South Korea | featured news

A South Korean official says the country's president has visited islets that Japan claims as its own. The move likely will deepen animosity between the rivals.

"Evening of shame." Not words you often -- if ever -- associate with the sport of badminton. But those were the words being used by British TV after eight female badminton players were kicked out of the Olympic Games doubles competition on Wednesday afternoon over twin charges of "not using one's best efforts to win a match" and "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport."

At a time when much of the advanced world is unloading its debt, South Koreans are still borrowing at a feverish rate that economists say is unsustainable, and potentially dangerous.

CJ Group of South Korea hopes to furnish nearly 200 U.S. movie theaters with equipment that will move seats, emit scents and perform other special effects. As the giant spaceship crashes into the mysterious planet, the seats inside the movie theater heave back and forth and rumble like an earthquake.

South Korea on Wednesday proposed resuming whaling for scientific research, angering other Asian countries and conservationists who said the practice would skirt a global ban on whale hunting.

Everyone's made a joke they thought was funny only to see it fall flat, but Park Jung-geun's attempt at humor could see him jailed for up to seven years in South Korea. Park, a photographer by profession, re-tweeted some messages from North Korea's official twitter feed, such as reports on the late leader Kim Jong Il's travels across the country and negative tweets about South Korea.

Washington has urged the governments in Tokyo and Seoul to increase cooperation. But the pact triggered an uproar in South Korea, where resentment of Japan’s early 20th-century colonization remains raw and the public regards any sign of Japan’s growing military role with deep suspicion.

A treaty between South Korea and Japan will encourage the sharing of military data on their common concerns: North Korea’s threats and China’s military expansion.

North Korea has dispatched soldiers to pour buckets of water on parched fields and South Korean officials have scrambled to save a rare mollusk threatened by the heat, as the worst dry spell in a century grips the Korean peninsula....

North Korea on Monday accused the South’s government and news media of slandering its leadership and threatened “special actions” by the military.