International

The leader of one of South Korea's largest animal rights groups has been accused of secretly exterminating hundreds of rescued dogs -- despite a declared no-kill policy -- to ensure a continued stream of donations. South Korean attitudes on canines are divided -- about one million dogs are eaten every year in the country, often as a summertime delicacy. But the tradition is declining as the nation increasingly embraces the idea of dogs as pets, with eating them now something of a taboo among young South Koreans. For years, Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE) has spearheaded campaigns to rescue canines from dogmeat farms across the country, accumulating some 23,000 members and around two billion won ($1.8 million) in annual donations. South Korean President Moon Jae-in -- who is a known animal lover with several dogs -- adopted a small black and white mongrel from CARE when he came to office in 2017. Staff members at CARE told the Hankyoreh newspaper that the organisation's head, Park So-yeon, had more than 230 rescued dogs destroyed because of a shortage of space at the shelter. The number was equivalent to around a quarter of the animals the group rescued in the period, according to the newspaper. Only 10 percent of the dogs were suffering from incurable illnesses and most were killed because of their large size, a CARE employee was quoted as saying. The animals were then listed as having been adopted. CARE has often appealed for donations to carry out more rescues, and needs to continue operations to justify the funding requests. The organisation has long asserted in those appeals that it does not kill dogs even if they are not adopted. But Park said in statement that a "small number" of exterminations had been "inevitable" since 2015 due to a "surge in requests for rescue missions". She added that only severely aggressive dogs or those with incurable illnesses were destroyed, and only after extensive efforts to treat them first. CARE staff members mounted a protest in the organisation's offices at the weekend to demand Park's resignation. According to a 2017 survey, 70 percent of South Koreans do not eat dogs, but far fewer -- about 40 percent -- believe the practice should be banned. It also found 65 percent support raising and slaughtering dogs in more humane conditions.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in replaced his chief of staff, who played a key role in improving ties with North Korea, with a longtime confidant on Tuesday as part of a shake-up aimed at raising approval ratings amid economic woes and a spy scandal. Moon replaced Im Jong-seok with Noh Young-min, a former politician who has been serving as ambassador to China since October 2017, as the top presidential secretary, the Blue House said. Yoon Do-han, a former journalist, was named press secretary, while former lawmaker Kang Gi-jung will be the senior secretary for political affairs, Moon's office said. Noh and Kang worked on Moon's presidential campaign in the run-up to the 2017 snap election. The three posts do not require confirmation hearings. The reshuffle is seen aimed at revitalising momentum for an administration facing faltering approval ratings and the spying scandal which have both slowed Moon's legislative agenda. The Blue House has been grappling with allegations that it has spied on political foes and officials from previous administrations while interfering in personnel management at private businesses. Moon's office says the claims are groundless. Among Moon's key tasks this year is boosting the economy and a sluggish job market and hosting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on an unprecedented trip to Seoul. Kim's visit was planned last year but delayed amid stalled nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington, in which Seoul played a bridging role. Kim also seeks a second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump this year. Moon's approval ratings have dropped to the lowest levels since he took office in May 2017 on the back of growing frustration over economic policies and lacklustre progress on North Korea's planned denuclearisation. North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, but relations have warmed significantly since the North sent a delegation to the Winter Olympics in the South last year. Im, a former student democracy activist who served a three-and-a-half year prison term for orchestrating an unauthorised 1989 visit by a fellow campaigner to North Korea, played a pivotal role in the detente between the two Koreas. The Blue House did not announce Im's next move, but he was widely expected to seek a return to politics through next year's parliamentary election.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is on his way to China for his fourth summit with China’s Xi Jinping, South Korean media said yesterday. South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper, citing an unidentified source with close knowledge of North Korea-China affairs, reported that Kim was travelling to Beijing late yesterday to meet with Xi. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing an unspecified source familiar with North Korea issues, said a North Korean train possibly carrying a “high-level” official had crossed the border into China. The source told Yonhap it had not been confirmed whether a senior official was on board, but that dozens of security vehicles and officials had blocked the roads around a station in the Chinese border city of Dandong as the train passed. Last year Kim travelled to China three times to meet with Xi, before and after Kim held other summits with US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Kim is expected to meet again with both the US and South Korean presidents in the near future, and another visit to China has been seen as a possible move before those summits. Earlier on Monday the South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported that US State Department officials recently met multiple times with North Korean counterparts in Hanoi and discussed planning a second summit between Trump and Kim, fuelling speculation that Vietnam could host the event. At their landmark June summit in Singapore, Kim and Trump pledged to work towards denuclearisation, but the pact was light on details and talks since have made little headway. China is the North’s most important economic and diplomatic backer, despite anger over its neighbour’s nuclear and missile programmes. Ties have warmed in the last year as Pyongyang’s relations with both Seoul and Washington have also improved. China also played a role in Trump’s meeting with Kim, lending the North Korean leader an airliner for his trip to Singapore. Diplomatic sources say Xi will probably go to North Korea at some point soon, which would make him the first Chinese leader to do so since 2005. In early December, Xi told North Korea’s foreign minister during a visit in Beijing that he “hoped North Korea and the United States meet each other halfway and address each other’s reasonable concerns, allowing positive progress on the peninsula’s nuclear talks.”

