South Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) - Both pressure and diplomatic options are on the table for dealing with North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday, hours after a senior North Korean diplomat rejected any talks until Washington changed its policies.

Blinken told a joint briefing with South Korean officials in Seoul that the administration of President Joe Biden would complete its review of North Korea policy in the next few weeks in close consultation with its allies.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Thursday it will ignore a U.S. offer for talks unless it withdraws its hostile policy, after Washington reached out to Pyongyang in a bid to resume nuclear negotiations.

The statement by Choe Son Hui, the first vice foreign minister, came hours before the U.S. and South Korean foreign and defense chiefs met in Seoul for their first joint talks in five years to discuss North Korea’s nuclear program.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Fresh off a stop in Tokyo, President Joe Biden’s top diplomat and defense chief traveled to South Korea on Wednesday, a day after North Korea made sure it had their attention by warning the United States to “refrain from causing a stink” amid deadlocked nuclear negotiations.

How to get North Korea to return to talks will be a major focus when Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin meet South Korean officials this week.

ANSAN, South Korea (AP) — For the first time in years, Choi Bok-hwa didn’t get her annual birthday call from her mother in North Korea. Each January, Choi’s mother had climbed a mountain and used a broker’s smuggled Chinese cellphone to call South Korea to wish her happy birthday and arrange a badly needed money transfer.

Choi, who hasn’t sent money or talked to her 75-year-old mother since May, believes the silence is linked to the pandemic, which led North Korea to shut its borders tighter than ever and impose some of the world’s toughest restrictions on movement.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Thursday the government was declaring war on property crime amid widening accusations of insider speculation by dozens of employees of the state housing corporation.

The growing scandal has sparked outrage in South Korea as property prices in and around the capital Seoul have soared, making affordable housing hard to find.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea has agreed to a 13.9% increase in its contribution to the cost of hosting some 28,500 U.S. troops for 2021, the biggest annual rise in nearly two decades after U.S. calls for greater funding.

The increase will take South Korea’s contribution this year to 1.18 trillion won ($1.03 billion). Former U.S. President Donald Trump had accused South Korea of “free-riding” on U.S. military might and demanded that it pay as much as $5 billion a year.

Washington, Mar 8 (AP-PTI) The United States and South Korea have reached agreement in principle on a new arrangement for sharing the cost of the American troop presence, which is intended as a bulwark against the threat of North Korean aggression.

The State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs said the deal includes a negotiated increase in Seoul's share of the cost, but it provided no details.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean and U.S. militaries are scaling back their annual exercises this month due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to support diplomacy focusing on North Korea’s nuclear program, officials said Sunday.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the allies decided to start the nine-day drills on Monday after reviewing factors like the status of the pandemic and diplomatic efforts to achieve denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s central bank says the country’s economy shrank for the first time in 22 years in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic destroyed service industry jobs and depressed consumer spending.

Preliminary data released by the Bank of Korea on Thursday showed the country’s gross domestic product last year contracted 1% from 2019. It was the first annual contraction since 1998, when South Korea was in the midst of a crippling financial crisis.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea may be trying to extract plutonium to make more nuclear weapons at its main atomic complex, recent satellite photos indicated, weeks after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal.

The 38 North website, which specializes in North Korea studies, cited the imagery as indicating that a coal-fired steam plant at the North’s Yongbyon nuclear complex is in operation after about a two-year hiatus. Smoke was observed emanating from the plant’s smokestack at various times from late February and early March.