Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will make a five-day visit to South Korea next week that will include a meeting with President-elect Park Geun-hye, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.    Suu Kyi will arrive in Seoul on Monday and attend the opening ceremony of the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games to be hosted by the South Korean alpine town of PyeongChang, the ministry said in a statement.    In South Korea, Suu Kyi will also receive the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights

The European Union’s executive arm, the Commission, has informed Samsung of its preliminary view that the company’s seeking of injunctions against Apple for allegedly infringing “standard-essential” patents in the EU amounts to an abuse of a dominant position.According to industry agreements, companies owning the rights to essential phone technology must usually license it to competitors on what are called fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms.Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition commiss

The top leaders of China, Japan and Russia have congratulated South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye on her election victory, her party said Saturday.Park, the 60-year-old daughter of the late authoritarian president, Park Chung-hee, was elected the country's first female president in Wednesday's election. The conservative candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party won just over 51 percent of the vote against main opposition Democratic United Party candidate Moon Jae-in's 48 percent.Park will suc

North Korea said Friday that an American citizen has been detained after confessing to unspecified crimes, confirming news reports about his arrest at a time when Pyongyang is facing criticism from Washington for launching a long-range rocket last week. The American was identified as Pae Jun-ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. News reports in the U.S. and South Korea said Pae is known in his home state of Washington as Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-ol

China published a plan to reduce the world’s largest population of smokers as part of a 2005 treaty, without implementing recommendations such as warning labels that include photos of rotten teeth and diseased lungs. China plans to cut the number of smokers to 25 percent of the population by 2015 from 28.1 percent in 2010, according to the plan published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology yesterday, seven years after the country signed the treaty that recommends the graphic w

The United States on Friday sanctioned four Iranian companies, including one accused of providing weapons to the Syrian regime's crackdown.The Treasury Department said SAD Import Export Company shipped weapons to the Syrian Armed Forces on behalf of Iran's Defense Industries Organization, which it accused of being used by the government to "assist" the Syrian regime's crackdown.In 21 months, the anti-regime revolt in Syria has claimed more than 44,000 lives, according to monitors.SAD Import Expo

Mario Monti handed in his resignation to Italy's president in Rome on Friday, bringing to a close his "difficult but fascinating" 13-month technical government and preparing the country for national elections. With the short trip to the president's office after bidding a farewell to foreign diplomats and then his Cabinet, Monti kept his pledge to step down as soon as Parliament approved a budget law. President Giorgio Napolitano, who tapped Monti in November 2011 to draft reforms to shield Italy

All four South Korean workers who were abducted earlier this week in Nigeria have been released, a government official said Saturday.They are all safe and have been handed over to South Korean officials in the African country, the official from the foreign ministry told reporters.They were freed around 10 p.m. Friday (Nigerian time), the official added.The workers from South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries were taken hostage Monday, along with a Nigerian co-worker, while working at a constructi

President Barack Obama nominated Sen. John Kerry as secretary of state on Friday, commencing a widely anticipated reshuffle of his national security team."In a sense, John's entire life has prepared him for this role," Obama said as he announced the decision at the Roosevelt Room of the White House with Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden standing next to him.The son of a Foreign Service officer, Kerry has a "deep respect for the men and women of the State Department," Obama said."Having served w

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called for more satellites and rockets to be launched following the country’s apparent success in sending a satellite into orbit earlier this month, the communist nation’s state media said Saturday.Kim made the remarks Friday at a banquet honoring the scientists, technicians and others who contributed to the Dec. 12 launching of a long-range rocket that put the satellite Kwangmyongsong 3-2 into orbit, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an En

Ki Sung-yueng, an integral part of South Korea's bronze medal-winning team at the London Olympics, claimed his second straight South Korean male footballer of the year honors on Friday.In a vote by 20 football journalists and seven technical officials at the Korea Football Association (KFA), Ki, midfielder for Swansea City in the English Premier League, earned a total of 70.2 points. Ki, 23, edged out Lee Keun-ho, winger for the Ulsan Hyundai Tigers in South Korea's K-League, who earned 65.2 poi

    SEOUL, Dec. 18 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean pastor has been released on bail after spending more than five months at a detention center in eastern China for allegedly helping North Korean defectors there, a Seoul official said Tuesday.   The 51-year-old pastor, Jeon Jae-gwi, was arrested by Chinese authorities on July 9 at an airport in Harbin on charges of sheltering five North Korean defectors and has been held at the detention center in Yantai of northeastern Shandong Province.   "To my kno