South Korean prosecutors have rejected complaints by famed film director Kim Ki-duk of criminal defamation against an actress who accused him of physical and sexual assault, and journalists who reported other allegations. Kim, 58, is one of South Korea’s top directors whose awards include the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival for “Pieta” and Berlin’s 2004 Silver Bear for Best Director. But an actress in 2017 accused him of sexual and physical abuse, saying he forced her into unscripted sexual scenes and slapped her repeatedly while shooting his 2013 award-winning film “Moebius”, before replacing her with another actress. Prosecutors dropped the sex abuse charge citing lack of evidence but fined Kim 5mn won ($4,600) for physical assault under a procedure to settle minor cases out of court. Several other actresses came forward afterwards, anonymously accusing Kim of raping or sexually abusing them in an investigative television programme, “PD Notebook”, that aired last year as the #MeToo campaign against violence against women  took off in South Korea. Kim denied the accusations and asked prosecutors to investigate the “PD Notebook” journalists for defamation, and the “Moebius” actress for defaming and false accusation. He was able to do so under South Korea’s defamation law, which makes libel a crime and provides that stating the truth can still be an offence if it is deemed to have tarnished others’ social reputation. Seoul prosecutors said yesterday that they had dismissed all of Kim’s complaints, saying the actress’s sex abuse accusation was only dropped because they were unable to find enough evidence, and there was no proof she was purposefully lying.

A high-ranking North Korean diplomat defected several weeks ago in Italy, according to information gathered by the South Korean intelligence service. The current whereabouts of Jo Song Gil, the charge d'affaires of the North Korean embassy in Rome, and his wife are unknown, South Korean lawmaker Kim Min Ki said on Thursday, according to local media reports. The intelligence service informed him and other lawmakers of the development behind closed doors, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The couple have been unaccounted for since early November, it said. The South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo had previously reported that 48-year-old Jo applied for asylum in a third country for him and his family in December. The move reportedly came after he was ordered back to North Korea. A spokeswoman from South Korea's Unification Ministry said the country is looking into the report but that the country's authorities have not been able to confirm it. Jo had run his country's Italian mission since October 2017, when Italy expelled ambassador Mun Jong Nam following North Korea's sixth nuclear test.  Should his application be confirmed, it would be the highest-level defection of a North Korean diplomat since 2016, when the deputy ambassador to London defected to South Korea. According to JoongAng Ilbo, Jo and his wife are currently in the care of Italian authorities. It is unclear whether they want to go to South Korea. The newspaper said they have made no contact with the government in Seoul. According to sources from the Italian Foreign Ministry, the ministry was informed about a change in embassy personnel "at the time." There has been no asylum application from a high-ranking diplomat in recent weeks. The ministry would not confirm whether Jo is still in Rome.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said yesterday he is ready to meet US President Donald Trump anytime to achieve their common goal of denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, but warned he may have to take an alternative path if US sanctions and pressure against the country continued. In his New Year address, Kim said denuclearisation is his “firm will” and suggested for the first time that North Korea would no longer produce nuclear weapons, but also urged Washington to take unspecified corresponding action to speed up the stalled diplomatic process. North Korea might be “compelled to explore a new path” to defend its sovereignty if the United States “seeks to force something upon us unilaterally ... and remains unchanged in its sanctions and pressure,” Kim said in his nationally televised address. The comments are likely to fuel growing scepticism over whether Pyongyang intends to give up the nuclear weapons programme that it has long considered essential to its security. There was no immediate reaction from the US State Department, but South Korea’s presidential office welcomed Kim’s speech, saying it carried his “firm will” to advance relations with Seoul and Washington. Kim and Trump vowed to work towards denuclearisation and build “lasting and stable” peace at their landmark summit in Singapore in June, but little progress has been made since. Pyongyang has demanded Washington lift sanctions and declare an official end to the 1950-53 Korean War in response to its initial, unilateral steps toward denuclearisation, including dismantling its only known nuclear testing site and a key missile engine facility. Those measures were in line with its resolve to “no longer make, use or spread” nuclear weapons, Kim said, indicating a possible moratorium on weapons production for the first time. Although Pyongyang did not conduct nuclear or missile tests last year, satellite images have pointed to continued activity at the North’s related facilities. US officials say those initial steps were not confirmed and can be easily reversed, and have called for strict sanctions enforcement on the impoverished country until full, verifiable disarmament. Washington halted some large-scale military exercises with Seoul to aid nuclear negotiations, but smaller drills continued. Kim called for South Korea to “completely stop” joint military drills with the United States involving strategic assets, while multilateral negotiations among countries involved in the armistice agreement should be pursued to build a permanent peace regime. The two Koreas technically remain at war because the conflict ended in a truce - signed by North Korea, the United States and China - not a peace treaty. “Now that North and South Korea decided to take the path of peace and prosperity, we demand that joint military exercises with outside forces should no longer be allowed and deployment of war equipment such as foreign strategic assets should be completely stopped,” Kim said. Analysts said Kim’s message sent clear signals that North Korea is willing to stay in talks with Washington and Seoul this year - but on its own terms. “North Korea seems determined in 2019 to receive some sort of sanctions relief ... The challenge, however, is will Team Trump be willing to back away from its position of zero sanctions relief?” said Harry Kazianis at the Washington-based Centre for the National Interest. “Kim’s remarks seem to suggest his patience with America is wearing thin.” The televised speech is closely watched as a rare public appearance for the young leader, setting the tone for his domestic and foreign policies for the year ahead. After racing toward the goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States in 2017, Kim used last year’s speech to warn that “a nuclear button is always on the desk of my office” and order mass production of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles. But he also offered to send a delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in the South in February, setting off a flurry of diplomacy that included three summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and the meeting with Trump in June. This year, Kim said inter-Korean relations have entered a “completely new phase”, and offered to resume key inter-Korean economic projects banned under international and South Korean sanctions, without conditions. Dressed in a Western-style black suit and a navy-silver tie, Kim sat on a leather couch against a backdrop of bookshelves and portraits of his late father and grandfather, his predecessors in the Kim dynasty. The setting, which mimics the one favoured by Chinese President Xi Jinping for his New Year address, marks a departure from previous years when Kim stood before an assembly hall packed with officials. “He appeared more confident than ever, emboldened by some of the progress he made last year, which also implies he thinks he has the upper edge in the negotiations with the United States as a nuclear-armed state,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. In the 30-minute speech, Kim spent more than 20 minutes highlighting his campaign to create a self-reliant economy despite a “harsh economic blockade.” As a way to tackle chronic power shortages, he raised the need for atomic energy. North Korea is known to have developed at least three nuclear plants, including a five-megawatt reactor at its main Yongbyon complex producing weapons-grade plutonium, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

