Recalling the first historic summit between leaders of the US and North Korea a year ago, Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Wednesday that the government sees this month as a critical period in making progress in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. “Today is the first anniversary of the historic Singapore summit … the second US-North Korea summit was held in Hanoi in late February, and we are expecting the third one to come soon,” Kim said during a meeting betw

North Korea sent a condolence message and flowers for former first lady Lee Hee-ho who died Monday night, the Unification Ministry said Wednesday. Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and First Vice Director of Workers’ Party of Korea, delivered a written message in her brother’s name, for the funeral of Lee, who is known for her own efforts as well as support for the peace and inter-Korean reconciliation efforts of her husband -- former President Kim Da

Jeju police said Tuesday they will refer a murder case involving a 36-year-old woman to the prosecution on charges of killing her ex-husband and dismembering and abandoning his corpse. Police believe Koh Yu-jeong intentionally killed the victim, whom police only identified as a 36-year-old man surnamed Kang, and had set up a plan for the murder in advance.  This contradicts Koh’s claim that she tried to defend herself from Kang’s sexual assault. Koh killed Kang with a knife at a

The question of how North Korea will respond to the death of former first lady Lee Hee-ho, who along with her late husband, President Kim Dae-jung, devoted her life to improving inter-Korean relations, is the focus of attention as Pyongyang has been lukewarm for months toward Seoul’s offers of cross-border cooperation. 　The Unification Ministry said Tuesday it had delivered the news of Lee’s death to the North in the morning through the inter-Korean liaison office in the North’

Tens of thousands of young North Koreans have been forced to join work brigades to build a huge resort complex in Wonsan, with leader Kim Jong-un harboring ambitions of transforming the port city into a source of foreign currency, British paper the Times reported Sunday. Located on the southeastern coast of North Korea, the Wonsan region has been the focus of the North Korean regime’s tourism push, with an aim to complete the project by October 2020.  After a rare trip by Western medi

The ASEAN-Korea Center, an intergovernmental organization, is organizing ASEAN Week 2019 in Seoul to showcase the diverse cultures of the 10 ASEAN member states. From Friday through Sunday, special events and exhibitions will be held at Seoul Plaza to raise public awareness of ASEAN cultures and tourism ahead of the ASEAN-South Korea Commemorative Summit scheduled for November this year. The center invited the citizens of Seoul and anyone with an interest in the ASEAN region to “take

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Sunday that the government is making a concerted effort to restart talks between the United States and North Korea at the earliest possible date.“Following the meeting in Hanoi, restarting the US-North Korea summit has become very crucial. From that perspective, President Moon Jae-in proposed holding an inter-Korean summit (in order to support the US-North Korea talks),” Kim said on a KBS television show. As US President Donald Trump will

While the trade war between the United States and China is reshaping the global economy, it is also leaving little room for South and North Korea to move the denuclearization process forward, according to John Park, director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. “If the US and China have a truce or suspend the application of tariffs, that could provide political space for South Korea’s diplomatic role to increase. But, in this environment, South Korea’s impact is

South Korea on Wednesday approved a plan to dispatch $8 million in humanitarian aid to North Korea via UN agencies and is considering additional donations of rice to alleviate hunger and illness in the impoverished country. The South and North Exchange and Cooperation Promotion Council, a decision-making body under the Ministry of Unification that deals with inter-Korean policies, gave the green light to the use of funds from the government budget to support humanitarian programs for North Korea

Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, has appeared in public for the first time in nearly two months, dispelling speculation that she had been under probation over the breakdown of the second US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February. According to the Korean Central News Agency, Workers’ Party of Korea First Vice Director Kim Yo-jong and Kim Jong-un attended a mass gymnastics and artist performance called “The Land of the People” at the

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa pledged Monday to enhance cooperation with European countries to find the missing South Korean tourists who were on board a boat that collided with a cruise ship on the Danube River in Budapest last week. Twenty-one people are still missing. Seven have been confirmed dead, and seven others were rescued.“We will further strengthen cooperation with the Hungarian government and the coastal countries, such as Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, to achieve substantial

President Moon Jae-in will make a state visit to Sweden from June 14-15 at the invitation of His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, the Embassy of Sweden in Seoul said. The president will lead a delegation comprising South Korean government ministers and business representatives. First Lady Kim Jung-sook will be joining him on the trip. As a part of his eight-day Nordic visit, which begins June 9, Moon will also visit Finland and Norway.The upcoming trip is “a part of his efforts

South Korea expects the Hungarian authorities to soon begin searching inside the sunken tour boat involved in a collision in the Danube River in Budapest which killed at least seven Korean tourists and left 21 others missing, a Foreign Ministry official said Friday. The sightseeing boat capsized and sank within a matter of few seconds after colliding with larger ship Viking River Cruise in driving rain on Wednesday evening.The ministry official said the Hungarian authorities have been trying to

Tough sanctions slapped on North Korea have begun to adversely affect the most vulnerable people there, experts said, stressing the need for swift humanitarian action for millions of hungry and sick people. What has hurt the lives of North Korean people the most are sanctions, and the widespread impact has reached those who already could not afford food, University of North Korean Studies professor Yang Moon-soo said during a roundtable held by the state-run Korea Institute for National Unificat

Relations between South Korea and Japan have deteriorated to what is arguably their worst point to date as they dispute every inch of ground over Tokyo’s responsibility to compensate the Korean victims of forced labor during World War II. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha’s meeting with her Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, in Paris on Friday thwarted hopes that those strained ties would mend anytime soon. The two top envoys wrapped up their meeting having only escalated the tensio

US President Donald Trump on Sunday downplayed the potential danger of North Korea’s missile launches in early May, just a day after national security adviser John Bolton called the tests a clear breach of UN resolutions. “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me,” Trump tweeted during a four-day state visit to Japan that started Saturday. On May 9, North Korea tested two short-range missiles, which fell into the East S

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said President Donald Trump has firm willingness to implement sanctions against North Korea, in another signal that the country will not pursue sanctions relief in order to resume nuclear talks. “The president is determined that we continue our efforts to enforce both the UN sanctions and the US sanctions against North Korea,” he said at the US House Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday. Mnuchin said sanctions are effective leverage to

The US State Department on Wednesday reaffirmed that UN sanctions against North Korea will remain in place, after Pyongyang publicly criticized Washington’s “extreme hostile policy” regarding the seizure of its cargo ship, escalating tensions between the two countries amid stalled nuclear talks. In a rare press conference at the UN in New York on Tuesday, North Korea’s UN Ambassador Kim Song demanded immediate return of the country’s second-largest cargo ship, the W

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Tuesday that the government’s plans to send food assistance to North Korea will adhere to humanitarian principles and pledged to separate the action from wider political goals. “Providing humanitarian aid is (a matter of) humanitarian principles, no more, no less. The international community’s universal consensus is that humanitarian aid should be separated from politics,” Kim told reporters in his first media briefing since he took office April 8. Unifica

The US should revise its strategy of pressuring North Korea to give up all its nuclear weapons before offering any sanctions relief, said a veteran diplomat, in order to avoid repeating diplomatic events that have ended in failure over the past two decades. “The US needs to take an incremental approach to resolve North Korea’s denuclearization issues. Demanding it to relinquish its entire nuclear arsenal first seems to be another repetition of the history of failure that begun (to be) attempted