President Barack Obama will Monday try to cajole Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a US framework for final peace talks with the Palestinians, but the Israeli leader is vowing to resist all "pressures."Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu will also discuss Iranian nuclear diplomacy, but likely struggle to reconcile differing views after Israel blasted an interim pact with Tehran reached last year as a bad deal.Unusually, Netanyahu will not be the center of attention in Washington, where his visits to t

Members of the South Korean men's national football team arrived Sunday in Athens, the site of their upcoming friendly match against Greece, as players braced themselves for competition within the squad.South Korea is scheduled to take on Greece at 7 p.m. on Wednesday in the Greek capital, or 2 a.m. on Thursday in South Korea.Head coach Hong Myung-bo arrived from South Korea with eight players from the domestic and Asian leagues, while several others playing in Europe and Middle East traveled se

A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine arrived in a southeastern South Korean port on Monday to participate in an annual joint military drill, a senior military official said, amid a series of provocations by North Korea.The USS Columbus, a Los Angeles-class submarine, arrived in Busan, some 450 kilometers south of Seoul, along with the U.S. 7th Fleet command ship, the USS Blue Ridge, to participate in the Foal Eagle exercise.The combat field training began last week and will last until April 18. Foal

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Monday that the sooner North Korea gives up its nuclear program, the earlier unification with the communist nation will come.In an address at an international leadership conference, Park also said the South should make thorough preparations to become one nation with the North because a chance for unification could come abruptly. That's why she decided to set up a presidential preparatory committee for unification, she said."The road to unification will b

Korea Electric Power Corp., South Korea's state-run energy company under pressure to improve its financial health, said Sunday it will reduce its debts by 14.7 trillion won ($13.8 billion) over the next three years .KEPCO's debt-cutting plan comes as the government is trying to normalize heavily-indebted public organizations. Eighteen state entities, including KEPCO, were put under scrutiny for their mounting debts and ordered to submit detailed blueprints on how they would reduce their liabilit

Many political watchers expected the opposition bloc to face an uphill battle ahead of the nationwide local elections in June, but few could have predicted that the solution would be another new party, especially one that combines the largest opposition party with the emerging party of a popular independent.On Sunday, Kim Han-gil, the chief of the main opposition Democratic Party, and Ahn Cheol-soo, a former presidential candidate with his own party in the making, announced that they would join

South Korea plans to propose Red Cross talks with North Korea this week in a bid to arrange cross-border family reunions on a regular basis, government sources said Sunday.The two Koreas held the first rounds of family reunions last month in more than three years, allowing family members to meet after being separated during the 1950-53 Korean War. Seoul had planned to propose to the North that their Red Crosses arrange regular family reunions and resolve other humanitarian issues.In her address

The chairman of NHN Entertainment Corp., a leading local online game operator, has joined the list of South Korea's stock rich, whose stock holdings are worth more than one trillion won ($937 million), data showed Sunday.Lee Jun-ho, the chief executive of NHN Entertainment, saw the value of his stocks reach 1.63 trillion won as of the end of February, up 12.3 percent from 947.2 billion won at the end of last year, according to Chaebol.com, which tracks the country's family-run conglomerates know

A South Korean businessman was sentenced to a 10-year prison term in Oman for bribing an executive of an Omani state-run oil company, a conviction that he strongly denies and plans to appeal, the South Korean Embassy and news reports said Sunday.The 60-year-old businessman, the vice president of a South Korean conglomerate's Middle East regional unit, was sentenced by an Omani court on Feb. 27 and fined 4 million rial ($10.4 million), the South Korean Embassy told Yonhap.The names of the busines

South Korean officials said Sunday they have been strengthening their monitoring of changes in emerging markets amid growing political and financial unrest that may affect the global economy."We are closely watching the situation (in emerging markets) with vigilance," an official at the finance ministry said, demanding anonymity. "Concerns over emerging economies are spreading as financial instability in Argentina and Turkey, and political unrest in Ukraine, Thailand and Venezuela have been grow

Foreign-currency loans extended by South Korean banks declined last year from a year earlier, as a stronger won helped borrowers repay their outstanding debts, mostly yen-denominated ones, the financial watchdog said Sunday.The amount of foreign currency-denominated loans extended by local banks reached $25.17 billion at the end of last year, down $4.77 billion from a year ago, according to the Financial Supervisory Service.The decline was attributable to the Korean won's ascent to the Japanese