A South Korean delegation crossed the border into North Korea on Wednesday to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for reconnecting and repairing roads and railways across the divided peninsula despite stalled denuclearisation talks. A nine-car special train carrying around 100 South Koreans, including officials and five people born in the North, was seen leaving Seoul railway station early in the morning for the North's border city of Kaesong. The train in red, white and blue was carrying a slogan on its side which read: ‘Let's open an era of peace and prosperity together-- reconnection of South-North railways and roads.’ Near the platform, a small group of around 10 protestors held banners denouncing the North's leader as a murderous dictator and condemning the transport linkage as aimed at communizing the whole Korean peninsula. About two hours later, a still photograph was broadcast on South Korean television showing the train arriving at Panmun Station at Kaesong where the ceremony will take place. South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North's leader Kim Jong Un agreed to hold the ceremony by the end of this year when they met at their third summit in Pyongyang in September. - Sanctions exempt - Concerns arose that the train and other materials being brought into the North for the ceremony could breach various sanctions imposed on the isolated regime over its nuclear weapons programme, but the UN Security Council reportedly granted a waiver for the event. Seoul stressed that the ceremony would not herald the start of actual work on reconnecting and modernising road and rail links between the two Koreas -- which remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty. The event is a mere ‘expression of a commitment’ to the projects, a South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman said, adding that construction would depend on ‘progress on the North's denuclearisation and circumstances concerning sanctions’. The two sides wrapped up their joint railway and road inspections for the projects this month. South Korea has set aside some $620,000 for the endeavour. The ceremony comes as the United States ramps up efforts to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. Following a rapid rapprochement earlier this year that culminated in a historic summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, progress has stalled with both sides accusing each other of dragging their feet and acting in bad faith. Critics say North Korea has made no concrete commitments and is unlikely to surrender its atomic arsenal, while Washington's policy of maintaining pressure through isolation and sanctions has left Pyongyang seething. - Second summit - Trump said Monday that he was ‘looking forward’ to his second summit with Kim, which Washington says may take place early next year. He tweeted the statement after he was briefed by Stephen Biegun, the US special representative on North Korea, who wrapped up a three-day trip to Seoul on Saturday. Biegun said last week the United States will be more lenient in enforcing its blanket ban on US citizens' travel to the totalitarian state when dealing with aid workers, a goodwill gesture as Trump seeks a fresh summit. The Trump administration has generally refused to let US aid groups operate in North Korea, seeking to both maximise pressure on Pyongyang and ensure the safety of Americans. Biegun also said in Seoul last week Washington was willing to discuss trust-building initiatives with Pyongyang. Senior transport officials from Russia, China and Mongolia as well as several foreign ambassadors to South Korea will attend Wednesday's ceremony, the South's Unification Ministry said.

