South Korea is pushing for a consular agreement with Beijing as part of its measures to step up protection of its citizens living overseas amid controversy over alleged torture of a North Korea human rights activist during his detention in China. The Foreign Ministry said Thursday it plans to speed up efforts for the pact to facilitate consular access to Koreans in Chinese custody. “We see the agreement as contributing to better protection of our citizens in China,” spokesman Cho Tai-young said

The alleged torture of North Korean human rights activist Kim Young-hwan by Chinese investigators is escalating into a diplomatic dispute between the two governments.Seoul’s Foreign Ministry toughened its stance Tuesday, promising to assist Kim’s and his supporters’ plans to take China’s human rights abuses to the United Nations.Earlier in the day, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman denied the claim of torture, saying China had “proceeded with the investigation according to the law” and “prote

Foreign Ministry summons Japanese official over defense white paperSeoul strongly protested Tokyo’s fresh claim on Tuesday to the South Korean islets of Dokdo in its latest defense white paper. In the annual document approved by its cabinet, Japan identified the rocky islets as its territory and said the ownership issue “still remains unsolved.” The description has not been changed since 2005. The Korean government dismissed the claim as “unacceptable,” urging an immediate rectification.“We stro

Speculation is rising over a possible suspension of a joint project between North Korea and China to build an industrial belt along their border. Citing a source within the North Korean military, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper on Sunday reported that China declared a moratorium on the Hwanggeumpyeong economic zone development program last month after Pyongyang insisted on maintaining its troops on the border island to safeguard its interests there. Local farmers reportedly said that a small wat

South Korea and Australia launched a regular high-level meeting here on Monday to boost cooperation in politics and defense between the two middle powers in the Asia Pacific, Seoul officials said. The first strategic dialogue was designed to provide a wider framework for detailed bilateral discussions to better cope with the region’s changing security environment, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.It is an integration of two high-level talks between the two sides, which have separately co

Group of some 130 activists demands probe into alleged Chinese torture of South KoreanLawmakers and activists said Friday they plan to appeal to international bodies over alleged physical abuses, including electrical torture, by Chinese investigators of an activist for North Korean human rights.They sharply criticized the South Korean government for its tardy and tepid response to the claims by Kim Young-hwan. He was deported to Seoul last week after 114 days of detention in China alongside thre

An appeals court in Seoul on Thursday ordered the government to pay more compensation to the family of Cho Bong-am, former President Syngman Rhee’s political rival, who was executed on false charges of espionage in 1959. The Seoul High Court set the damage payment at 2.97 billion won ($2.6 million), up 500 million won from a lower court ruling. The family sued the government last year demanding 13.7 billion won after the Supreme Court overturned a guilty verdict on Cho. The former independence f

Kim Jong-un’s wife visited South Korea in 2005, intelligence agency confirmsNorth Korean leader Kim Jong-un continues to shake off the regime’s long-held tradition of secrecy, intriguing watchers eager to find signs of change in the reclusive state. In the latest breakaway, Pyongyang’s state media late Wednesday confirmed that the mystery woman beside the 20-something leader at recent public events is his wife, Ri Sol-ju. Ri has fueled rampant speculation in recent weeks about her identity. She

South Korea plans to demand an apology and other diplomatic steps from China after verifying a claim by a prominent rights activist of abuse during his detention, Seoul officials said Thursday.Kim Young-hwan and three other South Korean crusaders for human rights in North Korea were deported to Seoul last week after 114 days of confinement in China. They were arrested on March 29 on charges of “endangering national security.” Kim said Wednesday that he was tortured, deprived of sleep and forced

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― In a further clarification of its view on a key history issue between South Korea and Japan, the U.S. government said Tuesday that Japan’s trafficking of Korean women for sex services during the World War II is an unassailable “fact.”“These were women who were trafficked for sexual purposes,” a State Department official told Yonhap News Agency.The official stressed that how to characterize the incident is more important than the terminology to describe the victims.“Rat

The number of unmarried male citizens in Seoul aged 35 to 49 has increased more than 10-fold over the past 20 years, data showed Wednesday.According to the data released by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the number of single men of the age bracket in the capital city came to 242,590 in 2010, up from 24,239 in 1990. The rate of unmarried men among the age group has shown an upward trajectory during the past two decades to account for 20.1 percent in 2010 from around 2 percent in 1990, the dat

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has paid an inspection visit to an amusement park construction site, the North’s media said Wednesday, publishing Kim’s third reported visit to the newly built facility in Pyongyang.“Marshal Kim Jong-un visited the Rungna People’s Pleasure Ground just before the start of operation,” the (North) Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported in an English-language dispatch. The official news outlet has covered Kim’s two previous visits in April and early July to the am

The U.S. ambassador on Wednesday urged North Korea to learn from the recent political and economic reforms in Myanmar to improve the lives of its own people, but warned the North’s new leadership will be further isolated unless it abandons its nuclear ambitions. U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Sung Kim also said his government has “lost confidence” in working toward resuming dialogue with North Korea after it reneged on the Feb. 29th deal with Washington, an agreement to swap denuclearization ste

Kim Young-hwan claims North Korea was involved in detention of four activistsNorth Korea was closely involved in China’s detention of four South Korean activists who campaigned for human rights in the communist country, one of them said Wednesday. Kim Young-hwan also told a news conference that he was physically abused by Chinese investigators during interrogation and told not to disclose it.Kim and three others arrived in Seoul on Friday after 114 days of confinement in China. They were arreste

World’s 17th-largest donor struggling with shortage of funds and personnelSouth Korea is struggling to meet its commitments to an increased overseas assistance as its financial stability is threatened by ever-growing welfare outlays and shriveling tax revenues. The country has touted its astonishing transformation from a major aid recipient to the world’s 17th largest donor in a few decades. In 2010, it joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Com

Lee Dong-kwan, a former presidential secretary of public relations, has been appointed to a new post of ambassador for cooperation in public opinion and culture, Cheong Wa Dae said Tuesday.The Cabinet also created another ambassadorial position for human rights during a meeting and appointed Kim Young-ho, a former unification aide and now a professor at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul. The two posts offer neither an office nor pay and last one year. Lee is believed to be one of President Le

The Korea International Cooperation Agency said Monday it has completed a power plant in Haiti as part of its efforts to help rebuild the disaster-stricken country. The state-run aid agency has funneled $3 million into the project over the last two years in the sea town of Leogane, some 40 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince and the epicenter of a powerful earthquake that swept through the country in February 2010. The facility is expected to supply about 4,000 households and entails a mobile elec

Institute builds on global knowledge network in security, Asia, public policyWhen it started out in the spring of 2002, the East Asia Institute looked no different from many independent academic projects ― pure, proud but doomed to obscurity.Its organization was untenably tiny with only two staffers. It declared financial independence from government and businesses. Its motto ― “Ideas can change the world” ― sounded fairly idealist A decade later, the experiment has transformed into one of the w

ULSAN (Yonhap News) ― A South Korean graduate school specializing in nuclear studies has signed a cooperation deal with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to train experts in atomic power, the school said Saturday.Under the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency will recommend students from member nations seeking to build atomic power plants to study at the KEPCO International Nuclear Graduate School (KINGS) in South Korea’s southeastern coastal city of Ulsan, according to a KINGS offic

South Korea has recently allowed fish imports from North Korea, government officials said Sunday, a first since it imposed sanctions on the communist state following its deadly military provocations in 2010.Forty tons of scallops, an amount worth $100,000, were shipped through the Port of Sokcho on the eastern border in mid-June upon the request of three South Korean firms, said officials at the unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. It is the first time the South Korean gover