal involving her mother and ex-President Park Geun-hye.Eight months after she went into hiding in Europe to avoid the prosecution’s summons, Chung finally returned home in handcuffs and shifted all responsibility to her mother.Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye's

President Moon Jae-in’s pick for the first culture minister of his administration, Rep. Do Jong-hwan of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, has had a diverse career. By training, Do is a Korean language teacher with a doctorate in Korean literature from Chungnam National University. Do, whose name has been linked to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism for sometime, began his career as a teacher in the 1980s.Rep. Do Jong-hwan of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (Yonhap)However, his

Suh Hoon, the National Intelligence Service chief nominee, is promising a spy agency dramatically different from past administrations. Speaking at the first day of his two-day parliamentary hearing Monday, Suh gave an outline of the NIS he envisions, which would require some major changes. While the main role of the agency concerns national security, the NIS has been implicated in a series of political scandals over the years. Such alleged wrongdoings have damaged the agency’s reputation and fed

The probe into Russia’s role in the US election pierced the innermost circle of the White House Saturday, with reports that Donald Trump’s son-in-law sought a secret communications line with Moscow -- the most damning allegation yet from the scandal.　The latest furor was stirred up after the Washington Post reported late Friday that Jared Kushner -- arguably Trump’s closest White House aide, and husband to the president’s eldest daughter Ivanka -- made a pre-inauguration proposal to the Russian

President Moon Jae-in on Saturday expressed his wish to meet Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, soon to discuss how to more effectively communicate with people online, his office said.The president posted a message on his Facebook account in response to an email that Zuckerberg sent him last Sunday to congratulate him on his victory in the May 9 election.   Facebook founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (right) waves as he makes a commencement address at Harvard University in Cambridge,