South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission said Thursday that it will launch an investigation into allegations that the military violated rights of conscripts who said they had been fed poorly and denied access to bathrooms because of the COVID-19 response. The previous week, an Army conscript prompted public outcry when he revealed on Facebook that he had been given insufficient meals while in quarantine, showing a picture of what appeared to be a nearly empty tray. The militar

South Korea’s mandatory military service is back in the limelight as younger men step up calls for conscription for women as a matter of gender equality. But experts say this movement faces a long road ahead. The fresh debate about subjecting both men and women to mandatory military service was sparked by ruling Democratic Party Rep. Park Yong-jin, who suggested revamping the conscription system as part of his 2022 presidential election campaign. Park proposed an all-volunteer military o

South Korea and China have not discussed the Quad alliance, a US-led democratic coalition comprising the US, Australia, India and Japan to contain an increasingly assertive China, the Ministry of National Defense said Monday. “It’s an unequivocal no. We have not been in talks on the matter and on whether we will join the group,” ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan said, referring to a report that Beijing had repeatedly asked Seoul whether it planned to join the group amid gro

President Moon Jae-in on Thursday set more drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 than previously revealed to achieve a carbon-neutral Korea by 2050, at a two-day virtual climate summit ending Friday. The Leaders Summit on Climate, joined by 40 world leaders and hosted by US President Joe Biden seeking to restore US leadership on the carbon-cutting commitment, marks Washington’s return to the climate dialogue that the Donald Trump administration abandoned after withdrawing from

An aircraft carrier will strengthen South Korea’s naval power at a relatively affordable price, the Navy said Wednesday, amid controversy surrounding its 2 trillion-won ($1.8 billion) project to build the first aircraft carrier by 2033. “The homegrown weapon will rein in North Korea’s aggression and will put us at advantage in the event of conflict. It will help advance our interests in peacetime,” a senior Navy official said at a briefing. The official said Seoul needs

Conscripting women into the armed forces now would be premature, the Ministry of National Defense said Tuesday, amid fresh debate about making military service compulsory for both women and men. At present, all able-bodied men in South Korea are required to serve in the military or complete an alternative public service program. Women can join the military as officers or noncommissioned officers. “Expanding conscription isn’t a yes-no, black-and-white question because we need to l

Defense Minister Suh Wook and Gen. Won In-choul, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received their first doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on Friday as they prepared to travel overseas. Suh is taking part in the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 4-5, while Won will attend a change-of-command ceremony for the US Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii later this month. There Won will meet with his US and Japanese counterparts to discuss expanding military ties. South Korea’s

South Korea and Indonesia will soon resume work on their joint fighter jet project, as Indonesia works to catch up on its already late payments and return engineers to production lines here, Korea’s arms procurement agency said Thursday. The Indonesian defense minister, who took part in the rollout ceremony here on April 9, when Korea revealed a prototype jet, agreed to work out a plan for the resumption of the project, saying Indonesia remains committed to the joint work, a senior agency

The fruit of South Korea’s 20-year quest to make a more independent military with locally built fighter jets took shape Friday, as it unveiled the prototype of its first homegrown jet, the KF-21 Boramae.  President Moon Jae-in hailed the event as marking a new era of self-reliance in the military, describing the jet as the new backbone of the Air Force. The vision of deploying homegrown warplanes by 2015, announced by late President Kim Dae-jung in 2001, was initially met with doubt

South Korea’s first homegrown fighter jet, the KF-21 Boramae, will be ready to fly with weapons aboard by 2028, the arms procurement agency said Sunday. “We will come up with air-to-air missiles by 2026 and air-to-surface missiles by 2028,” the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said. The fighter jet, whose prototype was revealed to the public Friday, will have to go through flight tests through 2026 and become combat ready by 2032. It provides an opportunity for Kore

North Korea has built a new submarine believed to be capable of carrying at least three ballistic missiles and is gauging the right time to unveil it, a local news outlet said Sunday, citing anonymous Seoul officials familiar with the matter. “South Korea and the US believe North Koreans have finished building one that they revealed in 2019,” Yonhap News Agency quoted the officials as saying. The North’s state media released a photograph at the time, in which leader Kim Jong-u

The South Korean and Indonesian defense chiefs said that their deal to build Korea’s first homegrown fighter jets together represents a relationship based on trust, and that they should build on the legacy to expand exchanges, at a face-to-face meeting in Seoul on Thursday. The KF-X program, in which Indonesia seeks a 20 percent share and technology know-how while Korea holds the rest, is set to reveal its prototype jet early this month, but Indonesia has so far paid just $22 million

The South Korean and European Union defense chiefs agreed to cooperate on Seoul’s initiative to engage North Korea in talks to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, at a face-to-face meeting in Seoul on Wednesday. Defense Minister Suh Wook and Gen. Claudio Graziano, chairman of the EU Military Committee, discussed expanding ties to deal with security concerns on the Korean Peninsula and in the surrounding regions. Graziano, who represents the defense chiefs of the 27-member EU, reports t

Indonesia is defaulting on a deal with South Korea to build Korea’s first homegrown fighter jets, sitting on its contribution to the project worth at least 8 trillion won ($7.1 billion), but Seoul is confident that it could manage the undertaking without the Southeast Asian country. The KF-X program, in which Indonesia seeks a 20 percent share and technology know-how while Korea holds the rest, is set to reveal its prototype jet early this month, but Indonesia has so far paid just $2

Delays in building a US base in South Korea to host the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system have been a fact of life for the past four years. But the two allies may soon find themselves at odds as Washington demands better living conditions for its personnel handling the THAAD system. In April 2017, South Korea brought in a THAAD battery to counter mounting threats from North Korea. But the living accommodations for the soldiers who live at the site remain inadequate, as Sou

South Korea’s military and an international recovery team led by the UN Command will resume an annual search for the remains of Korean and UN soldiers missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, the Ministry of National Defense said Thursday. The excavation project, which lasts from April to November annually, will begin Monday. The search has been held since 2019, a year after South and North Korea agreed to a military pact singed to end hostilities in the inter-Korean border.　 The command is

South Korea’s arms procurement agency said Wednesday that it will invest about 7 trillion won ($6.19 billion) to build three more Aegis destroyers and buy 36 American-made attack helicopters as part of a long-term initiative to bolster its military capabilities. The Navy is seeking to produce Aegis destroyers with better ballistic missile defense in upgrades to its Sejong class destroyer, the country’s first Aegis warship commissioned in 2008. The Navy expects to build the new destr

The two ballistic missiles North Korea tested a week ago could carry nuclear warheads and would be hard to intercept with South Korea’s missile defense systems, a local security think tank said Tuesday in its latest report. “They could put a nuclear warhead on each KN-23,” the Sejong Institute said, referring to the missiles. The report cited experts including Jefferey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies. He said the North could mount nu

The US military held its first joint missile defense drill in the Indo-Pacific region involving four US bases in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Hawaii, the US Army said. The Korean military confirmed Tuesday that the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in Osan, Gyeonggi Province -- a subunit of the Eighth US Army that commands 28,500 US troops here -- joined the 38th ADA Brigade in Japan, the E-3 ADA THAAD unit in Guam and the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command in Hawaii. The tw

South Korea’s drive to achieve carbon neutrality is an opportunity to create deeper and wider ties between Seoul and Sofia, the Bulgarian ambassador to Korea says. “The shift to a sustainable green economy based on clean energy is a common priority for Bulgaria and Korea,” Petko Draganov, Bulgarian ambassador to Korea, said during an interview with The Korea Herald at his office in Yongsan, Seoul. “Our country promotes the European Green Deal,” he said, referrin