President Lee Myung-bak on Wednesday discussed with visiting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke how to get the pending Korea-U.S. free trade deal approved by the parliaments of both countries. The bilateral free trade agreement, first signed in 2007 and supplemented last December, is yet to be ratified by the National Assembly and the U.S. Congress. Lee’s meeting with Locke Wednesday came a ...

Polls opened Wednesday for small yet significant parliamentary and local by-elections seen as a test for the rival parties and some of the potential presidential candidates before South Korea elects a new parliament and a new president next year. Three parliamentary seats and one gubernatorial post are on offer in the elections, with the other 34 races vying for small local government heads and ...

The Seoul government is set to receive a massive database from Berlin on the 1990 reunification of East and West Germany to prepare itself for “sudden changes” in North Korea. President Lee Myung-bak has assigned the Ministry of Unification, which he initially planned to merge into the Foreign Ministry, with two main jobs ― preparation for reunification with the North and taking care of the incr...

Army, Navy, Air Force to have two vice chiefs each under reform plan The Ministry of National Defense has decided not to introduce a system to rotate the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff among four-star generals of the Army, Navy and Air Force, officials said Tuesday. The decision has triggered concerns among military experts who said that the military’s reform drive aimed at enhancing...

The ratification bill for South Korea's free trade agreement with the European Union is expected to pass the parliament's standing committee later this week, as the South Korean government has responded positively to rival parties' demand to offer transfer tax cuts to small livestock farms, removing the last remaining hurdle to the long-stalled free trade deal, officials and lawmakers said Monday...

A group of North Korean defectors and civic activists on Monday urged South Korea's parliament to pass a bill aimed at improving the human rights situation in the reclusive communist state. In an opening ceremony for "North Korea Freedom Week," some 100 Seoul-based defectors, human rights advocates and lawmakers gathered in the National Assembly to discuss ways to abolish gulags in the North and...

President Lee Myung-bak named Yu Bong-ha, chief of the Korean traditional medicine division at Kyung Hee Medical Center, as his second family doctor, Lee’s spokesperson Kim Hee-jung said Monday, upon lobbying by local practitioners of oriental medicine. Yu will be officially appointed to the vice ministerial position early next month. The president is allowed to appoint a physician and an orien...

The planned return of Yu Woo-ik, President Lee Myung-bak’s first chief of staff who has served as Korea’s top envoy to China for the past 16 months, is expected to coincide with a Cabinet reshuffle early next month, offering a glimpse of what Lee’s vision for the remainder of his term. As one of Lee’s closest confidants, Yu is likely to get a new top post at home along with a handful of others w...