A US judge ordered North Korea to pay $501mn over the death of American Otto Warmbier, concluding that the university student likely suffered torture.   The penalties, which North Korea is highly unlikely to pay willingly, come in the midst of a diplomatic drive by President Donald Trump, who is eager to reach a potentially landmark deal with leader Kim Jong-un.  The parents of Warmbier sued North Korea in a US court after the 22-year-old was flown back to the United States last year in a coma, unrecognisable to his family and dying within days of his return.  Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the US District Court for Washington, DC, awarded $501,134,683.80 to the family, most of it in punitive damages.  “An American family, the Warmbiers, experienced North Korea’s brutality first-hand when North Korea seized their son to use as a pawn in that totalitarian state’s global shenanigans and face-off with the United States,” she wrote.   “North Korea is liable for the torture, hostage-taking, and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier, and the injuries to his mother and father, Fred and Cindy Warmbier,” she added. Howell said North Korea did not submit any response to the lawsuit, which the family filed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a US law that allows lawsuits against foreign governments over offences not considered to be covered by diplomatic immunity.  As one of the world’s most isolated countries, North Korea is believed to have few assets in the United States that could be seized to meet the judgment.   But North Korea is seeking to end economic sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme. An accord with Trump raises the possibility of future US assistance, which could become entangled by the court-ordered damages.  Trump, who held a historic summit in June with North Korea, posted on Twitter that he had a briefing Monday on diplomatic efforts and is “looking forward to my next summit with Chairman Kim!”  Senator Robert Portman of Ohio, who had secretly met North Korean officials as he pushed for Warmbier’s release, hailed the court verdict.  “While nothing will bring back Otto Warmbier, who was such a promising young man, I’m glad that North Korea has been rightly held accountable for his death,” he tweeted. Warmbier, an Ohio native who studied at the University of Virginia, travelled to North Korea on a tour but did not return home. He was pulled away at the Pyongyang airport and charged with crimes against the state for allegedly taking down a poster in support of Kim.  The ruling said the family was continually advised by the State Department to stay quiet, believing North Korea would make a demand in return for Warmbier’s safe release.

South Korea said Monday it will fine German automaker BMW 11.2 billion won ($10 million) for allegedly dragging its feet in recalling cars with faulty engines linked to dozens of engine fires. BMW vehicles bursting into flames made headlines in South Korea earlier this year, with local media reporting more than 40 cases in 2018 and some parking lots refusing to accept BMW cars over fears they could catch fire. The auto giant recalled more than 170,000 vehicles in South Korea with a faulty exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooler, which the firm blamed for the fires. In August, it announced a recall for Europe and some Asian countries -- including South Korea -- of 480,000 cars affected by the same problem, before expanding it to more than one million additional diesel cars two months later. ‘BMW announced earlier that it had become aware of the connection between the faulty EGR cooler and the fire only on July 20 this year,’ the South Korean transport ministry said in a statement, announcing the results of a five-month probe. ‘But we discovered that... BMW's German headquarters had already formed a special team in October 2015 tasked with solving the EGR cooler problem.’ In addition to the fine, the ministry will also ask prosecutors to investigate BMW for allegedly delaying acknowledgement of the issue on purpose and dragging its feet on the recall. In South Korea, six out of 10 imported cars are from Germany, with BMW selling nearly 39,000 in the first six months of this year, according to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association.

Tens of thousands of South Korean taxi drivers walked off the job across the country yesterday and held a mass rally in downtown Seoul to protest against a carpooling service that they say will destroy their jobs.  The demonstration came days after the death of a taxi driver who set himself on a fire in protest against plans to introduce car-pooling service Kakao Mobility, a unit of mobile messenger operator Kakao Corp. “If the service is implemented, my income will shrink by half. I’ll fall into poverty,” said driver Yoon Woo-seok, 62, at the rally in front of the National Assembly. Drivers wearing black headbands and ribbons to mourn their colleague chanted “combat illegal carpool”. Kakao postponed the official launch of its service after the suicide.” We will have continued consultations with the industry, parliament and the government,” the company said. South Korea has one of the world’s highest smartphone penetration rates, but app-based car-hailing services such as US-based Uber have not taken off, partly because of strong unions and tight regulations in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.  The protests pose a challenge to the labour-friendly government, which has also pledged to promote new industries to cut reliance on big conglomerates, such as Hyundai and Samsung. According to a survey in October by pollster Realmeter, more than 50% of the public support carpooling. The taxi strike stranded commuters and disrupted traffic, with some taxis temporarily blocking a road leading to a highway in the central city of Daejeon, according to photos and media reports.  Seoul’s taxi operation rate dropped to 50% compared to the same day last week, a transport ministry official told Reuters. Taxi drivers say they already suffer low incomes and long hours. “My entire family is scraping a living on my tiny income,” said another driver, Lee Nam-soo, 67. He said he earned 80,000 won ($70) to 90,000 won a day. “There’s no way I can survive if Kakao operates.” Taxi associations urged parliament to ban carpooling, while calling for a crackdown on what they say are illegal carpooling services. The transport law bans the use of personal vehicles for commercial purposes, but allows carpooling services of drivers with riders heading in the same direction during “commuting” hours. Commuting times are not specified by law, causing confusion. The ruling party has created a task force to try to resolve the dispute.

