The first thing United States President Barack Obama did after being inaugurated was issue executive orders closing the detention center at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and prohibiting the u

North Korean National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il met with Wang Jiarui, head of the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Friday and expressed inte

It is hard to understand the comments made by members of the ruling Grand National Party at yesterday’s meeting of the National Assembly Public Administration and Security Committee convened to

In his inaugural address, United States President Barack Obama said America is a “friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity” and that &ld

The ruling Grand National Party has produced something called a “Special Act on the Prevention of Acts of Violence in the National Assembly.” It says it is going to have the bill go throug

It was decided at the Korea-Japan summit in Seoul that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan will launch the Korean satellite KOMPSAT-3, a multi-purpose satellite being developed by the Korean governme

All you see are pieces of bodies and ruins of structures. One Western doctor there to help said he is amputating people lined up as if they were on a conveyor belt. So far more than 600 Palestinians h

KBS is being accused of deliberately fabricating and distorting its live video and audio broadcast of the annual New Year’s bell-ringing event at Bosingak. Indeed, the scene at Bosingak and what

We welcome in the first morning of the new year with a sense of crisis, a sense that the democracy that has held up Korean society for the past 20 years is collapsing. The ruling camp is trying to res

Media workers are becoming increasingly outspoken as they try to prevent the Lee Myung-bak administration from taking control of the news media. Having held a rally announcing the intensification of t

Most of the world’s conscientious objectors to military service who are in prison, are in prison in Korea. There are hundreds every year. This is because the Korean government does not recognize

There is no end to the Lee Myung-bak administration’s ambitions to control the news media. If there is one thing it has pushed for more tenaciously than others since President Lee was inaugurate

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has fired seven teachers who belong to the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU, Jeon Gyo Jo). The stated reason is that they failed to have thei

The six party head of delegation talks in Beijing came to an end after four days of meetings in which negotiators failed to adopt a verification protocol on North Korea’s nuclear programs. This

President Lee Myung-bak was said to have strongly reprimanded Cheong Jean-gon, senior presidential secretary for education, science and culture, with regard to the issue of revising the history textbo

All inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation projects as well as cross-border passages of people for the purpose of economic transactions were strictly restricted or banned beginning yesterday. While mo

Yesterday North Korea informed the South that it is going to end tourist visits to the North Korean city of Gaeseong (Kaesong) and halt train passage between North and South starting December 1. It al

Nothing goes according to promises, but nothing has gone backwards as much as the Lee administration’s pledge on private education expenses. One of his biggest pledges was the reduction of priva

The “major shareholders (creditors) independent agreement,” a restructuring program for construction companies, is becoming incoherent. The deadline for joining was the November 18 but tha

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the start of South Korean tours to North Korea’s Mount Geumgang (Kumgang). Some 1.7 million tourists, overwhelmingly South Korean, have visited the area by sh