The United States urged Moscow on Thursday to help international observers enter Crimea, as it joined allies in denouncing the semi-autonomous peninsula's planned referendum to separate from Ukraine.In a fourth emergency session on the Ukraine crisis in less than a week, the United Nations Security Council was once again clearly divided, with Western powers denouncing the Crimean parliament's "illegal" decision to put the question of secession from Ukraine to a referendum on March 16."We call on

Japan's government said Friday that Bitcoin is not a currency but that it "is natural" that transactions involving the virtual unit should be taxed."As a matter of common sense, if there are transactions and subsequent gains, it is natural... for the finance ministry to consider how it can impose taxes," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. (AFP)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited an air force unit, the country's state media reported Friday, an inspection trip that also quelled speculation of any change in the political fate of one of his top aides.Kim was accompanied by nine officials, including Choe Ryong-hae, the director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, the Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch.The dispatch came more than two weeks after the North Korean military's top political officer di

Police on Friday raided the office of the nation's taekwondo governing body as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations that it had fixed matches to benefit selected players.The Korea Taekwondo Association is under suspicion of rigging the results by coercing referees to make favorable decisions for the selected players during national team tryouts so that they can take the spot in the team.A team of investigators from the National Police Agency obtained computer hard drives and confide

South Korea will spend 4 trillion won ($3.8 billion) over the next three years to boost venture start-ups and encourage entrepreneurship, the finance minister said Friday."We will improve systems for each stage from business launch to growth, recoupment of invested money and retrying (after a failure), and spend 4 trillion won by the end of 2017 to regain vitality in business start-ups and unrelenting spirit," Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok told a public-private joint meeting on realizing the "cr

Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen will visit Seoul this summer to play a South Korean opponent, the German team announced Friday.On its website, Bayer Leverkusen, which has two South Korean players, Son Heung-min and Ryu Seung-woo, said it will face FC Seoul of the K League Classic on July 30."(Son) can expect a hero's welcome when die Werkself travel to the South Korean capital Seoul as part of the club's preseason preparations this summer," Bayer Leverkusen said, referring to itself by the Germ

The top commander of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region said Thursday his troops will stay ahead of any military threats in the region under the Pentagon's new defense guidelines.Navy Adm. Samuel Locklear admitted that the security conditions there are "getting more complex" and the U.S. military is going through budget cuts.But the Quadrennial Defense Review, released Tuesday, "once again places at the very top the rebalance to Asia as a priority," he said at a forum hosted by the Atlantic

The U.S. ambassador to Seoul said Thursday Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II is "a grave human rights violation," expressing hope for Tokyo to take steps to ease the pains of victims. Sung Kim made the remarks at a forum hosted by the Kwanhun Club, a senior journalists' association, in Seoul, echoing Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se's criticism the previous day in Geneva of Japan's attempts to deny its wartime atrocities."Yes, I agree (with Yun)," Kim said. "The comfort

A key witness in a case of alleged evidence forgery framing a North Korean defector for espionage was in a life-threatening condition Thursday after attempting suicide, prosecution officials said.The witness, an ethnic Korean with Chinese nationality whose name was withheld, is suspected of obtaining the fake evidence, including documents purporting to be the defector's immigration records, and handing it over to the National Intelligence Service.The case of Yoo Woo-seong, a 34-year-old former c

North Korea has punished dozens of its citizens for helping a South Korean Christian missionary with his alleged spying activities in the communist country, a news report said Wednesday.The missionary, Kim Jong-uk, has been held in the communist state for more than four months since he was arrested on charges of spying for South Korea's state intelligence agency in October.Last month, Kim confessed to committing anti-state crimes and appealed for mercy during a news conference in Pyongyang cover

China unveiled Wednesday an economic growth target of 7.5 percent for this year and plans to boost its 2014 military spending by 12.2 percent, marking a fresh double-digit increase of its defense budget.The world's second-largest economy announced a military budget of 808.23 billion yuan ($131.8 billion), compared with 720 billion yuan last year, as it opened the annual legislative session of China's National People's Congress.China's rapid military modernization has increased tensions with its

In its updated global defense strategy, the Pentagon on Tuesday emphasized the need to counter a "significant" threat from North Korea's unpredictable regime."North Korea remains closed and authoritarian," it said in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, which Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel characterized as defining the "historic transition" unfolding through the U.S. defense enterprise.The QDR sets the direction of the U.S. military's overall operations at home and abroad in a period of budget au