Japanese police were investigating yesterday the cause of a powerful blast that ripped through a restaurant in the country’s north overnight, injuring 42 people and damaging surrounding buildings.  The explosion in the city of Sapporo on Sunday night started fires and caused the partial collapse of some neighbouring buildings, forcing dozens of residents into shelters, officials said.  The cause of the blast was still under investigation, police said, but there were reports that it may have been a gas leak. Some reports said fumes were leaking from spray cans that had been collected for disposal at a real estate company in the building. But investigators were also looking into at least nine propane tanks installed in the building for the various businesses located inside.  Numerous customers at the restaurant on the building’s first floor said they smelled gas at the time of the explosion, Kyodo News agency reported. The blast produced large flames and sent plumes of smoke rising in the night air, with witnesses describing a terrifying boom.  The two-storey wooden building, which also housed a clinic, was seriously damaged, a Sapporo fire department official told AFP.  Police said 42 people had been injured, but there were no fatalities. Among the injured were several children, as well as a man who suffered burns and a woman who jumped from the building to escape, breaking her leg in the process.  “There was an enormous sound, ‘bang’, then when I looked up at the sky it was filled with plumes of smoke,” an elderly woman said in footage on public broadcaster NHK.  “The ceiling fell, then the entire second floor collapsed and we were all stuck. We managed to escape after everyone kicked through the wall,” a person who was in the restaurant at the time told Kyodo.  The fire from the blast spread to neighbouring buildings, and debris blasted out by the explosion shattered the windows of nearby apartments and restaurants, according to local reports. “We are investigating details about the damage together with police at the scene,” the fire department official said. The blast happened around 8.30pm, and the city government opened a shelter to house dozens of people whose homes were damaged.  The explosion also caused a temporary black-out, with 250 buildings losing electricity, but power was later restored, he said. The three tenants in the building were poorly prepared for possible fires, Sapporo fire department official Takashi Shida told AFP.  “We instructed them to improve these points during an on-site inspection in October but they had not made progress,” he said.

Nuclear-armed North Korea condemned the United States over its latest sanctions measures, warning Washington’s approach could “block the path to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula forever”.  After a rapid diplomatic rapprochement this year that culminated in the Singapore summit in June between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, progress has stalled in talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.   In Singapore the two men signed a vaguely-worded statement on denuclearisation, but have since disagreed on what it means. Now Pyongyang is demanding sanctions relief and condemning US insistence on its nuclear disarmament as “gangster-like”, while Washington is pushing to maintain the measures against the North until its “final, fully verified denuclearisation”.  Washington last week added three senior North Korean officials to those subject to sanctions over human rights abuses, including Choe Ryong Hae, who has been considered a right-hand man to Kim. In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, the North said Trump had repeatedly expressed his desire to improve relations with Pyongyang, but the US State Department was “bent on bringing the DPRK-US relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of fire”.  DPRK is the acronym for the North’s official name. In recent months high-ranking US politicians including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had “almost every day slandered the DPRK out of sheer malice”, added the Sunday statement by the policy research director of the foreign ministry’s Institute for American Studies.   Using sanctions and pressure “to drive us into giving up nuclear weapons” would be the “greatest miscalculation”, it added, and would “block the path to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula forever”.  A second summit between Trump and Kim — who exchanged personal insults and threats of war throughout 2017 — is expected to be held next year, with the US leader facing criticism over the planned talks since North Korea has taken few concrete steps to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.   Pyongyang has long said it needs the weapons to deter a possible US invasion, and has spent decades developing them, at a heavy cost in both resources and the imposition of multiple sets of UN, US, EU and other sanctions.  But yesterday its nuclear assets were conspicuous by their explicit absence from coverage of the seventh anniversary of the death of Kim’s father and predecessor Kim Jong-il, on whose watch Pyongyang carried out its first two nuclear tests. Alongside extensive coverage of commemorative events across the country, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party, published a lengthy editorial lauding Kim Jong-il’s efforts to secure a “firm military assurance for peace and prosperity”.  A year earlier, the same newspaper praised his “immortal feat” in building a “Juche nuclear power state”. Its front page was dominated by a large picture of soldiers and officials including Kim paying their respects at his father’s mausoleum, a sprawling palace on the outskirts of the capital. It was the leader’s first public activity in two weeks after visiting a shoe factory in Wonsan earlier this month.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in told Japanese lawmakers yesterday “cautious, restrained” language is needed when discussing wartime forced labour to avoid “inciting antagonistic emotions” between the people of the two East Asian countries. A row between Seoul and Tokyo flared again in late October when South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp must pay four South Koreans 100mn won ($87,700) in compensation for their forced labour during World War II. Japan denounced the ruling, which said a 1965 treaty did not remove the workers’ right to reparations, as “unthinkable”. The strain in relations between the two US allies could affect efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes, analysts say. Moon, who met Japanese lawmakers in Seoul yesterday, said his government would take its time to seek a solution because the issue was triggered by a judicial ruling that must be respected. “I think we need to use cautious, restrained expressions on this issue so as not to incite antagonistic emotions of the peoples of both countries,” Moon said at the meeting. “Hurting the amicable sentiment between the two countries does not help the progress of the future relationship between South Korea and Japan,” he added. Japanese leaders have reacted angrily to the Nippon Steel verdict and a later ruling against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, arguing that the issue was settled by the 1965 treaty. At a press briefing in Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the South Korean rulings defied international law. “Relations between our two countries right now are in a very difficult situation,” he said. “We will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government to respond in the appropriate manner.” Moon addressed another contentious bilateral issue over Seoul’s decision last month to disband a fund meant to settle compensation for South Korean women forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. Under a 2015 deal, Japan apologised to the “comfort women” — Japan’s euphemism for women, many of them Korean, forced to work in its wartime brothels —and provided a 1bn yen ($9.4mn) fund to help them. South Korea has said it will discuss with Japan what to do with the balance of the fund, which stood at 16.08bn won ($14.2mn) by end-October, including Seoul’s contributions. “I hope that South Korea and Japan can discuss how to utilise the balance of the fund and 1bn yen in a way that fits the original purpose,” Moon said.

