A ranking North Korean official in charge of policies on South Korea will attend a private academic forum in the U.S. next month, an official in Seoul said Friday.Won Tong-yon, deputy director of the United Front Department of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, will travel at the invitation of a pro

President Lee Myung-bak urged aides Friday to exercise greater ethical self-control, saying he wants to make his administration the cleanest in South Korean history, although a series of top secretaries have been implicated in corruption scandals.“We have to keep in mind that our administration was

South Korea will soon open a super science data computing hub capable of processing more than 20 petabytes of information, joining a select group of 10 countries that operate such a facility, the science ministry said Thursday.The new Global Science Experimental Data Hub Center (GSDC) will begin ser

Chinese authorities released a group of South Korean journalists and others who were detained early last week while on a reporting trip near the Chinese border with North Korea, a foreign ministry official in Seoul said Thursday. The five-member team dispatched by Seoul’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper was

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) -- The U.S. government on Wednesday vowed full cooperation in the investigation into an alleged rape by an American soldier of a young Korean woman near a military base north of Seoul, according to the South Korean Embassy in Washington.Assistant Secretary of State for East

A market economy and new business class have emerged in North Korea since the 1990s even though their government will not acknowledge it publicly, a panel of experts said Wednesday. Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Center for Free Enterprise in Yeouido, Seoul, professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin

North Korean officials believe the Libyan regime would not have collapsed had it held on to its nuclear weapons, the outgoing British ambassador to Pyongyang said Wednesday, casting doubt on the likelihood that the North will relinquish its nuclear capabilities.The remarks by Ambassador Peter Hughes

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) -- North Korea on Tuesday accused South Korea of seeking “the road to war” but called again for international talks on its nuclear arsenal.South Korea’s conservative government has taken relations with the North “to their worst state with widespread atmosphere of war and confron

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) -- The military commander in charge of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region expressed concern Tuesday that North Korea will resume belligerence related to its ongoing power succession.“The dynamics surrounding succession and, you know, most importantly, the prospect of con

A housewife’s obsession with her children’s education has led a Seoul court to order she pay 10 million won ($8,500) to her husband in a rare divorce ruling, the family court said Wednesday. The case highlights the excessive attention paid to children’s education by many parents in South Korea.The S

BEIJING (Yonhap News) ― North Korea and China agreed to strengthen economic cooperation during talks between their prime ministers in Beijing, China’s state news agency reported Tuesday.The North’s Premier Choe Yong-rim and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao “pledged to promote trade, investment and

Yang Sung-tae was sworn in as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in South Korea on Tuesday, vowing to bolster transparency and openness of the judiciary.The 63-year-old incoming chief justice, who replaced predecessor Lee Yong-hun, said the current level of South Koreans’ trust toward the ju

PARIS (Yonhap News) ― A South Korean adoptee won a seat in the French Senate in the country’s parliamentary election on Sunday, becoming the first ethnic Korean to advance to France’s top political body.Jean-Vincent Place, 43, who was adopted by a French family in the 1970s and grew to become a poli

More than twice as many South Korean soldiers and officers have been charged with violating the anti-communist National Security Law in the current conservative government than in the previous liberal administration, a report showed Tuesday.The law strictly prohibits distribution of publications pra

BEIJING (Yonhap News) ― The United States and North Korea are seeking to hold a second round of talks early next month to discuss terms for resuming the long-stalled six-nation negotiations on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs, a South Korean official said Thursday.The bilateral talks are

The number of people struggling with depression increases every year, with women and the elderly suffering the most, the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service said Tuesday. According to its report to Rep. Joo Seung-yong of the Democratic Party, 1,485 per 100,000 females and 637 per 100,000

NEW YORK (Yonhap News) ― South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged North Korea on Tuesday to give up its nuclear programs, saying denuclearization is a key first step toward eventual unification of the two divided states.Lee made the appeal during a speech after receiving a global leadership award

A retired professor of Seoul National University has been appointed president of Adama Science and Technology University in Ethiopia, making him the first South Korean university president in Africa. Lee Jang-gyu, 65, former professor of electrical engineering, is expected to begin his five-year ter

South Korea’s spy agency has detained a North Korean defector for an alleged assassination attempt against a fellow defector acting as an anti-North Korean activist, an intelligence official said Friday.The suspect, identified by his last name Ahn in his 40s, was taken into custody for plotting to k

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos pledged Thursday to significantly boost relations between the two countries and seek an early conclusion of a free trade agreement.The leaders agreed during summit talks in Seoul to upgrade their half-century-old relatio