Rep. Ha Tae-keung of the ruling People Power Party said Wednesday he submitted a bill allowing the South Korean government to place groups and individuals on the foreign terrorist list in the absence of a United Nations designation. Ha said the proposed amendment to the laws on counter-terrorism would let the prime minister, whose role is largely administrative and ceremonial, designate Hamas as a terrorist organization without having to wait for a designation by the UN. Hamas is an Islamist mil

Since its establishment in 1961 as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has not only collected intelligence on cases related to North Korea, but also investigated them. Come January, the South’s most important intelligence headquarters will be barred from investigating cases related to North Korea. Rep. Kim Byung-kee of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, a former high-ranking official at the NIS, says prohibiting the intellig

South Korean ruling party’s reform committee is facing the possibility of an early disbandment amid an internal backlash over its unpopular demands. The People Power Party’s reform committee was formed on Oct. 26 to lay out a vision for realigning the party for the 2024 general election, and headed by a party outsider -- Yohan Ihn, a third-generation descendant of a US missionary who gave humanitarian aid during Japanese colonial times. Ihn has announced a series of reform measures i

South Korea’s Ministry of Justice on Tuesday held a high-level seminar with the International Criminal Court to mark the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute -- the founding treaty of The Hague-based war crimes court. The regional seminar, held under the theme of the “ICC and the Asia-Pacific: past, present and future of the Rome Statute -- vision for the greater regional solidarity,” was hosted in Seoul by the Justice Ministry and the Supreme Court on Nov. 14-1

South Korea’s spy service suspects Chinese agencies are behind the operation of fake websites posing as well-known South Korean news outlets to spread propaganda. The National Intelligence Service said Monday that Chinese press relations agencies Haimai and Haixun created phishing websites that look like websites of news outlets here and then generated a series of stories it said are “pro-China” and “anti-US." Some of the examples of the stories circulated by the pho

South Korea is likely to begin a trilateral discussion on the 52-hour weekly work cap, with the government moving to resume talks as the labor umbrella union returns to the dialogue for the first time in five months. The discussion will include the government's latest proposal on allowing exceptions to the legally set maximum of 52 hours of work per week. The Ministry of Employment and Labor said Monday that employers may be given more flexibility in arranging the work schedules on a weekly

Rep. Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat, met with five members of the US congress during his trip to Washington on Nov. 7-8 to jointly raise concerns about China forcibly repatriating North Koreans who defected into its territories. The South Korean lawmaker with the ruling People Power Party said in a release Friday that he discussed the issue of China’s forced repatriation of North Korean defectors in meetings with Sen. Ted Cruz and House of Representatives members Chris Smith,

South Korea’s National Assembly recently became the 32nd legislature to be represented in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an association of lawmakers concerned about Beijing’s increasingly hostile behaviors. The first South Korean lawmakers to join the cross-parliamentarian alliance are the ruling People Power Party’s Rep. Ji Seong-ho and the opposition Democratic Party of Korea’s Rep. Oh Yeong-hwan. The two lawmakers will serve as inaugural co-chairs until the

The Democratic Party of Korea said Friday it would file a second motion to remove the chief of the country’s broadcaster regulator, after withdrawing the first one. In Thursday’s National Assembly plenary session, the Democratic Party introduced and passed the contentious motion to impeach Lee Dong-kwan, who heads the Korea Communications Commission, only to retract it a day later amid public outcry. The Democratic Party, which holds enough seats in the Assembly to pass motions witho

The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea on Friday rescinded the impeachment motion targeting a senior incumbent prosecutor overseeing criminal investigations into the party's leader, Rep. Lee Jae-myung. The retraction came one day after the Democratic Party filed and passed a motion to impeach Prosecutor Lee Jung-seop during Thursday's Assembly plenary session, triggering public backlash. The senior prosecutor has been leading the ongoing investigations into some of the more high-profile c

President Yoon Suk Yeol is again being pressured by the main opposition to remove one of the minister-level heads in his Cabinet. The Democratic Party of Korea, which has the majority in the National Assembly, on Thursday adopted a motion to impeach Lee Dong-kwan as the head of the country’s broadcasting regulator, the Korea Communications Commission. The opposition party said that Lee, who was appointed on Aug. 25 to lead the KCC, the mission of which is to monitor broadcasting content an

