Police officers have been assigned to guard the Constitutional Court's eight justices ahead of a highly controversial ruling on President Park Geun-hye's impeachment, a court official said Thursday.The court, which has been reviewing the legality of Park's impeachment over a corruption scandal, is widely expected to announce its verdict before March 13, when a second justice of the nine-member bench is set to complete her term. (Yonhap)"We determined that the justices needed additional security

The recent assassination of his half-brother shows how vulnerable North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is to potential challenges to his power, a former North Korean spy here said Thursday."The fact that Kim Jong-un assassinated his own half brother in such a brutal manner conversely shows the regime is that vulnerable," Kim Dong-sik, formerly a North Korean agent, said in a report on the recent murder.He is currently a researcher at South Korea's state-run Institute for National Security Strategy, h

The recent murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half brother will likely bolster the ongoing move in the United States to add the North to the list of states sponsoring terrorism if Pyongyang is proved to have been involved in the death, a senior foreign ministry official in Seoul said Thursday.Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of late former leader Kim Jong-il, died on Feb. 13 at an airport in Kuala Lumpur after apparently being poisoned by two Asian women. He was waiting for a flight to Maca

A Seoul court on Thursday rejected a request to question North Koreans who defected to the South while working at a restaurant in China last year.The Seoul Administrative Court turned down the request sought by the Lawyers for a Democratic Society to call the defectors as witnesses in a case it filed to nullify the decision by the National Intelligence Service that banned its lawyers from talking to those that arrived in the South. In this file photo taken on April 11, 2016, an employee of a Nor

The market for frozen dishes is growing fast in South Korea, on the back of a new social trend in which more people are choosing to live and eat alone, industry data showed Thursday.The market for frozen meals, such as frozen fried rice with prawn or kimchi, reached 46.5 billion won ($40.6 million) in 2016, growing by more than five-fold from 8.9 billion won in 2012, according to the data released by CJ Cheiljedang, a leading food manufacturer.  (Yonhap)Fried rice with various ingredients that c

The US government will likely put South Korean economic issues on the back burner for a while as it will focus more on security concerns in the northeast Asian region, experts said Thursday.According to the report by the state-run Korea Development Institute, researchers and experts from renowned think tanks, including the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, held round-table talks in Seoul last week to discuss the future of Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula in the Trump era.

Credit card spending by foreign visitors to South Korea jumped more than 30 percent from a year earlier last year, helped by a sharp increase in spending by Chinese visitors, a report showed Thursday.Credit card purchases by non-residents came to 13.7 trillion won ($12 billion) in 2016, up 32 percent from the previous year, according to the report from the Korea Culture & Tourism Institute.(Yonhap)Credit card spending by Chinese visitors came to 8.3 trillion won, accounting for 60.6 percent of t

South Korean companies and duty-free shops remain jittery over China's threats that the deployment of a high-tech US missile defense battery on South Korean soil would wreak havoc on their business, industry sources said Thursday.With Seoul and Washington pushing ahead with the deployment in defiance of China's strong protest, Chinese media have unleashed a cascade of reports that South Korean companies will suffer "severe damage" should it become a reality. (Yonhap)In July last year, South Kore

A series of UN Security Council sanctions appear to have failed to stop North Korea's weapons exports, a US media outlet said Thursday.In an email interview with Voice of America, Peter Wezeman, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the studies found that the North Korean regime continues to violate the UN sanctions and export small-size weapons and traditional weapons technologies to six or seven countries. (Yonhap)Iran and Syria have been mentioned as regul

South Korea's foreign ministry has sent an official letter to local municipalities in the southeastern city of Busan, asking for cooperation in resolving diplomatic rifts with Japan over a statue symbolizing the victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery, officials said Thursday. In December, civic groups installed the girl statue in front of the Japanese consulate in the nation's second largest city. Japan demanded an immediate removal and recalled its ambassador to South Korea in protest last m

South Korea's parliamentary chief and political parties on Thursday failed to agree on having the speaker exercise his authority to put to a vote the proposal to extend the term of the independent counsel investigating a corruption scandal involving President Park Geun-hye.National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun and the floor leaders of the ruling Liberty Korea Party, the main opposition Democratic Party, the People's Party and Bareun Party gathered earlier in the day to discuss using the speak

