Adani News

Tag: South Korea

  • South Korea kicks off radiation tests on North Korean defectors

    South Korea kicks off radiation tests on North Korean defectors

    SEOUL : South Korea has kicked off radiation exposure tests on North Korean defectors who hailed from areas near the reclusive country’s Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, an official at Seoul’s Unification Ministry said on Tuesday.

    The radiation testing, which started on Monday, is expected to be completed by November, with its outcome likely to be made public in late December, Yonhap News Agency quoted the official as saying. The test will be conducted on 89 defectors who had lived in Kilju county and its nearby areas and escaped the North after the country’s first nuclear test in 2006.

    The North conducted all of its six nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, located in Kilju in the country’s northeastern province.

    The South Korean government previously held similar tests on 40 North Korean defectors in 2017 and 2018. Among the 89 defectors to undergo the testing, nine will be those who were suspected of having been exposed to radiation during the government’s previous tests.

    In a report released in February, the Transitional Justice Working Group, an advocacy group for the North’s human rights, said hundreds of thousands of residents living in the area near the Punggye-ri site are at risk of exposure to radioactive materials being spread by underground water.

    -IANS

  • S.Korea: Nationwide rainfall subsides but disrupts travel, causes damage

    S.Korea: Nationwide rainfall subsides but disrupts travel, causes damage

    SEOUL: Heavy downpours that pounded South Korea earlier this week subsided on Saturday, officials said, although travel disruptions and damages continued in some parts of the country.

    As of Saturday afternoon, most weather warnings over the heavy rainfall had been lifted, and lighter downpours are now prevailing throughout the country. Jeju, the southern island that had seen more than 1,000 millimetre of rain since Wednesday, reported 35 cases of flooding and soil erosion, according to municipal authorities, Yonhap news agency reported.

    However, Jeju International Airport has returned to normal operations aside from a few delays, with a total of 512 flights scheduled to operate.

    In Incheon, west of Seoul, the worsening weather in the Yellow Sea has forced the closure of four of the 14 passenger ship routes to nearby islands, with wind speeds in the area having reached up to nine metre per second. In Busan, 320 kilometre southeast of Seoul, a strong wind warning remained in effect, with the maximum instantaneous wind speed in the area reaching 5-10 metre per second.

    The strong winds have caused a number of accidents in the port city, such as a bus colliding with a truck at 6:23 a.m., injuring 11 people. There were also 79 safety-related reports across Busan about such cases as signboards and outer walls about to fall.

    In Gwangju, 268 km south of Seoul, a gas pipe in the northern ward of Buk became flooded at around 4:30 a.m., cutting off gas to 280 households. In the surrounding South Jeolla Province region, nearly 700 hectare of farmland was estimated to be flooded after four consecutive days of downpours.

    –IANS

  • South Korea to resume Finance Ministers’ meeting with Japan

    South Korea to resume Finance Ministers’ meeting with Japan

    SEOUL: South Korea and Japan agreed to resume their long-stalled Finance Ministers’ meeting “at an appropriate time this year” as the two countries gear up to normalise economic ties after several years of trade tensions.

    Officials from Japan will visit South Korea next month to work out details of the meeting, Yonhap News Agency reported on Tuesday citing the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

    The agreement was reached during a meeting between South Korean Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho and his Japanese counterpart, Shunichi Suzuki, on the sidelines of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Incheon.

    “Japan and South Korea share common values, such as freedom and human rights,” Choo said ahead of the meeting.

    “(As the two countries) consider the free trade and market system to be the key of their economic management, there are many areas in which the two governments and the private sectors can join forces.”

    The Finance Minister said it is significant that South Korea and Japan have resumed shuttle diplomacy, or regular visits to each other’s countries by their leaders.

    President Yoon Suk Yeol was the first South Korean president in 12 years to make a bilateral visit to Japan in March.

    Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will make a two-day visit to South Korea on May 7, according to Japanese media reports. Seoul and Tokyo also agreed to make joint efforts to address international and regional issues, and vowed to expand cooperation in global platforms, such as the Group of 20 and the ASEAN+3.

    South Korea and Japan recently have been making efforts to revitalize their bilateral exchanges, after the two countries agreed to reinstate each other to their respective “white list” of trusted trading partners.

