First lady explains S. Korea's dog meat ban plan to Queen Camilla

First lady Kim Keon Hee told Queen Camilla about South Korea's legislative moves to ban the consumption of dog meat during their meeting in London last week, according to a presidential spokesperson on Sunday. Touting the move initiated by the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and the ruling party to ban dog meat sales by 2027, Kim described the proposed legal ban as a constructive step to enhance the awareness of animal rights, spokesperson Lee Do-woon said in a written statement. Yoon's t

Nov. 26, 2023

FM Park holds talks with China's Wang ahead of trilateral talks with Japan

Foreign Minister Park Jin held bilateral talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Busan on Sunday, hours before the two were set to meet trilaterally with their Japanese counterpart. The talks came days after North Korea said it launched a military spy satellite and successfully placed it into orbit, after two botched launch attempts in May and August, respectively. In response, South Korea scrapped part of a 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction accord. In a tit-for-tat, North Kore

Nov. 26, 2023

Japan reportedly decides to support S. Korea's World Expo bid: media

Japan has decided to support South Korea's bid to host the 2030 World Expo in the southeastern city of Busan, a local media report said Sunday, as the voting for the mega event is set to take place this week. The Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun said Tokyo has made the decision in consideration of President Yoon Suk Yeol's continued efforts to improve long-frayed ties between the two countries. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had reportedly notified his will to support Busan's

Nov. 26, 2023

Top diplomats of S. Korea, Japan hold bilateral talks ahead of trilateral talks with China

Foreign Minister Park Jin held bilateral talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa in Busan on Sunday, ahead of the trilateral gathering involving their Chinese counterpart. In the talks with Kamikawa, Park was expected to discuss ways to move the bilateral relations forward amid a thaw in the ties after South Korea decided to resolve the issue of compensating Korean forced labor victims during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula without asking for contributions f

Nov. 26, 2023

Yoon returns home from trip to Britain, France

President Yoon Suk Yeol returned home Sunday from a trip to Europe that took him first to Britain for a state visit and then to France for a final campaign to bring the 2030 World Expo to Busan. Yoon and first lady Kim Keon Hee paid a four-day state visit to London on the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations and received a ceremonial welcome featuring a carriage procession to Buckingham Palace and a state banquet hosted by King Charles III. The visit produced a new bilateral agreement, call

Nov. 26, 2023

Top diplomats of S. Korea, China, Japan to hold talks on resuming trilateral leaders' summit

Top diplomats of South Korea, China and Japan were set to hold talks in the southeastern port city of Busan on Sunday, with discussions on resuming the long-stalled three-way summit of the three countries' leaders expected to be in focus. The trilateral meeting among Foreign Minister Park Jin, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa also comes after about a four-year hiatus as the three neighboring countries seek to deepen the tripartite cooperation despite m

Nov. 26, 2023

Top diplomats of China, Japan in S. Korea for trilateral talks

The top diplomats of China and Japan arrived in South Korea on Saturday for trilateral talks with their South Korean counterpart on efforts to resume the long-suspended leaders' summit of the three neighbors. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa each landed in the southeastern port city of Busan, the venue for the gathering, in the afternoon. They will hold separate bilateral talks with Foreign Minister Park Jin on Sunday, before having the three-wa

Nov. 25, 2023

PM to attend next week's voting in Paris for 2030 World Expo host

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is set to visit France next week to participate in the voting for the 2030 World Expo as South Korea vies to host the mega event in its southeastern city of Busan, his office said Saturday. The host country will be elected by the 182 member states of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the body in charge of overseeing the quadrennial event, during its general assembly in Paris on Tuesday (local time). Busan is competing against Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and

Nov. 25, 2023

Yoon says Busan Expo will return favor S. Korea received from intl. community

President Yoon Suk Yeol said Friday that South Korea plans to return the favor it received from the international community during its economic development by hosting the 2030 World Expo in its southeastern city of Busan. Yoon made the remark during a National Day reception hosted by the South Korean Embassy in Paris, which was attended by around 500 people, including delegates to the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the body in charge of overseeing the World Expo. The 182 BIE mem

Nov. 25, 2023

South Korea to host trilateral meeting with top diplomats of Japan, China

South Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Park Jin is to meet with his Japanese and Chinese counterparts in Busan on Sunday. The upcoming meeting in the South Korean port city will mark the first gathering of the top diplomats of the three countries in four years and three months. The Foreign Ministry in Seoul said in a release Friday that Park will be speaking with Tokyo’s Yoko Kamikawa and Beijing’s Wang Yi over the weekend to discuss a possible trilateral summit of the count

