President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday vetoed a bill mandating a special counsel investigation into multiple allegations against first lady Kim Keon Hee, including her alleged meddling in past elections, with the legislation marking the third of its kind. Tuesday’s approval comes 12 days after the National Assembly passed the bill on Nov. 14, in a vote boycotted by the ruling People Power Party. Yoon has already vetoed two similar special counsel bills passed in December 2023 and September, wh

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon on Tuesday refuted allegations that he received help during the 2021 Seoul mayoral by-election from Myung Tae-kyun, a self-proclaimed power broker at the center of a growing political scandal. With a background in public opinion polling, Myung Tae-kyun has claimed he supported Oh's victory by providing polling data and strategic advice. Speaking at a press briefing at City Hall on Tuesday, Oh denied ever commissioning polls from Myung or receiving any related data. Th

South Korea will continue to make efforts to develop its alliance with the United States in the best way possible under the incoming second Donald Trump administration, its top envoy said Monday. Ambassador Cho Hyun-dong made the remarks amid concerns that Trump's reelection could lead to significant changes in policies related to the alliance, security and other shared issues, given his unconventional and transactional approach to running state affairs. "We put the top priority on con

The Cabinet on Tuesday demanded the National Assembly reconsider a bill calling for a special counsel investigation into corruption allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee, the third time the government has sought a veto of the opposition-led bill. A motion demanding reconsideration was approved during a Cabinet meeting held 12 days after the bill passed through the opposition-controlled National Assembly. President Yoon Suk Yeol is widely expected to endorse the motion. "The right to

The Cabinet on Tuesday demanded the National Assembly reconsider a bill calling for a special counsel investigation into corruption allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee, the third time the government has sought a veto of the opposition-led bill. A motion demanding reconsideration was approved during a Cabinet meeting held 12 days after the bill passed through the opposition-controlled National Assembly. President Yoon Suk Yeol is widely expected to endorse the motion. The bill calls for

Main opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was acquitted Monday of subornation of perjury, with the Seoul Central District Court ruling him not guilty of allegedly asking a former mayoral secretary to provide false testimony in his favor in late 2018. Last year, prosecutors charged Lee with attempting to persuade a witness to make false testimony in his favor in December 2018, for a court trial over an alleged election law violation. Lee was accused of lying during a televised debate during his campai

The leaders of South Korea and Malaysia forged a strategic partnership on Monday to bolster cooperation in trade, the defense industry, clean energy and critical materials as they eye the 65th anniversary of diplomatic ties next year. This came as President Yoon Suk Yeol received Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on the occasion of his official visit to South Korea. It was the first visit by a Malaysian leader in five years. During the talks, Yoon expressed anticipation that their "bil

President Yoon Suk Yeol's approval rating rose for the second consecutive week to 25.7 percent, a survey showed Monday. According to the survey by Realmeter and commissioned by a local news outlet, the positive assessment of Yoon's performance rose 2 percentage points from the previous week, while the negative assessment fell 2.7 percentage points. The survey was conducted on 2,508 adults from Monday to Friday last week and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, wi

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung is set to be sentenced Monday on charges of suborning a former mayoral secretary to make false court testimony in his favor, marking the second in a series of rulings that could jeopardize his potential presidential bid. Lee, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, is accused of encouraging a secretary to former Seongnam Mayor Kim Byung-ryang to give false testimony during a 2019 trial related to his alleged election law violations. The alleged offen

President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee have stopped using their mobile phones and replaced them with new phones, an official at the ruling bloc said Sunday. The move came after Yoon said in a Nov. 7 press conference that both he and his wife should have changed to new mobile phones after his inauguration, in response to criticism over the first lady using her personal phone for communications linked to controversies surrounding her. "I was given advice on changing the mobile ph

Tensions between the rival political parties are expected to escalate in the following days, with the main opposition seeking to put a bill calling for a special counsel investigation into allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee up for a revote on Nov. 28. On Nov. 14, the opposition-led Assembly passed the revised special counsel probe bill in a 191-0 vote, as the ruling People Power Party lawmakers boycotted the vote. The Assembly has previously passed two similar bills, in December 2023

The Seoul Central District Court is set to rule Monday on perjury subornation charges against Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party. The ruling of the first trial comes just 10 days after Lee received a suspended prison sentence in a separate trial for violating the Public Official Election Act, further compounding the legal challenges that could cost him his parliamentary seat and jeopardize his presidential aspirations. Prosecutors filed the perjury subornation case aga

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung is set to face a sentencing hearing this week for allegedly suborning perjury, legal sources said Sunday, 10 days after he got a suspended prison term for election violations. The Seoul Central District Court is set to deliver a verdict Monday on Lee's charges of suborning a secretary of a former Seongnam mayor to make false court testimony in his favor in a 2018 election law violation case involving him, according to the sources. Prosecutors suspect the lead

  South Korea will not be attending a memorial ceremony scheduled to take place in Japan to honor wartime forced labor victims, including many Koreans, from an old Japanese mine complex, the foreign ministry said Saturday. The decision, made only a day before the planned ceremony, came after Tokyo announced that a Japanese vice foreign minister with an apparent hard-line political stance on past history will be attending the ceremony as its government representative. "We have decided n

President Yoon Suk Yeol's national security adviser said Friday that Russia had already provided North Korea with military equipment and "anti-air" weapons in return for North Korea's recent troop dispatch to the Ukraine war. Shin Won-sik, director of the presidential National Security Office, said in a televised interview with SBS Friday that these weapons were sent to Pyongyang, which would "allow North Korea to address vulnerabilities in its anti-air defense capability." T

Akiko Ikuina, parliamentary vice minister at Japan's Foreign Ministry, will attend the Sado gold mine memorial ceremony on Sunday to commemorate wartime forced labor victims there, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Friday. From Saturday to Sunday, Ikuina will visit Sado, in Japan's Niigata prefecture, to "attend the memorial service for the Sado Island Gold Mine and also tour (the mine)," the Japanese government said in a notification. South Korean Ambassador

Rep. Cho Kuk, an ally of former Democratic Party of Korea President Moon Jae-in, is due to be sentenced by the highest court in three weeks. Cho faces a dozen charges. Most notably he is charged with using illicit means to get his children into prestigious schools, for which his wife Chung Kyung-shim was handed four years in jail in 2022. The court ruling led to their daughter Cho Min losing her admission to Korea University and medical school at Pusan National University. He is also charged wit

The presidential office on Friday signaled it would consider a supplementary budget with President Yoon Suk Yeol addressing the issue of social polarization as the policy priority its administration should tackle. A senior official of the presidential office said that it "will not rule out the possibilities of the proactive fiscal intervention including the allocation of an extra budget," adding the timing for the supplementary budget "has yet to be determined." This signals

President Yoon Suk Yeol's job approval rating has remained unchanged for two straight months, despite Yoon's handling of foreign affairs during his trip to the South American countries and the conviction of the opposition leader for election law offenses the previous week. According to Gallup Korea's weekly poll result of 1,001 respondents released Friday, Yoon's popularity came to 20 percent. His job disapproval rating edged up 1 percentage point to 72 percent compared to th

South Korea has completed the production of vacuum vessel sectors for the international thermonuclear experimental reactor project, aimed at achieving fusion power production at power plant scale, the science ministry said Friday. The country has completed building four vacuum vessels for the ITER, the world's largest tokamak to be set up in southern France, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT. A tokamak is a magnetic fusion device created to demonstrate the viability of fusion as