Tag: south korea

Contents: South Korea fears that MERS virus will break out into general population; Iran demands a nuclear agreement ‘snapback’ provision of its own

US reaffirms defense of Japan’s Senkaku Islands; Japan-U.S. military guidelines will include ‘collective self-defense’

(Reuters) – North Korea has declared a no-sail zone for its ships off its east coast, South Korean media reported on Monday, suggesting more missile launches are possible before the U.S. defense chief visits Seoul this week.

The government of North Korea has once again threatened to attack a proposed United Nations field office planned to be built in Seoul and specialize in monitoring human rights abuses perpetrated by the Kim Jong Un regime.

AFP reports that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress in April, making him the first prime minister of Japan to deliver such an address. The event is to come at the end of a visit in April focused on “deepening trade and military ties,” although there is speculation he will also cover the “evils and horrors” of Japan’s history, as he did during a speech to the Australian Parliament last July.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un took time on March 8 to celebrate International Women’s Day with speeches and public events, handing out makeup to a crowd of pilots as gifts for their wives.

American Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert has been released from the hospital Tuesday after a violent knife attack by a pro-North Korean nationalist. During his stay in the hospital, Lippert received a near-universal outpouring of support from South Koreans grateful for the U.S. partnership–support The New York Times claims, based on the words of two bloggers, “has provoked a backlash” among leftist South Koreans.

Two days before Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, was attacked by an enigmatic knife-wielding crackpot named Kim Ki-Jong and slashed in the face, North Korea was promising “merciless strikes” against America and South Korea, and warning that “the situation on the Korean peninsula is again inching close to the brink of a war.”

The North Korean government wasted no time celebrating the act of terrorist Kim Ki Jong, who assaulted U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert in Seoul yesterday with what is being described as a “fruit knife.” North Korean state-run Korean Central News Agency declared the attack “just punishment for U.S. warmongers.”

South Korean media say U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert has been attacked while giving a lecture and taken to a hospital for treatment.

North Korean refugees who choose to speak of the horrors of living within the communist nation face violent threats to them and their families still trapped inside. Many choose to speak anyway, however, and in South Korea they are becoming increasingly common staples in news and entertainment programming.

In the wake of two shootings that left a total of eight people dead–including the gunmen–South Korean officials are considering an all-out ban on storage of firearms in homes and mulling the placement of a GPS monitor on every firearm in the country.

Nineteen American historians have signed a letter condemning the government of Japan for demanding that textbook publisher McGraw Hill remove references to “comfort women” from a book that references Japanese atrocities during World War II.

A South Korean government source told The Korea Herald the Indonesian government will invite North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un to the Bandung Conference in April.

SINUI ISLAND, South Korea (AP) — He ran the first chance he got.