The Ministry of National Defense will implement a stringent inspection system next month as the government strives to root out corruption and enhance public trust, officials said Monday. From October, it will also apply the property registration rule to more military officials in a bid to boost the anti-corruption drive. Such measures came as some 120 officials from the ministry, the Joint Chie...

SINGAPORE, June 27, 2011 (AFP) - New recruits to Singapore's military, air force and navy are to get a new standard-issue item of equipment besides their rifle -- the iPad. The defence ministry said Monday it will be issuing "about 8,000" of the sleek, touch-screen tablet computers -- already wildly popular with the city-state's tech-savvy youth -- to recruits from November. The ministry said i...

Defense chiefs of South Korea and Sweden will hold talks in Seoul on Tuesday to discuss ways to enhance bilateral military exchanges and cooperation in the defense industry, officials at the Ministry of National Defense said Monday. Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his Swedish counterpart Sten Tolgfors will also exchange views on issues concerning regional security and peace, officials said. D...

SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's military said Sunday it will not reprimand two Marines who fired rifles last week at a civilian jetliner after mistaking it for a North Korean military aircraft. The two Marines guarding an island near the tense Yellow Sea border with the North fired their K-2 rifles at the Asiana Airlines plane flying in sea fog in a pre-dawn incident on Friday. The plan...

WASHINGTON (AP) ― A Senate committee is looking to block the reorganization of U.S. forces in east Asia, which it sees as too costly and impractical, the panel’s chairman said Friday. Legislation backed by the Senate Armed Services Committee would prohibit funding to relocate the U.S. Marine base in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. It also would suspend plans to relocate thousands of fam...

Two non-commissioned officers died on Friday due to an apparent cardiac arrest while undergoing separate physical tests, Army officials said. A 40-year-old warrant officer, identified only by his surname Kang, suddenly collapsed during a 3-kilometer run, part of an annual fitness test at a military base in Cheorwon, about 80 kilometers northeast of Seoul, they said. Kang was immediately sent t...

The South Korean military has deployed to frontline areas near the Demilitarized Zone tactical surface-to-surface missiles that put the North Korean capital of Pyongyang within their striking range, military sources said Friday. The forward-deployment early this year of the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems came as concerns were rising that the North could provoke again with its long-range...

South Korea will launch a new military command Wednesday to better defend the five northwestern border islands, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday. North Korea’s November shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, prompted calls for stronger measures to safeguard the islands of vital strategic value, which this new command is designed to meet. The ceremony to mark its launch is to take place at 3 p.m. ...

The military is striving to tighten discipline in cyberspace as an increasing number of tech-savvy enlisted soldiers are caught breaking rules on Internet use. While South Korea prides itself on being one of the world’s most wired countries, widespread video recording devices and access to the Internet have created a headache for the military. The military has been running 82 “cyber patrol team...

South Korea’s defense minister has warned that his country would respond very strongly to any future attacks by North Korea. Kim Kwan Jin said at a regional security conference in Singapore on Saturday that his government must react with stiffer responses than in the past because North Korean provocations are becoming increasingly bold. Kim said North Korea has been insincere in previous talks ...

South Korean and U.S. troops sprayed toxic defoliant Agent Orange and other herbicides over 6,840 hectares of the Demilitarized Zone between 1968 and 1969, in an effort to thwart North Korean infiltrations, a report said Friday. The estimated size of the areas on which Agent Orange was sprayed was about 14 percent of the southern side of the DMZ, the 4-kilometer-wide, 249-kilometer-long buffer z...

North Korean hackers have apparently sent spam e-mail messages to South Korean military officers, carrying viruses and malicious computer code, military officials here said Monday. According to an official, senders who claim to be graduates of the Korea Military Academy in Seoul have written to about 60 current South Koran officers who graduated from the academy. Messages mostly included a benig...