South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired two suspected short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Saturday in the seventh weapons launch in a month, South Korea’s military said, a day after it vowed to remain America’s biggest threat in protest of U.S.-led sanctions on the country.

The North had been expected to halt weapons tests because the 10-day U.S.-South Korean drills, which it views as an invasion rehearsal, ended earlier this week.

President Donald Trump downplayed the latest launch.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s foreign minister on Friday called U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “poisonous plant of American diplomacy” and vowed to “shutter the absurd dream” that sanctions will force a change in Pyongyang.

The North’s blistering rhetoric may dim the prospect for an early resumption of nuclear negotiations between the countries. A senior U.S. diplomat said earlier this week that Washington was ready to restart the talks, a day after U.S. and South Korean militaries ended their regular drills that Pyongyang called an invasion rehearsal.

SEOUL, S. Korea, Aug 22 (NNN-YONHAP) – South Korean President, Moon Jae-in’s approval rating, fell this week, on controversy over the nomination of new justice minister, a weekly poll showed today (Thursday).

According to the Realmeter survey, support for Moon fell 2.7 percentage points over the week, to 46.7 percent this week.

The negative assessment on Moon’s management of state affairs was up 2.9 percentage points to 49.2 percent.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Thursday it will scrap an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan, a decision that could escalate a dispute over history and trade and undercut security cooperation on North Korea.

With the decision not to extend the pact, the political and trade disputes between South Korea and Japan now extend into some of the most sensitive national security issues in the region.

The arrangement was designed to share information on the threat posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear activities.

SEOUL, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Working-level talks between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States seemed about to resume soon, a senior official of the South Korean presidential Blue House said on Thursday.

Kim Hyun-chong, a deputy director of the National Security Office (NSO) of the Blue House, made the remark after a meeting with Stephen Biegun, U.S. special representative for DPRK affairs who arrived here from Japan Tuesday evening for a three-day visit, according to local media reports.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Japan has approved shipments of a high-tech material to South Korea for the second time since imposing export curbs last month, two sources said, ahead of talks by government officials this week to resolve a dispute stemming from their wartime past.

Relations between the two U.S. allies worsened late last year when a South Korean court ordered Japanese companies to compensate some of their former laborers forced by the firms to work during World War Two.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A runaway train. Crashing billiard balls. A compound fracture.

Journalists and academics in Seoul have been running out of colorful descriptions for an intensifying dispute between South Korea and Japan over history and trade that has sent always shaky relations plummeting further.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Saturday said leader Kim Jong Un supervised another test-firing of an unspecified new weapon, seen as an attempt to pressure Washington and Seoul over slow nuclear negotiations and their joint military exercises.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military said North Korea fired two projectiles into the sea Friday to extend a recent streak of weapons tests believed to be aimed at pressuring Washington and Seoul over slow nuclear diplomacy.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectiles launched from the North’s eastern coast flew about 230 kilometers (143 miles) on an apogee of 30 kilometers (18 miles) before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

SEOUL, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed Thursday to build a peace economy on the Korean Peninsula with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) through dialogue and cooperation.

Moon made the remarks in his address on the 74th anniversary of the Liberation Day to mark the liberation of the peninsula from the 1910-1945 Japanese colonization.

"We aim to establish a peace economy in which prosperity is achieved through peace and also complete our liberation through the unification of the peninsula," Moon said.