North and South Korean officials inspected work to ease tension on their militarised border on Wednesday, checking on the demolition of bunkers and probing for secret tunnels, despite scant progress on persuading the North to give up nuclear arms. The two sides destroyed 11 guard posts within 1 km (0.6 mile) of each side of the heavily fortified border and withdrew equipment and personnel late last month, as a first step in a military pact reached in September between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. ‘Our verification team brought stethoscope-like equipment to see if there were underground tunnels, but the North side did not stop them nor express discomfort and actively cooperated,’ Moon's spokesman, Kim Eui-kyeom, told a news briefing. A year ago, such a joint operation by some 77 officials from the two sides would have been unthinkable. North Korea's repeated missile tests and its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September 2017, in defiance of UN and US warnings, had stirred fears of war. But things have changed at a head-spinning pace over the past 12 months. In a New Year message last year, Kim extended an olive branch to old enemy South Korea, then sent a team to the Winter Olympics there in February, and held three summits with Moon over the course of the year. Kim also met US President Donald Trump for an unprecedented summit in Singapore in June. Moon said the removal of the border guard posts and Wednesday's two-way verification exercise marked a ‘new milestone’ in the 65-year division of the peninsula. ‘It's something we couldn't even imagine in the past that the South and the North build trails in the Demilitarised Zone where they confronted each other, and pull out the guard posts and transparently verify it,’ Moon told aides after watching a broadcast of the inspection. Live video footage showed soldiers equipped with telescopes and other equipment gathered at the Military Demarcation Line then crossing the border together to visit the demolished posts on both sides. The soldiers checked that all firearms, personnel and lookout posts were removed, and tunnels and other facilities destroyed, the South's defence ministry said. The atmosphere was ‘cordial’ and soldiers chatted and shared cigarettes, Moon's spokesman said. Moon is hoping to host Kim in Seoul for their fourth summit, perhaps as early as this month, but North Korea has been aloof amid stalled nuclear talks with the United States. North and South Korea are technically still at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Kim and Trump vowed in their June talks in Singapore to work toward denuclearisation, but they have made little progress.

A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea on Saturday across their heavily fortified land border, which the two sides have begun to demilitarise as relations between the Cold War-era foes warm, the South's military said. The rare defection came as the two Koreas push ahead with a process of reconciliation in an effort to ease tensions, despite talks between Pyongyang and Washington on the North's nuclear weapons programme stalling. The incident did not trigger any gunfire, unlike last year when a North Korean soldier ran across under a hail of bullets from his own side. "A North Korean soldier was detected crossing the military demarcation line" by South Korean troops using surveillance equipment, the military Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement. "Related agencies plan to investigate him regarding the details of how he came to the South," it said. The JCS gave no further details, such as the exact location of the defection, the soldier's name, rank or unit or whether he was carrying a weapon. "The soldier is safely in our custody", the JCS said. The last defection involving North Koreans occurred in May when two civilians aboard a small boat fled to the South across the Yellow Sea. In November last year, a North Korean soldier drove to the heavily guarded border at speed and ran across under fire from his own comrades. He was hit multiple times in the dramatic defection at Panmunjom truce village, a major tourist attraction and the only place on the frontier where forces from the two sides come face-to-face. Three other soldiers reportedly crossed the land border last year in separate incidents. In 2012 a North Korean soldier walked unchecked through rows of electrified fencing and surveillance cameras, prompting Seoul to sack three field commanders for a security lapse. More than 30,000 North Korean civilians have fled their homeland since the peninsula was divided at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Most flee across the porous frontier with neighbouring China and it is very rare for them to cross the closely guarded inter-Korean border, which is fortified with minefields and barbed wire. In recent months, however, the two sides have begun to remove landmines and destroy military bunkers at parts of the border as part of efforts to improve long-strained relations. They have also begun work to reconnect a train line and repair another rail link across the border.  Despite the warming ties, it remains unclear whether the North's leader Kim Jong Un will make his first-ever visit to the South this year, as Seoul is hoping. Kim agreed to travel to Seoul after hosting his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang in September for their third summit but prospects of a fourth Moon-Kim meeting have recently dimmed, with negotiations on denuclearizing the North grinding to a halt. In an apparent bid to encourage a hesitating Kim to commit to a trip, Moon elicited an expression of support for such a visit from US President Donald Trump at a summit in Buenos Aires on Friday. "The two leaders agreed Chairman Kim Jong Un's visit to Seoul would provide additional momentum to their joint efforts to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula," Moon's chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan said.

