South Korea, Military | featured news

North Korea has plenty of military firepower even if its threat this week of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States is a hollow one, with South Korea most at risk from the isolated regime's artillery and rockets.

South Korea has reached a landmark agreement with the United States to extend the range of Seoul's ballistic missiles by more than twice the current limit to counter the threat from North Korea, the government said on Sunday.

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

The South Korean military fired at a civilian plane near the Yellow Sea border with North Korea, mistaking it for one of the North's military planes, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Saturday, citing a military source.

South Korea agreed on Thursday to hold high-level military talks with rival North Korea, marking a major breakthrough in a crisis on the Korean peninsula and heightening the prospect of renewed aid-for-disarmament talks.

Amid South Korean plans to hold live-fire military drills this week and North Korean threats of retaliation, many residents of Yeonpyeong Island are evacuating, afraid of being caught in the middle.

The United States and South Korea began joint military exercises in waters west of the Korean Peninsula Sunday that have been opposed by regional giant China and have led to North Korea threatening "consequences."

South Korea and the United States are recklessly pushing the Korean peninsula "closer to the brink of war" by scheduling a joint military drill for this weekend, North Korean state media said Friday.