CHEONAN, South Chungcheong Province -- Shin Beom-chul, who until recently served as the deputy national defense minister, said that North Korea limiting its weapons testing to short-range missiles last week “may have been a Japan-conscious move.” Speaking with The Korea Herald, he said that as Pyongyang has been courting a summit with Tokyo, “anything beyond short-range missiles being fired toward the sea east of Korea would have the potential to be perceived by the Japanese as

Politics March 25, 2024

NAMYANGJU, Gyeonggi Province -- If former US President Donald Trump returns to the White House, Seoul may be excluded from Washington’s potential negotiations with Pyongyang due to the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s hard-line stance on North Korea, according to former Army general-turned-lawmaker Rep. Kim Byung-joo. “There is a possibility that our government may not have a seat at the table where decisions concerning the Korean Peninsula are being made between the US and North

Politics March 24, 2024

BUSAN -- Known locally as “South Korea’s second capital,” Busan is home to some 3 million and a key battlefield in the upcoming National Assembly election just three weeks away. Busan is also politically significant for South Korea, having been the birthplace of two presidents, Kim Young-sam and Roh Moo-hyun, who are symbolic figures with the conservative party and the progressive party, respectively. Here, the fiercest battle is expected in Nam-gu, the only district in the cou

Politics March 20, 2024

North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Monday morning, just over two hours ahead of an international summit held in Seoul that invited the US secretary of state, and three weeks ahead of South Korea’s National Assembly general election. The firings come more than a month after the launch of a cruise missile in mid-February. According to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, several SRBMs were fired at around 7

Politics March 18, 2024

The Democratic Party of Korea’s decision to nominate the former National Intelligence Service chief Park Jie-won to run in the upcoming general election has provoked uproar from the bereaved family of the South Korean fisheries official, Lee Dae-jun, who was killed by North Korean soldiers in September 2020. As the chief of the NIS at the time, Park is a key defendant in the ongoing trial over South Korean authorities’ alleged negligence during the time between Lee’s capture by

Politics March 15, 2024

At least three North Korean defectors are seeking to debut in Seoul’s political scene with the People Power Party, the ruling conservative party in South Korea. According to the People Power Party, three North Korean defectors in their 30s are running for a National Assembly seat through proportional representation in the upcoming general election slated for April 10. One of them is Kim Gum-hyok, 32, who says as a young millennial from North Korea, he wishes to represent “the younger

Politics March 14, 2024

Among the several new third parties that have emerged out of the Democratic Party of Korea, the new party founded and headed by Cho Kuk, former justice minister under President Moon Jae-in, has so far seen the highest ratings, according to the latest polls. In a March 5-7 Gallup Korea poll of 1,000 voters aged 18 and above, 6 percent said they would vote for Cho's Rebuilding Korea Party. By contrast, 3 percent said they supported the New Reform Party headed by Lee Jun-seok, who was ousted a

Politics March 12, 2024

Come April 10, South Koreans will head to the polls to choose the next batch of National Assembly members. With about a month left until election day, the latest polls find the ruling People Power Party’s leading while its rival, the Democratic Party of Korea, has been bogged down by infighting. According to a March 5-7 Gallup Korea survey of 1,000 voters aged 18 and up, 37 percent said they would vote for the People Power Party as opposed to 31 percent who said they would cast their ballo

Politics March 11, 2024

Lee Jong-sup, the former minister of national defense who was recently appointed as ambassador to Australia, faced protests by opposition parties as he arrived at the airport on Sunday to depart for Brisbane. Rep. Hong Ihk-pyo, the Democratic Party of Korea floor leader, held a protest at the Incheon Airport terminal for international flights and said that Lee being sent abroad as an ambassador was a demonstration of “what is wrong with the administration in power.” “Exactly ab

Politics March 10, 2024

Ihn Yohan, who is from the fourth generation of a US missionary family that helped build churches and schools in Korea during Japanese colonial rule, is running for office in the April 10 general election as a ruling People Power Party candidate. The People Power Party committee for nominating candidates for the general election asked In, whose American name is John Linton, to run, and he has accepted, according to those familiar with the matter. Ihn, director of the Severance Hospital Internati

Politics March 10, 2024

South Korea’s main opposition party on Thursday asked President Yoon Suk Yeol to walk back the appointment of his former Minister of National Defense Lee Jong-sup as ambassador to Australia. According to the Democratic Party of Korea, Lee has been banned from leaving the country by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials since the beginning of this year over an investigation into the death of a Marine. The Marine died during a search and rescue operation in July last

Politics March 7, 2024

North Korea is forcing political prisoners to work at some of its high-risk nuclear facilities, a North Korean defector was quoted as telling South Korean authorities. A former Pyongyang resident in her 40s who defected in 2019 said in an in-depth interview with authorities in Seoul that North Korea was sending its political prisoners to labor camps close to nuclear sites, according to a recent report by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification. “The levels of radiation

Politics March 6, 2024

The annual military drills conducted by South Korea and the US were “frantic war exercises,” North Korea said Tuesday, warning of consequences. “The US and the Republic of Korea have once again launched provocative, large-scale joint military exercises that amplify the unpredictability of the situation in the Korean Peninsula,” North Korea’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement carried by the official state media, the Korean Central News Agency, referring to Sout

Defense March 5, 2024

South Korea’s spy agency on Monday warned of a recent uptick in North Korean hacking threats against South Korean semiconductor firms. The National Intelligence Service said North Korean hackers have been ramping up hacking efforts targeting South Korean semiconductor equipment makers since the latter half of 2023. The NIS said the North Korean hackers mainly focused on companies whose servers are connected to the Internet and who had their vulnerabilities exposed. The North Korean hackers

Politics March 4, 2024

The race to win the Assembly seat for Jongno, long known as the center of politics in Seoul, officially kicked off Monday as the Democratic Party of Korea candidate, Kwak Sang-eon, set to work after a contentious primary. Kwak is the son-in-law of the late liberal President Roh Moo-hyun. The party decided to hand him the nomination for the symbolic Seoul district over other competitive figures such as Jeon Hyun-hee, who served as the head of the anti-corruption watchdog under President Moon Jae-

Politics March 4, 2024