A total of 12 North Korean refugees arrived here between April and June this year, the lowest figure since 2003 when Seoul’s Unification Ministry started compiling the data, it said Wednesday. The figure is down 96 percent from the same period last year, when 320 defectors fled the communist regime. The downward trend was a continuation from the previous quarter -- from January to March -- when 135 North Koreans arrived here, compared to 229 in the same period last year. The coronavirus

South Korea’s military on Tuesday opened applications for alternative military service to conscientious objectors. The move is in line with the Constitutional Court’s landmark ruling in June 2018 that objectors be given noncombat ways to fulfill their mandatory national service. Applicants who pass a series of fitness tests organized by the Defense Ministry and other expert groups will start their active duty as early as October as workers in correctional centers carrying out day-t

A third US-North Korea summit is unlikely before the US presidential election in November, but the door is open to diplomacy, US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said Monday. “I think it’s probably unlikely between now and the US election,” Biegun told a forum hosted by the Washington-based think tank German Marshall Fund when asked about a potential summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The US point man on North Korea, however, sa

South Korea’s Defense Ministry convened the first of this year’s two meetings on preparations for the transfer of its wartime operational control from the United States, scheduled to be completed by 2022, the ministry said Monday. “The transfer of the wartime operational control will bolster our defense readiness,” Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said, urging the military to be fully prepared for a successful handover. The meeting, attended by the defense minister, th

North Korea on Monday called on its people to rally behind leader Kim Jong-un amid lingering tensions on the peninsula, marking the fourth anniversary of Kim’s rise to chairman of the State Affairs Commission, the highest leadership institution there. The post was established in 2016 as part of branding the communist regime as a legitimate member of the international community. As chairman, Kim undertook a series of diplomatic breakthroughs including the historic first Washington-Pyongyan

The Japanese government has raised objections to the US proposal to invite South Korea to an expanded Group of 7 summit in September, Japan’s Kyodo News reported Sunday, citing diplomatic sources from Washington and Tokyo. In a message relayed to Washington upon its announcement to have Seoul at the table for the first time, along with three other countries, Japan said South Korea prioritizes inter-Korean reconciliation and leans on China, so the engagement would be inconsistent with

North Korea has recently stepped up monitoring of its citizens whose family members have defected to the South, a local news outlet reported Sunday. Defectors here have been sending cash to and corresponding with their family left behind in the North via Chinese brokers, but that has stopped after Pyongyang delegated the job of monitoring defector families to a central party organ in charge of state security, from provincial branches, the report said. The latest inter-Korean crisis over the

On Thursday, defense chiefs of South Korea and the US, Jeong Kyeong-doo and Mark Esper, respectively, vowed to bolster “diplomatic efforts for the complete denuclearization” of North Korea, in a joint statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War. Pyongyang should deliver on its promises to denuclearize and stop waging hostilities against Seoul, as agreed at the 2018 Washington-Pyongyang summit and worded in the 2018 inter-Korean military

Sweden, one of the six countries that provided medical support for South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, fielded the largest group of medical personnel at the onset of the conflict to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Nurse Jutta Andersson volunteered to join the 1,200-strong Swedish Red Cross dispatch, even though she said she had to “look in an atlas” to see where Korea was. “I first heard the appeal for Korea on the radio, that the government had decided to contribu

The remains of 147 South Korean soldiers who perished during the Korean War returned home on Wednesday to a solemn welcome. A special ceremony for their homecoming is scheduled Thursday evening as part of events to mark the outbreak of the war on June 25, 1950. The remains, kept for nearly two years at the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, were among those North Korea returned to the US in early 1990s and after the 2018 summit between Washington and Pyongyang in Singapore. Through two joi

Inter-Korean relations under the Moon Jae-in administration were never going to work, as they were built on a misguided belief, as worded by Moon in 2018, that North Korea would dismantle its nuclear arsenal for peace, said Cho Tae-yong, a former South Korean nuclear envoy and deputy national security adviser. “The nuclear talks were headed to a failure from the inception,” Cho said, citing former US national security adviser John Bolton, who in his forthcoming memoir described the

Kim Byung-joo, former deputy commander of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command, said South Korea should manage military tensions to prevent them from getting out of control, while remaining on guard against aggression from North Korea. Despite the North’s escalating threats to undo all the progress both sides have made toward peace and reconciliation, Seoul should continue to honor its agreements with Pyongyang, he added. “Returning to confrontation would further jeopardize the saf

South Korea and the United States should resume large-scale joint military exercises to make North Korea agitated and realize it is overstepping, said Vincent Brooks, who headed the 28,500-strong combined forces command between Seoul and Washington. “Now is a good time to say we’re going to go through with the exercise here in late summer,” Brooks said Wednesday, two days after the North demolished an inter-Korean liaison office amid escalating tensions on the peninsula prompt

The remains of nearly 147 South Korean soldiers who perished during the Korean War are set to return home this month from the United States, where they were sent from North Korea. The US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Thursday that it was returning the “largest volume” of war remains that included Korean soldiers since receiving them from the North in July 2018. About half of the remains set to come here had come from North Korea at that time, a month after the historic fir

South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo vowed strong responses to any aggression from North Korea, blaming the North for disappointing the expectations of those wishing for peace on the peninsula.  “We will forcefully respond to any attack from North Korea, without hesitation. We will keep under control the escalating tensions between the two Koreas,” Jeong said Thursday at an event to thank Korean War veterans. Hours earlier the military said it had yet to detect

In response to North Korea’s demolition of an inter-Korean liaison office, China called for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry sent out the message, less than two hours after the unprecedented aggression escalated military tensions on the peninsula. “South and North Korea are one people. As their neighbor, we hope for continued peace and stability on the peninsula,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. China, which shares a

There has been no talk whatsoever of scaling back the number of US troops stationed here, a Defense Ministry official confirmed Tuesday. The issue resurfaced here after the US announced it was reducing its military presence in Germany. “Nothing has been discussed on that matter,” the Seoul official said under customary condition of anonymity, echoing what South Korea’s chief negotiator for the defense cost-sharing negotiations with the US had said earlier. US President Dona

South Korea on Sunday vowed to honor reconciliatory inter-Korean agreements and called on the North to do likewise, while reiterating a staunch military readiness against any potential provocation by Pyongyang. Seoul’s top security advisers, led by Chung Eui-yong, chief of the National Security Office, reviewed the recent flare-up in tensions on the peninsula, following the North’s threats to sever ties with the South and even use military force. “National Security Council m

North Korea, which recently cut off all communication with the South, was seen moving several missiles, a local newspaper reported Friday, citing unidentified US authorities familiar with the matter. Several missiles were spotted atop transporter erector launchers, the road-mobile vehicles that elevate missiles to the firing position, in South Pyeongan Province, north of Pyongyang, where the North test-fired its first ICBM in 2017, the Donga Ilbo said. It added the US authorities suspect, fro

North Koreans need food and clean drinking water now more than ever before, but the situation is set to worsen, Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the World Food Program, said Tuesday, urging the international community not to look away. More than 10 million people -- nearly 40 percent of the country’s population – are in need for humanitarian assistance, she told reporters, adding that about the same number also lacked access to safe water supplies. Children as well as pregnant an