Seoul on Friday protested Japan’s introduction of newly updated schoolbooks and an annual diplomatic paper that carry reinforced claims to the Korean islets of Dokdo and distorted views on its wartime sexual slavery and other atrocities. Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong summoned Japanese Ambassador to Korea Koro Bessho and delivered a written complaint. “We strongly condemn the Japanese government’s approval of elementary schoolbooks that step up its provocations regarding Dokdo compared with

Foreign Affairs April 4, 2014

The chief nuclear negotiator of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are expected to gather next week in Washington to discuss ways to boost their trilateral coordination in the face of North Korea’s increasing threats. Seoul’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday appointed Hwang Joon-kook, who led recent negotiations with Washington on sharing costs for the upkeep of U.S. troops, as special representative for Korean Peninsular peace and security affairs and chief delegate to the six-party talks aimed at den

North Korea April 3, 2014

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to “crush” the hostile policy of the U.S., lambasting its ongoing military drills with South Korea that Pyongyang claims are heightening tension on the peninsula, state media said Wednesday. The current political situation is “extremely grave,” he said, despite a series of measures he has taken since early this year to “bring about a turning point for the improvement of inter-Korean relations and unification.” “The U.S. and its hostile allies are unscr

North Korea April 2, 2014

The U.N. Security Council will meet on Thursday to formulate its response to North Korea’s launch of ballistic missiles which breached its resolutions and prompted international criticism, Seoul officials said. The closed-door meeting is scheduled for 4:30 p.m., Eastern time, between the representatives of 15 member countries of the council. It came at the request of the United States.North Korea fired two midrange ballistic missiles into the East Sea Wednesday in an apparent show of force again

North Korea March 27, 2014

The leaders of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan agreed Wednesday to have their chief negotiators on the North’s nuclear weapons program convene at an early date, boosting expectations for the resumption of the long-stalled six-nation talks. At their trilateral meeting on the margins of the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, they reaffirmed that the six-party talks should ensure “substantive progress” in dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear programs in a “complete, verifiable and irreversible” manne

Foreign Affairs March 26, 2014

President Park Geun-hye faces a major test to her “principled” diplomacy at an upcoming summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who still refuses to repent for the country’s imperial past and sticks to his hawkish security stance. The two leaders are scheduled to join U.S. President Barack Obama in The Hague on Tuesday for a three-way summit on the sidelines of a nuclear security conference. It will mark the first formal contact between Park and Abe since their inaugurations about a year

Foreign Affairs March 23, 2014

This is the third installment in a series interviews with chiefs of United Nations offices in Korea. ― Ed.Feeling empty and lost, university student Lim Hyoung-joon started backpacking around the world in 1990 in search of inspiration for a worthy life. After roaming every corner of the globe from affluent metropolises of the U.S. to poverty-stricken streets in Bangladesh, he went to Malawi in 1994. Three days in the African country changed his life. With no other means of payment than traveler’

Foreign Affairs March 23, 2014

More than 1,300 Japanese academics have joined a protest against Tokyo’s move to review and alter its 1993 apology for its military’s wartime mobilization of sex slaves, a news report said Thursday. Hirofumi Hayashi, a politics professor at Kanto Gakuin University, and 14 other scholars have launched a signature-collecting drive against retaining and developing the statement by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, the Tokyo Shimbun reported. The apology, along with a 1995 statement by former

Foreign Affairs March 13, 2014

Vice foreign ministers of Korea and Japan held talks on Wednesday in Seoul in an apparent attempt to mend the two countries’ relations frayed by the Shinzo Abe government’s increasingly hawkish policies on historical and territorial issues. Cho Tae-yong and Akitaka Saiki were expected to have discussed bilateral ties and the situation on the peninsula, possibly including Japan’s wartime sex slavery and other historical issues. The meeting marks the first high-level dialogue since Abe’s visit to

Foreign Affairs March 12, 2014