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The North and South Korean militaries completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 front-line guard posts on Saturday as they continue to implement a wide-ranging agreement reached in September to reduce tensions across the world's most fortified border, a South Korean Defence Ministry official said. South Korea says the military agreement is an important trust-building step that would help stabilize peace and advance reconciliation between the rivals. But critics say the South risks conceding some of its conventional military strength before North Korea takes any meaningful steps on denuclearization -- an anxiety that's growing as the larger nuclear negotiations between...

The United States and South Korea have agreed to launch a joint working group to coordinate their North Korea sanctions, a move that reflects Washington’s attempt to bridge the allies’ diverging approaches to denuclearizing the Kim regime, experts said. “The two governments agreed on establishing a new working group that would further strengthen our close coordination on our diplomacy, on our denuclearization efforts, on sanctions implementations, and inter-Korean cooperation that comply with the United Nations sanctions,” Robert Palladino, the State Department’s deputy spokesperson, said. “So this is an additional step that we’re taking that Special Representative (Stephen) Biegun and his...

<p>President Trump was in Columbia, Missouri last night on his pre mid-term election tour speaking at an airport rally.....</p> <p>Among the other US Senate races an unusual one in Mississippi where there's an "open primary special election" being held next Tuesday. Two Democrats and two Republicans are running with the top two finishers set for a runoff three weeks later.....</p>

A top court ruled Thursday that South Koreans can now legally reject their mandatory military service on conscientious or religious grounds without punishment. The decision by South Korea's Supreme Court is expected to affect the cases of more than 900 conscientious objectors on trial, as hundreds of men, mostly Jehovah's Witnesses, are imprisoned every year for refusing to serve. One of the ways South Korea copes with potential aggression from its neighbor and traditional enemy of North Korea is to force all able-bodied men to serve two years in the military. But under President Moon Jae-in, who was elected last...

South Korea’s women have begun to rebel against impossible standards of beauty in a country known as the plastic surgery capital of the world. Women who call themselves “beauty resisters” have been destroying their cosmetics, cutting their hair and denouncing the pressures imposed on them by a patriarchal society which emphasises flawless beauty as the key to career and marital success. The trend, which has spread across social media and has been dubbed the “remove corset” movement, is the latest in a series of feminist initiatives in South Korea since the MeToo campaign began. Lina Bae, a beauty YouTuber, racked...

The US and South Korea decided Friday to suspend another major joint military exercise to give the diplomatic process with North Korea "every opportunity to continue." "Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis and Minister of National Defense Jeong Kyeong-doo decided to suspend Exercise Vigilant Ace to give the diplomatic process every opportunity to continue," chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a statement. The decision was made during Mattis' meeting with his counterpart in Singapore. The exercise was due to take place in December. Last year's iteration of the Vigilant Ace involved 12,000 US troops and some 230 military aircraft...

South Koreans have now found the perfect cheese to go with their wine. With craft beer becoming so popular across South Korea, the U.S. Meat Export Federation found “Beer Week Seoul” a prime opportunity to introduce the perfectly paired snack ... U.S. pork sausages. Funded by the USDA Market Access Program and the National Pork Board, the promotional effort included offering tasting samples of Johnsonville and Oscar Mayer sausages to the more than 25,000 visitors. “Our goal was to establish American pork sausages as an easy-to-cook and easy-to-eat choice that goes great with craft beer,” says Jihae Yang, USMEF director...

You ARE Alive in Me Your situation is about to change for the better. These days are for you, For as I stand with you and beside you it is with my momentum your life is carved. Therefore your now is My Destiny "Yeah " Prophecy coming alive to accomplish The Fathers will in "Real" time. Do you understand?! I Am your Spear head and the Living breathing Force of The ( (( Active Kingdom of Zion )) ) Budding, blossoming and bearing Live fruit before the world's very eyes and existence, for you are riding in My Chariot of...

US President Donald Trump’s statement that Seoul would not lift sanctions on Pyongyang without America’s “approval” did not go down well in South Korea, prompting criticism from activists and politicians from across the political spectrum. A group of student activists climbed up the Statue of King Sejong in central Seoul on Friday afternoon in a protest against Trump’s speech as they flew a banner that read, “South Korea is not a US colony” and chanted, “Trump needs to apologize.” The protest, which saw six people arrested, comes after Trump said Wednesday, “They won’t do it without our approval. They do...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea agreed on Monday to begin reconnecting rail and road links, another step in an improving relationship that has raised U.S. concern about the possible undermining of its bid to press the North to give up its nuclear program. The agreement on transport links came during talks in the border village of Panmunjom aimed at following up on the third summit this year between South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, last month. “The South and North reached the agreement after sincerely discussing action plans to develop inter-Korean relations...