A South Korean firefighting helicopter crashed into a river in Seoul Saturday, killing one and injuring two others on board, rescue authorities said. The chopper was hovering over the Han River in eastern Seoul to draw water into its tank when it went down, they said. The craft had been deployed to fight a bushfire on nearby hills.  Two pilots survived with injuries but a mechanic was killed. The wildfire on Mount Yeongchuk has since been under control. Police said they were investigating.  "Two people are still recovering from injuries, so it's difficult to get their statements at this moment," police said according to Yonhap news agency.

Interpol announced Wednesday that Kim Jong-yang of South Korea had been chosen as its new president, beating a Russian official whose candidacy had unnerved Western nations. The US-backed Kim, acting president of the global police body, was picked at a meeting of delegates from member nations in Dubai to replace Meng Hongwei, who went missing in his native China in September. Beijing later said Meng resigned after being charged with accepting bribes. There had been growing calls within Western nations for Interpol to reject Russian candidate Alexander Prokopchuk -- a Russian interior ministry official and current Interpol vice president -- over fears Moscow could abuse the role to target political opponents. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threw his weight behind Kim, who will serve out Meng's term until 2020. "We encourage all nations and organisations that are part of Interpol and that respect the rule of law to choose a leader with integrity. We believe Mr. Kim will be just that," Pompeo told reporters. Critics have raised concerns over Russia's previous applications for Interpol "Red Notices", or international arrest warrants, to target those who have fallen foul of the Kremlin. Interpol's president chairs its General Assembly while day-to-day operations are handled by the organisation's Secretary general Juergen Stock. In an open letter this week, a bipartisan group of US senators said choosing Prokopchuk would be like "putting a fox in charge of a henhouse".  "Russia routinely abuses Interpol for the purpose of settling scores and harassing political opponents, dissidents and journalists," they wrote.  Harriett Baldwin, a minister of state at the British foreign office, told parliament on Tuesday that London would support Kim's bid. Anti-Kremlin figures had also raised concerns, including Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who has been repeatedly jailed by authorities. "Our team has suffered from abuse of Interpol for political persecution by Russia," Navalny wrote on Twitter. "I don't think that a president from Russia will help to reduce such violations." US National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis echoed the endorsement for Kim. "As recent events show, the Russian government abuses INTERPOL's processes to harass its political opponents," he said on Twitter. The controversy also comes amid security concerns over accusations of Russian agents attempting to poison an ex-spy in Britain and trying to hack the network of the global chemical weapons watchdog. Ukraine, deeply at odds with Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and support for separatists, threatened to pull out of Interpol if Prokopchuk prevailed. Lithuania also said it would consider withdrawing from the network. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the US senators' letter as a "vivid example" of an attempt to interfere in the vote. Moscow's interior ministry denounced a "foreign media campaign aimed at discrediting Russia's candidate". But two foes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who have been targeted by international arrest warrants sought by Moscow, also said Tuesday they were launching a bid to get Russia suspended from Interpol for abusing the agency. The legal challenge was announced by financier Bill Browder, named in multiple Interpol warrants, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- a former oil baron who spent 10 years in a Russian jail and now lives in exile in London. "The Interpol constitution has very specific rules which forbid countries who are serial abusers from using the system," Browder told reporters.  Briefly arrested in Spain this year under a Moscow-issued Red Notice, Browder said the Russian candidacy was an attempt by Putin to "expand his criminal tentacles to every corner of the globe". He fought for -- and in 2012 secured -- US sanctions against Russian officials believed to be involved in the death of his tax consultant, Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky died in jail in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of a $230-million tax fraud.  Russia has rejected the claims and this week announced it was opening a new probe into Browder on suspicion of running a "transnational criminal gang", even suggesting he was behind Magnitsky's death. Russian prosecutors said he would be put on an international wanted list "in the near future". Multilingual Prokopchuk worked in tax enforcement before starting as a Russian representative at Interpol in 2006, according to the interior ministry.

