South Korea's professional football players will organize a union to defend their rights and enhance working conditions, a lawyer helping the establishment of the union said Wednesday.Park Ji-hoon, a lawyer who also works for local research group Center for Sports Culture, said South Korea's professional players union will get an approval from FIFPro, the international pro footballers' union, on Thursday at its Asia-Oceania Congress in Seoul. (Yonhap)FIFPro represents more than 65,000 players wo

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The US capital will grind to a halt Thursday, glued to computer and television screens as sacked FBI chief James Comey testifies about whether President Donald Trump pressured him to halt a probe into an adviser’s links to Russia.Trump, a ratings-obsessed former reality television star, may not appreciate the worldwide attention paid to Comey’s public testimony, which is being touted as the Super Bowl of high political drama.Comey is the star witness in the Senate Intelligenc

The government said Wednesday that it will set up overseas institutes that offer foreigners Korean language courses and Korean culture activities at six universities in six additional countries.The six universities, designated as the new operators of the King Sejong Institute, are Yancheng Teachers University in China's Jiangsu Province, Astrakhan State University in Russia, Indiana University in the U.S. state of Indiana, the University of Barcelona in Spain, National University in Indonesia an

South Korean quarantine officials culled nearly 700 birds Wednesday on the country's southern resort island of Jeju in the latest attempt to contain the spread of avian influenza.Quarantine workers gassed a total of 695 chickens and ducks from three poultry farms and packed them in plastic bags with carbon dioxide before burying them in fields near the chicken and duck farms, Kim Ik-chan, an official handling the issue at the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, spoke by phone from Jeju.(Yonhap

MUAN -- A group of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's special envoys will visit South Korea's southwestern province of South Jeolla as part of a four-day trip to South Korea, officials at the provincial government said Wednesday.The group, led by Toshihiro Nikai, secretary general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will make a stopover in Mokpo, a coastal city in the province, on Saturday-Sunday before departing for Seoul to hold talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to convey

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US intelligence officials believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that led Saudi Arabia and several allies to sever relations with Qatar, prompting a diplomatic crisis, CNN reported Tuesday.FBI experts visited Qatar in late May to analyze an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatar's state news agency, the US broadcaster said.Saudi Arabia then cited the false item as part of its reason for instituting a diplomatic and economic blocka

LONDON (AFP) -- Britain braces for the final day of general election campaigning Wednesday, after a turbulent few weeks that have shifted the political ground and been marred by terror attacks. Prime Minister Theresa May was riding high when she called a snap election on April 18, having kicked off Brexit proceedings and boasting a double-digit lead over the rival Labour party.But in recent weeks, the Conservative leader has seen her popularity wane as the political debate shifted from EU member

PARIS (AFP) -- French police shot and injured a man who attacked an officer with a hammer outside Paris‘s Notre Dame cathedral Tuesday, as he shouted “this is for Syria.”Police sources said the officer sustained minor neck injuries in the assault, which comes with France on high alert after jihadists killed seven people in London on Saturday.Documents found on the attacker identified him as a 40-year-old Algerian who was a doctoral student in information science at a university in the east of Fr

The new state program for dementia patients proposed by President Moon Jae-in is expected to affect some hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from memory loss and their families in the country, experts said Wednesday. During the presidential campaign, Moon had stressed that the government should take more responsibility for the treatment of dementia and proposed launching a state program to handle the issue. President Moon Jae-in holds up a pot of flowers that he made with senior citizens

United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has called on North Korea to cooperate with the UN point man on the North Korean human rights situation, Voice of America reported Wednesday.VOA's Korea Service said Zeid, the high commissioner for human rights, made the remarks at the opening of the UN Human Rights Council's session in Geneva on Tuesday, adding many countries are not cooperating with his office. In this June 2015 file photo, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra`ad

South Korea urged North Korea on Wednesday to accept local aid groups' move to visit the North for inter-Korean exchanges as Pyongyang has rejected their offers, citing Seoul's support of fresh UN sanctions.North Korea on Monday spurned South Korean civic and religious groups' move to resume exchanges, dampening liberal President Moon Jae-in's efforts to spur civilian inter-Korean engagements.(Yonhap)"There is no change in the government's stance over the resumption of civilian exchanges with th

South Korea should play a more "active" and "leading" role as a stake holder in handling North Korea's nuclear problem, President Moon Jae-in's pick for foreign minister said Wednesday.Kang Kyung-wha told a confirmation hearing that she will "sternly" deal with any provocation by the North while getting actively involved in international efforts to rein in Pyongyang's evolving nuclear and missile capabilities."The North's nuclear issue should be addressed as a top priority for the sake of realiz

RAS AL KHAIMAH, United Arab Emirates -- South Korea's national football team are having trouble finding the quickest way to reach Qatar amid a diplomatic rift in the Gulf region, an official from the national football governing body here said Tuesday.South Korea, led by head coach Uli Stielike, will take on Qatar in Doha next Tuesday for the final Asian qualifying round for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Before the crucial World Cup qualifier, South Korea are set to face Iraq for a tune-up in the Unit

The number of South Koreans visiting the Philippines shrank following the imposition of martial law in the Southeast Asian country's southern region and the recent shooting in Manila, industry sources said Wednesday.Some 400 people have canceled their trips to the Philippines since May 25 at a Seoul-based travel agency Mode Tour, the company said.  This file photo taken on Jan. 27, 2017, shows the departure lounge of Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, packed with tourists on the Lunar

South Korean officials said Monday that they have positively identified the remains of a person wearing a life jacket in the wreck of the doomed ferry that sank in 2014.They said DNA tests showed the remains recovered from the third floor of the ship on May 22 belonged to Lee young-sook, a housewife, raising to four the number of people whose remains have been positively identified. (Yonhap)Lee was aboard the Sewol ferry that sank off the country's southwestern coast near Jindo Island in April 2