    In 2019, South Korea took Japan off its white list following Tokyo’s removal of Seoul from its own list in apparent retaliation against the South Korean Supreme Court rulings the previous year that ordered two Japanese companies to pay compensation to Korean forced labour victims during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

    In yet another sign of a slow thaw in bilateral ties, Japan invited South Korea to take part in the upcoming G7 ministerial meeting that will kick off in Tokyo on May 11. It marked South Korea’s first invitation to the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ Meeting since 2008.

    –IANS

  • South Korea reports 5 more mpox cases

    South Korea reports 5 more mpox cases

    SEOUL: South Korea confirmed five more cases of mpox on Monday, bringing the country’s total to 47, health authorities said.

    Three patients are from Seoul, and the other two from South Chungcheong province and Busan, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

    None of them travelled abroad, Yonhap News Agency quoted the KDCA as saying.

    Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is traditionally confined to regions in Central and West Africa and can cause fever, chills, rashes and lesions, among other symptoms.

    South Korea reported the first case of mpox on June 22 last year and four more cases through March.

    The first five cases were linked to overseas travel. But most of the recent infections that began April 7 were believed to be locally transmitted, with no overseas travel history.

    —IANS

  • Top nuclear envoys of S Korea, US discuss N Korea threat in Seoul

    Top nuclear envoys of S Korea, US discuss N Korea threat in Seoul

    SEOUL: The top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the US have met in Seoul to discuss ways to cooperate on countering North Korea’s “evolving nuclear and military threats”, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.

    US Special Representative for North Korea Sung Kim held a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Gunn, on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Asan Plenum 2023 conference, a security forum hosted by a local think tank, Yonhap news agency reported.

    “The two sides shared their assessments of the current security situation on the Korean Peninsula and discussed joint responses to North Korea’s nuclear threats,” the ministry said in a statement.

    The envoys agreed to strengthen close coordination on Pyongyang to make it cease provocations and return to denuclearisation talks, based on the agreements from the South Korea-US summit held in Washington last week.

    It is their third consultation this month, following a bilateral session in Seoul on April 6 and phone talks on April 13.

    —IANS

  • South Korea again reports record low births

    South Korea again reports record low births

    SEOUL: The number of babies born in South Korea dropped to yet another record low level in February — the lowest number for any February since the statistics agency started compiling data in 1981.

    Only 19,939 babies were born in February this year, down 3.7 per cent from a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea released on Wednesday.

    The number of babies born in South Korea has been falling on-year for 87 consecutive months, reports Yonhap News Agency.

    A low birthrate has been one of the major crises for South Korea, with younger generations delaying or giving up on having babies due to the high housing prices and economic uncertainties.

    The country’s total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, came to 0.78 in 2022, marking the lowest number since the agency started compiling data in 1970. That year the rate was 4.53.

    The latest rate is much lower than the replacement level of 2.1 that would keep South Korea’s population stable at 51.5 million.

    Deaths, meanwhile, continued to outpace births, a trend that has been continuing since 2020.

    The number of deaths reached 27,390 in February, down 6.5 per cent from a year earlier, the data showed, leading to a natural decrease of 7,452.

    The decline in deaths apparently came amid the eased impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data showed that the number of marriages soared 16.5 per cent on-year to 17,846, as couples who have delayed their weddings tied the knot after pandemic-related restrictions were lifted. Divorces inched up 1.3 per cent to 7,228 cases over the period.

    –IANS

  • South Korea opposition calls for probe into US spying

    South Korea opposition calls for probe into US spying

    South Korea’s opposition urged the government on Wednesday to investigate alleged espionage by the United States after leaked documents appeared to show Washington spying on its key Asian ally.

    A trove of highly sensitive US intelligence that has emerged online included revelations that Washington had been spying on President Yoon Suk Yeol’s national security advisors as part of an effort to secure arms supplies for Ukraine.

    Seoul sought to downplay the importance of the leaked documents on Tuesday, with Yoon’s office claiming “a significant number” of the documents were fake and his national security advisor saying there were no “malicious intentions” in the incident.

    But the revelation has sparked criticism in South Korea about the vulnerability of sensitive sites including the presidential office.