* South decries "excessive political emphasis" by Japan * Verdict strains ties, could hurt efforts on N. Korea -analysts * Japan says issue was resolved by 1965 treaty normalising ties Japan should avoid aggravating historical tensions in a diplomatic row over South Koreans forced to work for Japanese firms during World War Two, South Korea's foreign ministry and prime minister have warned. Last month, South Korea's top court ruled that Japan's Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp must compensate four South Koreans for their forced labour during the war, a decision Japan denounced as "unthinkable." The binding court verdict is straining ties between the neighbours and could affect their bid to rein in North Korea's nuclear programme, analysts say. "The Japanese government must be clearly aware that excessive political emphasis on the present case will be of no help to the future-oriented relationship between South Korea and Japan," the South's foreign ministry said late on Tuesday. It was referring to comments by Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono in a Bloomberg interview on Sunday, when he said, "It would be difficult for any country to do anything with the South Korean government" if a court could reverse Seoul's pacts made under international law. The two countries share a bitter history that includes Japan's 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula and the use of comfort women, Japan's euphemism for girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in its wartime brothels. Kono's remarks threatened to add fuel to the controversy, the ministry said. "South Korea is very concerned that Japan's leaders in positions of responsibility are disregarding the root cause of the issue...and continue to make comments that rouse our public's emotions," it added. South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon also fired back. "Japanese government leaders' remarks are inappropriate and unwise," he said in a statement on Tuesday that accused Japan of trying to stoke a diplomatic dispute with the issue. The row was triggered by a Supreme Court ruling that Nippon Steel pay 100 million won ($87,700) to each of the four steel workers who sought compensation and unpaid wages, saying their reparation rights were not terminated by a 1965 treaty. Japan says the pact "completely and finally" resolved the issue. On Wednesday, its chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said South Korea was in violation of international law after the Supreme Court verdict, and urged Seoul to immediately take redressal steps. "We are watching to see what concrete steps the South Korean government will take," Suga said. A senior official in South Korea's presidential office said the government needed time to resolve the issue. "There has been a ruling by the judiciary that differs from the previous government stance, so we have to arrange our stance," said the official, who declined to be named. "This takes time, and the Japanese government overly criticizing our government does not help." South Korea says nearly 5,000 victims of wartime forced labour are alive, from a total of nearly 150,000. In December, a South Korean appeals court is expected to rule on similar compensation claims against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

A meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean officials set for Thursday in New York has been postponed and will be rescheduled "when our respective schedules permit," the US State Department said on Wednesday. In a statement, it added, "Ongoing conversations continue to take place," but did not elaborate. "The United States remains focused on fulfilling the commitments agreed to by President Trump and Chairman Kim at the Singapore summit in June," it said. The exact reason for the postponement was unclear. A senior South Korean foreign ministry official said that although the rescheduling was regrettable, there was no need to "overthink the postponement", according to Yonhap news agency on Wednesday. "I think we have to look at it as a part of the process of reaching complete denuclearisation and setting up a peace regime," Yonhap cited the unnamed official as saying. Pompeo had been due to hold talks with senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol, which were hoped to pave the way for a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and make progress on denuclearization. Trump's Republican party lost control of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday after the Democrats rode a wave of dissatisfaction with his presidency at US mid-term elections. While Republicans maintained control of the Senate, the Democrats now have the opportunity to block Trump's agenda and open his administration to intense scrutiny. Some analysts suggest a domestically weakened Trump may impact his foreign policy, even test his North Korean diplomatic gambit. Pompeo's meeting agenda had been to "discuss making progress on all four pillars of the Singapore Summit joint statement, including achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization" of North Korea, the State Department had said this week. Trump and Kim held their first summit in Singapore in June -- the first summit of an incumbent US president and a North Korean leader. At that meeting, Kim, who is seeking relief from tough US-led sanctions, committed to work toward denuclearization, but his steps since have fallen short of US demands for irreversible moves to abandon a weapons program that potentially threatens the United States.

South Korea and the United States yesterday resumed small-scale military training that was indefinitely suspended following an historic summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.   The combined marine drills were among “select” joint exercises that were indefinitely delayed in June, after Trump met with Kim in Singapore and pledged to halt “very provocative” and expensive joint military drills with Seoul.  But the Korean Marine Exchange Programme (KMEP), involving some 500 marines from the US and South Korea, will resume for two weeks from today in the South’s southern city of Pohang, Seoul’s defence ministry said.  “We have previously said we will conduct US-South Korea battalion-level or small-scale drills as planned,” ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo told reporters.  Washington is Seoul’s security ally and stations 28,500 troops in the South to protect it from its nuclear-armed neighbour.  The two countries have long carried out joint exercises which they insist are purely defensive in nature, but which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for invasion.  Along with the marine drills, Seoul and Washington suspended the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian training in August involving tens of thousands of troops. They also agreed to halt the Vigilant Ace air force exercise slated for December. The resumption in military drills comes just days before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to hold talks with his North Korean counterpart on denuclearisation and plans for a second summit between their leaders.   At their meeting in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a vaguely worded statement on denuclearisation but little progress has been made since.  The two have sparred over the exact terms of the deal, with Washington pushing to maintain sanctions against the North until its “final, fully verified denuclearisation” and Pyongyang condemning US demands as “gangster-like”.   As a latest sign of increasing frustration, the North’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Friday threatening to resume building nuclear weapons unless US ends sanctions against Pyongyang.  The North is under multiple UN Security Council sanctions for its weapons programmes.  In an interview with Fox News on Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated that sanctions will remain until Pyongyang carries out denuclearisation commitments made in Singapore.  Last month General Robert Abrams, the then-nominee to head US and UN forces in South Korea, said there “was certainly a degradation in the readiness of the force, for the combined forces” following the pause in drills.