A debate is roiling in South Korea over the plan to make Seoul larger, a recycled election promise that is failing to win voters in and out of the capital, polls reveal. Enlarging Seoul is a recurring proposal in South Korean politics -- interpreted as being intended to sway voters in the capital’s many satellite cities -- renewed by the People Power Party with the general election less than six months away. The plan was previously endorsed in past elections by some candidates with the Dem

A few days after the Islamist militant group Hamas entered Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than a thousand civilians, posters sympathizing with the deadly attacks popped up on several South Korean college campuses. The posters, which defended the Hamas attacks as an act of self-defense by Palestinians, were taken down shortly after -- but the debate on the war continues to rage on. Speaking to The Korea Herald, one Seoul university sophomore said she was “stunned by such open support for

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is mobilizing support for Palestine in the wake of Israel’s war with Palestinian-Islamist militant group Hamas, according to South Korea’s spy agency. In the 2023 audit by the National Assembly held Wednesday, the National Intelligence Agency’s director Kim Kyou-hyun told lawmakers that the North Korean leader is believed to have instructed “a wide range of support” for Palestine, in an apparent attempt to benefit from the war. The ch

President Yoon Suk Yeol cited reducing the national debt and stabilizing prices as his top priorities in an address to the National Assembly on Tuesday. “The approach our government is taking in managing our finances is to avoid passing on unaffordable debts to the country’s future generations,” the president said in a budget speech delivered before the members of the Assembly. “A sound fiscal policy is crucial to stabilizing prices in the long run and protecting our econ

A delegation of South Korean lawmakers is joining an alliance of politicians challenging what it sees as China’s ambitions to change global norms to advance its interests. The Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China will have its first delegation of South Korean lawmakers since launching on the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 2020. One of the South Korean lawmakers to be accepted by the IPAC is Rep. Ji Seong-ho, a North Korean defector and human rights activist who

[코리아헤럴드=김아린 기자] 중국을 견제하기 위해 결성된 다국적 국회의원 모임인 ‘대중국 의회 간 연합체’(Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China·IPAC, 아이팩)에 한국이 가입하게 된다. 28일 지성호 국민의힘 의원실에 따르면, 일본에서 30일 부터 이틀간 진행되는 ‘세계 위구르 대회’(International Uyghur Congress)에서 한국 국회 대표단의 IPAC 가입을 위한 절차가 마무리 될 예정이다. IPAC은 천안문 사태 31주년인 지난 2020년 6월 결성된 의회 간 연합체로, 홍콩 민주주의 탄압, 대만 겨냥 군사적 압박 등 중국의 공세적 외교에 대한 견제 활동을 펼쳐왔다. 현재 미국 영국 캐나다 호주 일본 등 30여개국의 국회의원들이 참여하고 있다. 이번 IPAC 가입으로 민주주의와 인권의 가치를 공유하는 자유 진영 국가들의 대중국 노선에서 한국의 역할이 확대될 전망이다. 특히,

North Korean hackers are hiding malware in “copycat applications” that look like they are South Korean to steal personal information of users and other sensitive data, the national spy agency said Friday. The National Intelligence Service busted the apps, which were made and distributed by a North Korean hacker ring and “nearly identical” in designs and features to a popular South Korean site. The spy agency only identified the site imitated in the North Korean phishing a

The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea on Thursday downplayed the National Intelligence Service findings that the country’s election infrastructure is vulnerable to cyberattacks, claiming that the spy agency was trying to get involved in politics. The Democratic Party linked the accusations of cybersecurity vulnerabilities by the NIS with the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s “attack on democracy.” The party also alleged that the spy agency was seeking access to the e

The ruling People Power Party on Monday announced an unusual pick to lead the reform of the party -- a descendant of an American missionary and a physician who contributed to the establishment of democracy in South Korea in the 1980s. John Linton, a professor of family medicine at Severance Hospital in Seoul, was chosen as the chief of the party’s reform committee on Monday. The 64-year-old, who became a naturalized South Korean citizen in 2012, was born and raised in the North and South J