    “The government must get to the bottom of eavesdropping allegations and if they are found to be true, it must get an official apology and guarantee that it won’t do it again from the US,” Lee Jae-myung, head of the opposition Democratic party, said on Wednesday.

    Opposition lawmakers have accused the government of trying to move past the incident and smooth relations ahead of Yoon’s state visit to Washington due later this month.

    Dozens of photographs of the documents have been circulating on social media platforms and messaging services including Twitter, Telegram and Discord for at least weeks.

    The Pentagon has said it is working to determine if the documents are genuine, and that at least one appeared to have been manipulated.

    However, US officials reportedly believe many of the documents are real.

    A copy of one of the leaked documents obtained by AFP shows discussions among Seoul’s top national security officials about whether providing arms and ammunition to Ukraine would violate the country’s long-standing policy against providing weapons to countries in active conflict.

    One official suggested exporting ammunition to Poland to get around the policy, the document showed.

    The leak has prompted US officials to reassure allies such as South Korea, which has provided non-lethal and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded last year.

    Seoul’s response to the incident has been criticized with former security official Choi Gi-il saying the government is “seemingly defending the US over the suspected surveillance.”

  • North Korean Citizens Resent Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Kim Ju Ae; Here’s Why

    North Korean Citizens Resent Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Kim Ju Ae; Here’s Why

    North Koreans “secretly hate” authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un’s 10-year-old daughter Kim Ju Ae who made her first appearance during the launch of “a new type” of an intercontinental ballistic missile in November, last year. Growing resentment for Kim’s daughter is because of her “plump” appearance and “round and rosy cheeks”. Children in North Korea are often skinny, and the animosity towards the North Korean dictator’s daughter may have a lot to do with her appearance, but majorly due to the string of crises that hang on the citizens as they struggle with poverty, chronic food shortages and other challenges in post-pandemic communist and isolated DPRK, according to Radio Free Asia.

    Just last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared alongside his rather cheerful daughter who enjoyed watching a sports event which was also attended by high-level DPRK officials. It was the first time the girl made a presence at a non-military event. As many times she is seen with her father, Kim Jong Un’s daughter is described as a “beloved child” or “respected child” by the North Korean state media. She was first identified by an ex-American basketball player Dennis Rodman, who claimed to have spent time with Kim’s family in 2013. It is reported that the father-daughter duo’s spree at the events might have upset the North Koreans.

    Speaking about the resentment faced by the 10-year-old child, a resident from the northwestern province of North Pyongan told Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service that the hatred is a lot about the authoritarian leader’s daughter’s lifestyle. “It makes me angry that my situation is so hard to bear, and Kim Ju Ae, who we all know is eating and living well, is showing up on TV in her fancy clothes so often,” the resident was quoted as saying. While the North Koreans reel under the food crisis, Kim’s daughter is reported to be living a life of luxury and comfort, while her father showcases that he is in charge of the country’s arsenal of powerful missiles, South Korean National Intelligence Services told state press. Ju-ae reportedly spends her time swimming, skiing, and horse riding and is known to have never attended a formal educational institution. This has tagged her as a privileged child from North Korea’s ruling elite circle.

  • New cases of Kovid-19 in South Korea were recorded below 10,000 for the third day

    New cases of Kovid-19 in South Korea were recorded below 10,000 for the third day

    Seoul (IANS) South Korea reported new Covid-19 cases below 10,000 for the third day in a row on Saturday, ahead of lifting the mask requirement for public transport. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said that 9,259 new cases of Kovid-19 were registered in the country. With this, the total number of infected people in the country has increased to 30,690,223.

    Yonhap news agency reported that the latest count was slightly higher than the previous day’s 9,065 and down 750 from 10,009 a week ago.

    According to KDCA, four people have died due to Kovid-19, with this the total death toll has increased to 34,159. While the number of seriously ill patients decreased by 11 from the previous day to 129.

    The government is planning to lift the mask requirement for public transport on Monday, less than two months after removing the mask requirement for most indoor places except public transport, hospitals and some other high-risk areas.

    Masks will be mandatory for medical facilities, pharmacies and other places prone to infection. Pharmacies in open public places, such as discount stores and train stations, would be exempt from the requirement.