President Moon Jae-in expressed optimism Saturday that South Korea will attain its goal of getting 13 million people inoculated against COVID-19 by the end of June. "Vaccinations are gaining speed," he wrote on his Facebook account. Just over the past two days, 1.2 million people received vaccine shots, raising the total to 5.23 million, 10.2 percent of the nation's population, as of Friday, he noted. If the current pace is maintained, there will be no problem in achieving the aim of

A fire stopped the operation of a turbine at a nuclear plant on the country's southeastern coast Saturday, officials said. There were no reports of casualties or radiation leaks. The fire broke out at the Shin-Kori 4 reactor in Ulsan, some 400 kilometers southeast of Seoul, at 9:28 a.m. and was extinguished about an hour later, according to the state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. The authorities suspect the fire started from an exciter of a turbine. The Nuclear Safety and Security Co

South Korea established a presidential committee Saturday to serve as the control tower of the nation's carbon neutrality drive. President Moon Jae-in said the government-private panel would be a "pivot" in uniting national efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. He admitted that it would not be easy for the country to attain the goal, given its heavy reliance on manufacturing industries and fossil fuels. "Carbon neutrality is an unavoidable task, with which mankind shou

South Korean National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug has met with political leaders of the Czech Republic to promote Seoul's nuclear power plant solutions, his office said Saturday. Park spoke with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis in Prague on Friday (local time) and emphasized that South Korea can be an ideal partner for the Czech Republic's nuclear power projects. "We are stronger than any other nation when it comes to construction time, cost and operation capabilities," Park s

The South Korean military confirmed two more cases of the novel coronavirus, the defense ministry said Saturday. One Air Force officer in Osan, 55 kilometers south of Seoul, tested positive for COVID-19 while in quarantine. So far, seven people at his air base have contracted the virus since the first case there was reported on May 21. One Army soldier in Inje, Gangwon Province, 165 km east of Seoul, also tested positive following his emergency leave to Seoul. The latest cases raised the tota

South Korea's daily new coronavirus cases stayed in the 500s for the second consecutive day Saturday as health authorities strive to contain cluster infections and the spread of virus variants. The country reported 533 more COVID-19 cases, including 505 local infections, raising the total caseload to 139,431, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said. There were five additional fatalities, raising the death toll to 1,951. The fatality rate was 1.4 percent. Daily caseloads ha

South Korea plans to impose a 20 percent income tax on capital gains from cryptocurrency transactions starting next year as planned, the government announced Friday, despite growing investor calls for delaying the taxation plan. The government announced the plan after discussing the matter during a vice-ministerial interagency meeting chaired by Koo Yoon-cheol, head of the government policy coordination under the Prime Minister's Office. Gains from cryptocurrency transactions will be classifie

South Korean stocks increased Friday on hopes for a quick economic rebound, taking a cue from improved US economic data. The Korean won rose against the US dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (Kospi) rose 23.22 points, or 0.73 percent, to close at 3,188.73 points. Trading volume was moderate at about 954 million shares worth some 13.4 trillion won (US$12 billion), with gainers outnumbering losers 596 to 262. Foreigners bought a net 139 billion won, while retail investors s

SEOUL -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among those who will join a virtual summit of global leaders on climate to be hosted by South Korea, Cheong Wa Dae announced Friday. President Moon Jae-in will host the two-day P4G Seoul Summit set to open Sunday with more than 60 leaders and top-level officials of foreign countries and international organizations attending. US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jin

The summit talks between President Moon Jae-in and US President Joe Biden last week helped the two countries further deepen their alliance in a "comprehensive, constructive and mutually beneficial" manner, the foreign ministry said Friday. The ministry made the assessment in a report to the parliament, saying that the May 21 summit "brought achievements encompassing political, economic cooperation and global issues, while expanding and deepening the realms of cooperation."

South Korea plans to take into account tax revenue situations and demand for increasing public finances before it decides on whether to draw up another extra budget in the latter half of 2021, a senior government official said Friday. First Vice Finance Minister Lee Eog-weon also said the government will focus its economic policy on underpinning an accelerating economic recovery in the second half. Talk of another extra budget emerged from the ruling party after President Moon Jae-in said Thur

The government and the ruling Democratic Party (DP) on Friday agreed on the need to restart dialogue with North Korea to restore inter-Korean relations as early as possible based on last week's Seoul-Washington summit deal that reaffirmed the allies' peace commitment toward the Korean Peninsula. "We have agreed that Seoul should facilitate conversations and exchanges with Pyongyang to ease the strained inter-Korean relations," DP spokesperson Rep. Koh Yong-jin said after a policy cons

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's biggest carmaker, is seeking to sell an idle plant site in China to a local district government, industry sources said Friday. Hyundai Motor plans to sell the site of the No. 1 Beijing plant, which has been suspended since April 2019, to the Shunyi administrative district, a person familiar with the matter told Yonhap News Agency over the phone. The plant's suspension came after Hyundai suffered years of sluggish sales in China due to the lingering impact of po

Seoul will address Tokyo's renewed claim to sovereignty of South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo on the Tokyo Olympic website as strongly as possible, Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong said Friday. Japan described Dokdo as part of its territory on a map posted on the Tokyo Olympic website to show the route of the torch relay, its latest claiming of the islets. The move has prompted mounting calls to revise it and concerns that the inclusion of the islets could undermine the Olympic spirit

South Korean banks' lending rates edged down in April amid a slight decline in deposit rates, central bank data showed Friday. The average interest rate charged on new bank loans came to 2.74 percent in April, down 0.03 percentage point from the previous month, according to preliminary data from the Bank of Korea (BOK). The BOK cut the key interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent in May last year after delivering an emergency rate cut of half a percentage point in March to cushion the impa

South Korean institutions' investment in foreign securities fell 1.7 percent in the first quarter as they reduced their holdings of foreign sovereign bonds, central bank data showed Friday. The combined value of foreign securities held by institutional investors came to $363 billion as of end-March, down $6.1 billion from three months earlier, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). Foreign securities include stocks, bonds and so-called Korean paper, which refers to foreign currency-denominated

The top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the United States held their second phone talks in less than a week on Friday to discuss cooperation to achieve denuclearization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, the foreign ministry said. Noh Kyu-duk, the ministry's special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, and his US counterpart, Sung Kim, discussed follow-up efforts to last week's summit between Presidents Moon Jae-in and Joe Biden, where the leaders stressed d

President Moon Jae-in has named Park Soo-hyun, a former lawmaker, as new senior secretary for public communication, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday. Park succeeds Chung Man-ho, who has been in the post for less than 10 months. Park worked as Moon's first Cheong Wa Dae spokesman starting in May 2017 after serving as lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party for four years from 2012. He left Cheong Wa Dae in 2018 in a failed bid to become governor of South Chungcheong Province. He was defeated in last ye

Jeju Island, South Korea's most popular holiday destination, will raise itsanti-COVID-19 social distancing measures by one notch to Level 2 at the end of this month to cope with growing local transmissions of the coronavirus, the provincial government said Friday. The Level 2 posture, the third highest in the country's five-tier COVID-19 alert system, will be enforced for two weeks beginning Monday, the government said, noting the operating hours of facilities used by the general public will be

The unification ministry said Friday it will seek to restore communication lines and dialogue with North Korea based on "sufficient conditions" for engagement created by last week's summit between President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump. In a report to the National Assembly, the ministry also said that Pyongyang must be now thinking hard about its next steps after Moon and Biden agreed to take diplomatic and pragmatic approach in denuclearization efforts. "The leader