North Korea replaced the vice chairman of its powerful National Defense Commission in this year's second session of the rubber-stamp parliament on Thursday, the country's media said.   Hwang Pyong-so, the top political officer of the Korean People's Army, was elected as vice chairman of the all-powerful defense commission, replacing Choe Ryong-hae who had taken the position in the past parliamentary session in April, the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English report, monito

North Korea Sept. 25, 2014

An American man recently sentenced by North Korea to six years of hard labor says he is digging in fields eight hours a day and being kept in isolation, but that so far his health isn't deteriorating.   Under close guard and with only enough time to respond to one question, 24-year-old Matthew Miller spoke briefly to an Associated Press Television News journalist at a Pyongyang hotel, where he had been brought to make a phone call to his family. It was his first appearance since he was convicted

North Korea Sept. 25, 2014

Hyundai Group is expected to be able to streamline its cyclical ownership structure with the sale of its logistics unit to be completed next week, raising market confidence in the cash-strapped conglomerate, corporate sources said Thursday.    Insiders said the money generated by the sale of Hyundai Logistics to Japanese private equity fund Orix Corp. will be used by Hyundai chairwoman Hyun Chung-eun and her family to purchase a100 percent stake in Hyundai Global, the holding company for the ent

Sept. 25, 2014

   At least 285,000 people have fled their homes because of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the United Nations said Tuesday, warning that intensified battles could lead to a "massive exodus".   Local Ukrainian authorities have so far registered some 117,000 people flooding out of the east to other regions of the country, the UN refugee agency said.   Vincent Cochetel, head of the UNHCR's European Bureau, told reporters in Geneva that the number "is in our view a low estimate," since most men fl

World News Aug. 5, 2014

A man dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire Tuesday on foreign troops at a military base, causing casualties, an Afghan military spokesman said.   NATO said it was investigating an "incident'' involving both Afghan and international troops at Camp Qargha, a base west of the capital, Kabul, which trains officers for the country's army.    Gen. Mohammmad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Defense Ministry, wrote on Twitter that "a terrorist using (the) uniform of (the) Afghan Army'

World News Aug. 5, 2014

Hyundai Motor Group's global chairman left for the United States Tuesday to assess overall market conditions and review corporate strategies to help the carmaker capitalize on opportunities and deal with challenges in the coming months.   The trip by Chung Mong-koo comes 15 months after his last visit to the world's second-largest new vehicle market, and is his third overseas tour of 2014.   Earlier in the year, he inspected operations of Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. in Europe and Chin

Mobility Aug. 5, 2014

South Korea's high-end hotel chain Lotte Hotel canceled its plan to host a Japanese annual event marking the establishment of the Japanese self-defense forces on Thursday, citing unfavorable public sentiment here.   The Embassy of Japan in Korea had planned to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the modern Japanese military at Lotte Hotel in central Seoul on Friday.    "In consideration of the public sentiment, (we) canceled the Japanese embassy's special event scheduled for

Industry July 10, 2014

President Barack Obama, faced with a potentially awkward scene at the Texas-Mexico border, sought to recast the political debate over a flood of young migrants as a question of Republican willingness to tackle the problem, and not his decision to skip a chance to view the crisis first-hand.   Obama turned to one of his chief critics, Texas' Republican Gov. Rick Perry, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, to try to make his point.   Following a meeting with Perry in Dallas Wedne

World News July 10, 2014

The North East Asia Trade Tower (NEAT) in Incheon has taken the title of South Korea's tallest building, the firms behind the project said Thursday.   The tower in Songdo, a city within South Korea's second-largest sea port city, is 68 stories tall and stands 305 meters tall. The new building, which took eight years to build and cost 516.3 billion won (US$509.3 million), joins the ranks of a growing number of landmark skyscrapers in the country.   The 80-story, 301-meter-tall Busan Haeundae Doos

Social Affairs July 10, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Washington and Beijing agreed on "important urgency" of swiftly curbing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, adding that they discussed "specific ways" to advance the goal of denuclearizing North Korea.   "The United States and China agreed on an important urgency of achieving a denuclearized, stable and prosperous Korean Peninsula, and we discussed specific ways in which we think can advance that goal," Kerry told reporters as the two nati

North Korea July 10, 2014