U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Seoul on Tuesday for failing to finance the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system on the Korean Peninsula. Last year, the U.S. deployed two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, launchers to South Korea in response to North Korea's increased missile and nuclear tests. "I said, so let me get this, we have a system that's very expensive and we shoot down rockets that are shot from North Korea to South Korea," Trump said to a crowd in Council Bluffs, Iowa. "Okay, so we're protecting South Korea, right? Why aren't they paying?" Trump...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in called on the U.S. to officially declare an end to the Korean War during an interview Friday, adding that the North had “promised complete denuclearization.” “If North Korea takes certain measures, the end-of-war declaration would be a political statement that would announce that the long-standing hostile relations between Pyongyang and Washington had ended,” Moon told the BBC, adding that he wanted the declaration to happen at the “earliest possible date.” The Korean War, which began in 1950, technically never ended, as only an armistice was signed in 1953. It will only officially be declared over...

SEOUL, Oct. 11 (Yonhap) -- More than 48,000 foreigners came to South Korea last year to get cosmetic surgery, spending some 215 billion won (US$189.12 million), health ministry data showed on Thursday. The numbers provided to Rep. Nam In-soon of the ruling Democratic Party for a parliamentary audit showed 397,882 foreign patients visited South Korea last year and paid 639.9 billion won in medical fees. The numbers are down 6.5 percent for the volume of patients and down 25.6 percent for the amount of money spent. Corresponding figures for plastic surgery patients, however, increased. There were 968 more foreigners who...

A South Korean court has sentenced former President Lee Myung-bak to 15 years in prison over a slew of corruption charges. His conviction is yet another blow to conservatives in South Korea. His conservative successor Park Geun-hye is serving a 33-year prison term over a separate corruption scandal. The Seoul Central District Court issued the sentence on Friday after convicting Lee of bribery, embezzlement and other charges. Lee, who has denied most of the charges leveled on him, has one week to appeal. Lee, who served as president from 2008-2013, has been held at a detention center in Seoul since...

SEOUL (Reuters) - Japan should refrain from flying the “Rising Sun” flag on a warship in a fleet review planned in South Korea next week, a North Korean propaganda website said on Friday, joining South Koreans in the latest spat over the countries’ colonial history. ...“The ‘Rising Sun’ flag is a war-crime flag that the 20th-century Japanese imperialists used when executing their barbaric invasions into our nation and other Asian nations,” North Korea’s state-controlled Uriminjokkiri website said. “Planning to enter flying the ‘Rising Sun’ flag is an unbearable insult and ridicule to our people.”

China is the country presenting the biggest barrier to peace on the Korean peninsula, surpassing North Korea for the first time, according to a new poll of South Korean citizens. China “does not want inter-Korean reunification”, according to 91 per cent of respondents, compared with 90, 88 and 53 per cent for Japan, Russia and the United States respectively. In the survey, released on Tuesday by the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (IPUS) at Seoul National University, 46 per cent of respondents viewed China as “the most threatening country to peace on the Korean peninsula”, a dramatic increase from...

Troops from North and South Korea began removing some landmines along their heavily fortified border on Monday, the South’s defense ministry said, in a pact to reduce tension and build trust on the divided peninsula. Project details were agreed during last month’s summit in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In a statement, the ministry said the two sides agreed to remove all landmines in the so-called Joint Security Area (JSA) in Panmunjom within the next 20 days, with military engineers performing the hazardous task on the South...

Troops from North and South Korea began removing some landmines along their heavily fortified border on Monday, the South’s defense ministry said, as part of a pact to reduce tension and build trust on the divided peninsula. Project details were agreed during last month’s summit in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In a statement, the ministry said the two sides agreed to remove all landmines in the so-called Joint Security Area (JSA) in Panmunjom within the next 20 days, with military engineers performing the hazardous task on...

Last week Pyongyang sent two rare Pungsans, Korean hunting dogs, to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, as a token of the growing friendship between the two countries. Named Songgang and Gomi, the dogs were transferred via the truce village at Panmunjom on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the Koreas on September 27, along with three kilos (6.6 lb) of food to help them adapt to their new home. According to the Blue House, Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, suggested the gift to Moon at a dinner in Pyongyang during the South Korean leader's historic trip to North Korea...

For those whose world is based in moral equivalence, there is no difference between liberal democracy and totalitarian dictatorship. Supposed micro-aggressions or past human rights sins are disqualifying factors to condemn an enemy’s contemporary embrace of slave labor and concentration camps. Welcome to the mindset of South Korea’s supposedly progressive leadership... According to Chosun Ilbo, a conservative paper which is among the largest circulated in South Korea, President Moon is seeking to change the textbooks used in South Korean schools beginning in 2020. Not only will the new books omit that the Republic of Korea (i.e., South Korea) is the...