U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter called on North Korea to shrink and eventually eliminate its nuclear weapons program, while acknowledging during a visit Sunday to the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas that prospects for reconciling with the defiant North are dim. ``For now what we have is what you see beyond us _ a very starkly divided and heavily defended border area,'' Carter told reporters as he stood on the South Korean side of a marker inside the DMZ that forms the de-facto borde

With DSLR cameras in hand and eyes beaming with curiosity, about 20 students carefully listen to a teacher explain how they, too, can take good pictures. This otherwise common scene is made more special as the students are homeless and the teacher is Cho Sei-hon, among the top tier of photographers in Korea. This is part of Cho and Seoul City’s welfare program called “Himang Frame,” or frame of hope, seeking to help homeless members of society become more self-reliant by providing them with a ch

Seoul City launched last week a new public bike-sharing service as part of its initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, although the project still faces the tasks of ensuring safety and promoting wider public participation. Since Oct. 15, Seoul Metropolitan Government has offered a total of 1,200 public bikes called “Ddaleungee” at 140 docking stations in five major regions including Yeouido, Sinchon, Seongsu and central Seoul near Gwanghwamun. Ddaleungee bikes are parked at a docking station nea

One out of 2 Seoul citizens does not have enough time to enjoy hobbies and leisure activities due mainly to financial pressures and excessive workloads, a survey showed Tuesday. According to the city-run Seoul Institute, about 50 percent of those surveyed said they do not have enough time for hobbies and leisure activities, with 12.4 percent of them saying they had “far from enough” spare time. The survey was conducted online on 1,000 Seoulites aged 19 or over in August. If they had enough spare

Wearing a winter coat and holding a picture of black sheep, a U.S. citizen has been staging a hunger strike in front of the Seoul mayor’s residence in central Seoul since last week. His demand to the mayor is simple: Stop selling public zoo animals to slaughterers. 　A.J. Garcia, U.S. branch president of civic group Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth, argues that Seoul City is using the overpopulation of animals as a means to draw profits. The Seoul Metropolitan Government runs the Seoul Zoo t

The newly elected chairman of a U.N. panel on climate change pledged Monday to urge the countries to price carbon emissions as part of the efforts to curb global warming.  Lee Hoe-sung, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, speaks during a news conference in Seoul on Monday. (Korea Meteorological Administration)“During the election campaign, I realized how much the countries longed for the organization’s leading role in solving the problem of climate change. The practical to