South Korea will ask the United States, China and Japan to prevent their citizens from visiting a troubled mountain resort in North Korea, a Seoul official said Tuesday. The move comes as the isolated communist country is seeking to attract foreign tourists to Mount Kumgang as part of its attempts to revitalize the stalled resort. North Korea invited a group of foreign business executives and j...

A top South Korean court said Tuesday that it is unconstitutional for the government to make no tangible effort to settle disputes with Japan over its refusal to compensate Korean women mobilized as sex slaves during its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The Constitutional Court ruled in a 6-3 vote that the government violated the basic rights of the former “comfort women” with its ...

The prosecution will summon the wife of Seoul’s education chief for questioning Wednesday, on allegations that her husband bought a rival candidate out of race in last year’s election, officials said Tuesday. It will also subpoena two confidants of Kwak No-hyun, superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, on the same day, to grill them on their alleged involvement in negotiations w...

By Kim So-hyun President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday named his first chief-of-staff and architect of the controversial “Grand Canal” pledge Yu Woo-ik as the new unification minister, confirming what had been expected ever since Yu left his 16-month service as ambassador to China four months ago. Lee also nominated Choe Kwang-shik, historian and chief of the Cultural Heritage Administration; Rim Ch...

Seoul education chief uspected of bribing former election rival Seoul’s education chief Kwak No-hyun may face subpoena as early as Wednesday in an intensifying probe into allegations that he bought a rival candidate out of race during last year’s election, sources at the prosecution said Tuesday. The Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office, which leads the investigation, detained for questioning a co...

President Lee Myung-bak is expected to name on Wednesday successors to ministers of health, unification, gender equality and perhaps culture, as three of the incumbents plan to run in the general elections seven months away. Ministers Lee Jae-oh of special affairs, Chung Byoung-gug of culture and Chin Soo-hee of health currently hold seats in the National Assembly as ruling party lawmakers and p...

South Korea on Tuesday urged Japan’s new government to “look squarely at its past,” setting a brusque tone following reinforced Japanese moves to lay claim to the South’s easternmost islets of Dokdo. Japan’s parliament approved former finance minister Yoshihiko Noda as the new prime minister earlier in the day, making him the country’s sixth leader in five years. The new Japanese government will...

An EU delegation will visit North Korea next month, a U.S.-funded radio station reported Tuesday, confirming the annual visit which had been cancelled last year after the North’s provocations on Seoul. The European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the Korean Peninsula, led by Christian Ehler, is scheduled to visit the communist state on Oct. 19 for parliamentarian-level talks, Radio Fr...

Parties stirred uneasily as the prosecution continued its interrogation of Park Tae-gyu, the key lobbyist involved in the Busan Savings Bank. Park’s case, together with that of Seoul Educational Superintendent Kwak No-hyun’s bribery allegations, is shaking up the political landscape ahead of the upcoming Oct. 26 by-elections as well as on the general and presidential races next year. Park turne...

Lee sought Russian pipeline project since taking office: GNP chief The purported project for Russia to pipe Siberian natural gas through North Korean territory into South Korea will help the two Koreas thaw the months-long ice and move on to a new chapter in ties, the leader of Seoul’s ruling party said Tuesday. The optimistic remarks by Grand National Party chairman Hong Joon-pyo came days aft...

Samsung Medical Center and Seoul National University Hospital Healthcare System Gangnam Center in southern Seoul were selected as the best hospitals for medical checkups in a Korea Consumer Agency survey. The agency said Tuesday that in a poll of 450 consumers, both Samsung and SNU hospitals scored 5.45 out of 7 to take joint first place in terms of consumer satisfaction with medical screening p...

Children in and around Seoul start learning to speak English at an average age of 3.7 years, the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education said. Its latest survey of 1,200 elementary school first- and second-graders in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, found that 92.7 percent received their first-ever English education around 3-5 years old. Only 7.3 percent in the same age bracket said they had not...