Nov. 24, 2023

Cyberattack feared in series of South Korean government website outages

Another South Korean government-run online service suffered an outage Friday, marking the fourth such failure within the past week. A website and mobile applications providing online ID services went down, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety. Friday’s breakdown in the government’s e-ID service comes a day after a website run by the Ministry of Economy and Finance-affiliated Public Procurement Service crashed on Thursday. The PPS website used by all government institution

Nov. 24, 2023

Nonregular workers discriminated by financial firms: labor ministry

South Korean financial institutions have been found to treat nonregular workers unfairly, according to the Labor Ministry on Friday. The ministry revealed the results of an investigation it conducted on 14 financial organizations, including banks, securities and insurance companies. A total of 62 cases of discrimination were identified across 12 companies, though the names of these companies were not disclosed. In one case, a sales office failed to provide a monthly lunch allowance of 200,000

Nov. 24, 2023

Opposition leader slams N. Korea for scrapping military deal, urges policy changes

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Friday denounced North Korea's scrapping of a military tension reduction agreement with South Korea, expressing concern that tit-for-tat actions of both sides could lead to tensions getting out of control. The North effectively scrapped the 2018 agreement on Thursday, saying it will restore all military measures halted under the deal. The move came after the South suspended part of the agreement in protest of the North's successful launch of a militar

Nov. 24, 2023

North Korea scraps 2018 military pact with South Korea

North Korea said Thursday it would step away from an inter-Korean military agreement reached on Sept. 19, 2018, vowing to deploy new and more advanced weapons along the shared border. In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Thursday, North Korea’s Defense Ministry said its forces “will not be bound by” the agreement that created a buffer zone around the fortified border, and that all military measures “will be restored immediately” in a

Nov. 23, 2023

S. Korea, UK to establish foreign, defense ministerial dialogue, fight cyber threats

South Korea and the United Kingdom on Wednesday agreed to establish a "two plus two" ministerial dialogue where foreign and defense ministers would hold regular bilateral meetings, amid signs of a destabilizing international order that the countries seek to jointly defend. The UK now becomes the third country to establish such ministerial dialogue with Korea, following the United States and Australia, according to Kim Tae-hyo, first deputy director of the presidential National Securi

Nov. 23, 2023

S. Korea, Britain forge strategic partnership on ODA projects

South Korea and Britain have forged a strategic partnership on official development assistance projects and other areas of sustainable growth, the financial ministry said Thursday. Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho and Foreign Minister Park Jin participated in the signing ceremony of the Strategic Development Partnership with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron in London, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The agreement was reached during President Yoon Suk Yeol's state visi

Nov. 23, 2023

[Full Text] President Yoon Suk Yeol's addreess to the House of Commons: A friendship to turn our challenges to pure opportunity

My Lord Speaker, Mr. Speaker, my lords, members of the House of Commons, ladies and gentlemen, It is my great honor to stand before the British Parliament, the Mother of all Parliaments. The United Kingdom has been the pioneer of modern history. It laid the foundation of liberal democracy. It opened the era of global market economy. The British people’s strong belief in freedom sparked the Glorious Revolution. It was the birth of modern parliamentary democracy. The British parliamentary

Nov. 22, 2023

Yoon, King Charles highlight 140 years of ties, vow to set new milestone

President Yoon Suk Yeol and King Charles III celebrated the 140th anniversary of the two countries' diplomatic relationship in a series of high-profile events held in London on Tuesday, pledging to set new milestones for their bilateral ties as well as to join hands to promote freedom, peace and prosperity worldwide. Tuesday's grand ceremonial welcome celebrated the centuries-old friendship between South Korea, which rose from the ashes of the Korean War to becoming Asia's fourth-

Nov. 22, 2023

[Herald Interview] Palestinian envoy denies Hamas connection with North Korea

Waleed Siam, the non-resident ambassador of Palestine to South Korea, said Monday that there was no connection between Hamas and North Korea, amid continued speculations of the Palestinian militant group’s alleged ties with the rogue country. “I can say in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian authorities that there is no contact between Hamas and North Korea,” the permanent general mission of Palestine said in an interview with The Korea Herald in

Nov. 21, 2023

Korea, UK to adopt Downing Street Accord to elevate ties: presidential office

South Korea and the United Kingdom are poised to adopt a new bilateral framework called the Downing Street Accord, during the upcoming summit between President Yoon Suk Yeol and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Yoon's office said Tuesday. The adoption of the new agreement will upgrade the relations between the two countries to a "global strategic partnership" from a "broad and creative partnership," emphasizing that the two countries will jointly address geopolitical risks as t

Nov. 21, 2023