An appellate court on Thursday upheld the entry ban on a Korean-American singer who has been forbidden to visit South Korea after winning US citizenship in an apparent attempt to evade military conscription.Steve Yoo, once a mega-hit singer here better known as Yoo Seung-jun, filed a lawsuit against a South Korean consulate in the United States in October 2015 for refusing to grant him a visa.This file photo captured from South Korea's online broadcasting channel Africa TV on May 27, 2015, shows

South Korea's seafood imports rose for the third straight year in 2016 on rising demand for healthier food and ingredients, government data showed Thursday.The total value of imported seafood reached $4.79 billion in 2016, up 5.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans. (Yonhap)It marked the third consecutive year of growth in imports since 2014, when they posted a 15.7 percent on-year jump.The amount, however, slid 2.4 percent on-year

Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn on Thursday called on the government to craft "bold" policy initiatives to stimulate domestic demand, warning that consumption could further weaken due to a string of risk factors, including rising prices.During a meeting of ministers tasked with bolstering local demand, Hwang stressed the need to stop declining consumption "at an early stage" through aggressive steps such as the early execution of state budgets and fiscal reinforcements. Acting

김정남 암살용의자 도안 티 흐엉으로 추정되는 여성이 'kiss prank(키스 장난)'이라는 유튜브 영상에서 발견됐다. 지난 4월 최초 게재된 것으로 보인다. 제목은 'How to kiss a girl(여자에게 키스하는 법)' 등이다.해당 프로그램에는 베트남 유튜브전용 스타 꾸엉 벡(Quang Bek)이 등장한다. 이 남성이 게임을 통해 여성들과의 키스를 시도한다는 설정이다.  흐엉 또한 상대역으로 등장한 모델 중 한 명이다. 벡과 스킨십하는 장면이 고스란히 담겨있다. (사진=유튜브 캡처)한편 말레이시아 언론 <히트스트리트>은 16일치 기사에서 "흐엉이 경찰조사에서 본인은 베트남의 인터넷 유명인(Internet Celebrity)이라고 주장했다"고 보도했다.흐엉은 경찰조사에서 "(김정남 살해도) 장난(설정)인줄 알았다"고 진술한 바 있다.   (사진=유튜브 캡처)코리아헤럴드 지예은 인턴기자 (yeeunjie@heraldcorp.com)

Liberal presidential hopeful Moon Jae-in's campaign said Thursday it would deploy security staff to protect him after it was tipped off about a potential terror attack. His spokesman Rep. Kim Kyung-soo of the main opposition Democratic Party said the party has obtained "detailed" information on a possible attack on the presidential front-runner. Moon Jae-in, former head of the Democratic Party (Yonhap)"The information was detailed and does not seem like a prank," Kim told Yonhap News Agency.The

Make-up products accounted for more than half of the annual sales at duty-free shops in South Korea last year, fueled by brisk demand from foreign tourists immersed in Korean entertainment culture, data showed Thursday. The combined cosmetics revenue from duty-free chains, including top players Lotte Duty Free and Shilla Duty Free, stood at 6.28 trillion won ($5.48 billion) at the end of 2016, up 51.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the data by the Korea Customs Service and the compani

Malaysia will send its police officers to Macao Thursday to collect DNA samples of the son of Kim Jong-nam, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half brother who was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur last week, media reports said.Chinese-language newspapers in Malaysia, China Press and Sin Chew Daily reported that the Malaysian police will send three officers to Macao on Thursday morning to gather DNA samples from 22-year-old Kim Han-sol.(Yonhap)The Malaysian officers will collaborate with Interpol in M

South Korea's opposition parties on Thursday expressed concerns over the rumor that President Park Geun-hye may voluntary resign to avoid being formally impeached in relation to the corruption scandal that has been rocking the country for months.Rep. Park Jie-won, the floor leader of the People's Party, said South Korea must immediately begin preparation for the presidential election if Park resigns voluntarily, which may disrupt the criminal investigation underway.South Korea's presidential off

South Korea's defense ministry said Thursday it will expand experimental projects to apply advanced information and communication technologies to military equipment and networks. During a briefing on the "u-experimental project," the ministry reported that it injected 23.5 billion won ($20 million) into 41 projects between 2007 and 2016, and plans to spend more in the coming years. (Yonhap)Last year's major projects included a Radio over Internet Protocol-based mobile command and control system