SEONGJU  -- The Ministry of Defense said Saturday the advanced US missile defense system deployed in a southern town won't cause any adverse effects to the local environment.Earlier in the day, the defense and environment ministries conducted their joint environmental survey of electromagnetic radiation and noise from the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in Seongju, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.Two rocket launchers and a powerful X-band radar are operational at the new US For

Minister of National Defense Song Young-moo on Saturday ordered the military to fight back “resolutely and confidently” against any North Korean provocation, the ministry said.Song made the remark during his visit to Yeonpyeong Island, a Yellow Sea island close to the inter-Korean border. The minister visited military units and paid his respects at monuments in memory of South Korean soldiers killed in the 2002 inter-Korean naval skirmish near the island, and victims of North Korea‘s shelling of

BRUSSELS -- The European Union has said that it will convene an extraordinary session next week to discuss the escalating tension with North Korea.EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini will chair the meeting of the Political and Security Committee slated for Monday, to discuss a variety of issues over the North, the EU said in a statement issued on Friday.EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini (Yonhap)Earlier this week, the Council of the EU broadened a sanctions list targeting North Ko

BEIJING/WASHINGTON  -- The leaders of the US and China once again called on North Korea, Saturday, to stop its provocative actions which recently have sparked high tensions on the Korean peninsular, while vowing to cooperate on a peaceful resolution to the North’s nuclear issue.After the phone conversation between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the White House said in a statement that the leaders agreed that “North Korea must stop its provocative and escalatory

North Korea said Saturday that nearly 3.5 million youths and retired soldiers have filed a request to enlist or reenlist in the military to retaliate against the United States over the latest economic sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council.The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North’s Workers’ Party, said a total of 3.475 million people, including students, young workers and retired soldiers, have asked to join or return to the military for three days after the government warned of repri

The US’ travel ban to North Korea is causing the communist state’s only international college to struggle to find replacement faculty for the upcoming fall semester and cancel a planned international forum, a report said Saturday.According to the Voice of America, Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, has decided not to open medical school-related classes during the fall term as it is hard for US lecturers and faculty to visit the North for the fall term.The VOA said some faculty of PU

Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee has rescinded his membership in the International Olympic Committee. The IOC's Executive Board announced Friday that Lee's family has asked the IOC "not to consider Mr. Lee for re-election as an IOC member." Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee (Yonhap)The 75-year-old has been an IOC member since 1996. But he has remained hospitalized since May 2014 when he suffered a heart attack.Lee's resignation leaves South Korea with one IOC member, Ryu Seung-min. The former

WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump ratcheted up tensions with North Korea Friday, saying the military is "locked and loaded" to deal with the regime's provocations.The warning is the latest in an exchange of bellicose rhetoric that has heightened concerns about a possible conflict between Washington and Pyongyang."Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely," Trump tweeted. "Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!"Soon after, the presi

A former South Korean diplomat was sentenced to three years in prison by a regional court on Friday for sexually assaulting a minor when he was stationed in Chile. The Gwangju District Court found the defendant, only identified by his last name Park, guilty of the sexual harassment charge and ordered his immediate detention.The former councilor of the South Korean Embassy to the Latin American country was indicted without detention in May for molesting a 14-year-old girl while he was in Chile. H

Netmarble Games, South Korea's No. 1 mobile game developer and publisher, said Friday its sales for the first half of this year topped 1 trillion won ($980 million) on the back of the global popularity of its latest game "Lineage 2 Revolution."Sales for the January-June period came to 1.22 trillion won, up from 1.05 trillion won logged a year earlier, the company said.The on-year sales growth came heavily from overseas, the company said. Lineage 2 Revolution (Netmarble)Revenue from overseas mark

The US International Trade Commission said Thursday it will launch an antidumping duty investigation into low melt polyester staple fiber imported from South Korea and Taiwan.The commission determined there was "a reasonable indication" that the products from the two countries are being sold in the US at less than their fair value, according to a press release. (Screen grab of US Commerce Department's website)A preliminary decision is due on or around Dec. 4, it said.The US Commerce Department w

A total of 288 professors at Seoul National University have signed a joint statement urging a senior government official in charge of science innovation to resign over her involvement in a 2005 fake stem cell research scandal.Dozens of SNU professors began collecting signatures Thursday for the statement calling for Park Ky-young, chief of the Science, Technology and Innovation Office at the Ministry of Science and ICT, to voluntarily step down. The number of co-signing professors are expected t

South Korea will host an international men's handball competition in Seoul starting this weekend, with Tunisia and Iran also in action.The 12th Seoul Cup Handball will begin Sunday at SK Olympic Handball Gymnasium in the nation's capital with a match between South Korea and Tunisia.Tunisia and Iran will square off Monday at the same venue. The finale Tuesday will pit South Korea against Iran. The top team after the round-robin play will be declared the champion.All games will start at 4 p.m.The

Prosecutors said Friday they have requested a court order to seize royalties from a memoir by former President Chun Doo-hwan, to collect part of his unpaid forfeit related to his bribery conviction in the 1990s.Chun, who served as president from 1980 to 1988, published his memoir in April this year, and drew fire for mentioning his government's bloody crackdown on the 1980 pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Gwangju, as a scheme led by North Korean troops and insisting that he was not

South Korea is planning to reduce the electricity reserve rate by up to 2 percent in 2030 amid its new energy policy to phase out nuclear power plants, the government said Friday.A government panel to outline the country's biennial power supply road map said that it determined the reasonable electricity reserve rate to be 20-22 percent in the cited year, compared with 22 percent estimated two years earlier.A 1 percentage-point drop in the reserve rate can allow the government not to build a powe