South Korean President Park Geun-hye has promised to raise the Sewol ferry, as the Asian country marks a year since the disaster.
A total of 304 people, mostly school students, were killed when the Sewol ferry – which was overloaded and illegally redesigned – sank off Jindo island.
The disaster triggered nationwide grief and outrage and led to severe criticism of safety standards and rescue efforts.
Divers have recovered all but nine of the bodies. Relatives say the ship must be raised and their remains found.
The government says salvaging the ship will cost $110 million and has previously refused to commit to doing so.
However, President Park Guen-hye, speaking at a port in Jindo, said she would take “the necessary steps to salvage the ship at the earliest possible date”.
South Korea’s legislative National Assembly adopted a resolution calling on the government to ensure the Sewol ferry’s speedy recovery, which it said “is the path toward healing the minds of the victims, survivors and bereaved families… as well as those of all the citizens”, reported Yonhap.
Photo Reuters
Memorial ceremonies are being held in some 300 places across South Korea.
The largest took place in the afternoon at a hall in Ansan city, the home of the students. A private ceremony will also take place at their school in the evening.
In the morning, PM Lee Wan-koo was prevented from entering the memorial hall by angry relatives of those who died.
Investigators say the Sewol ferry sank after an inexperienced crew member made too fast a turn. The combination of an illegal redesign and overloaded cargo meant the ship was unstable.
However, some relatives say they want an independent and more thorough inquiry into the disaster, which sparked countrywide debate about regulatory failings and official incompetence.
Most of the crew of the Sewol survived.
The captain and three senior crew members have since been given long jail terms for failing to adequately protect passengers, while 11 other crew members were also imprisoned.
The captain of the first coast guard vessel on scene was also jailed for negligence relating to the botched rescue effort.
Separate trials were held for employees of the ferry operator, Chonghaejin Marine Co. The company’s billionaire owner, Yoo Byung-eun, disappeared after the disaster and was eventually found dead.
South Korean activist Lee Min-bok has flown thousands of copies of controversial Sony film The Interview over the North Korean border.
Lee Min-bok said he had carried out the launches at night four times since January, most recently on April 4.
The Seth Rogen comedy, about a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, enraged Pyongyang.
Sony initially pulled The Interview after a hacking attack and threats to attack cinemas which were screening it.
But it changed its mind and gave the film a limited cinema release after being accused of responding to an attack on free speech.
The FBI says North Korea was behind the hack and threats, though it denies this.
Lee Min-bok, a defector from North Korea, said he had tied the DVDs to balloons along with bundles of US dollars and leaflets criticizing Kim Jong-un’s regime.
He told AFP news agency: “I launched thousands of copies and about a million leaflets on Saturday, near the western part of the border.”
He said the launches were all done in remote areas and without publicity but that the police “would have no right to stop me”.
Lee Min-bok told CNN, which joined him on Saturday’s launch, that he had not laughed at The Interview and found it vulgar.
But he said North Korea “hates this film because it shows Kim Jong-un as a man, not a God” and that he wanted to “tell the truth” to North Koreans.
Any North Korean who had access to a DVD player and was found to have watched the film would likely face a lengthy sentence in a prison camp.
South Korean activists have repeatedly carried out balloon drops across the border of material which they say shows the reality of life outside the restrictive country, in the hope of encouraging North Koreans to reject propaganda and stand up to their leadership.
North Korea has demanded South Korea stop such launches, saying they are provocative. Its border guards have in the past tried to shoot down the balloons.
According to South Korean military officials, North Korea has test-fired four short-range missiles into the sea off its west coast.
In a statement, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the missiles had a range of about 87 miles.
The missiles were fired from Dongchang-ri in the north of the country on April 3, the statement said.
North Korea often conducts missile tests in protest at US-South Korean military drills, one of which is ongoing.
Photo KCNA
The US and South Korea say the annual exercises are for defense training purposes, but Pyongyang calls them a rehearsal for invasion. They are always a trigger for a surge in tensions between the two Koreas.
When a drill began in March, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles, and on March 13 it fired seven ground-to-air missiles into the sea to coincide with the end of one part of the drill, Operation Key Resolve.
The current drill, Foal Eagle, is continuing.
A JCS spokesman said today’s test “appeared to have been supervised by Kim Jong-un”, the AFP news agency reports.
China, Japan and South Korea’s foreign ministers are meeting for their first talks since 2012.
The meeting in Seoul is likely to focus on ways to ease regional tensions over territorial and diplomatic disputes.
The three states have strong economic ties but relations still suffer from unresolved issues dating back to Japan’s actions in World War Two.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said he hoped the ministers would be able to “look forward into the future”.
South Korea’s Yun Byung-se welcomed Japan’s Fumio Kishida and China’s Wang Yi to South Korea’s capital on March 21.
Foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea last met in April 2012, for their sixth annual trilateral meeting.
It was cancelled the following year after Japanese PM Shinzo Abe angered China and South Korea by visiting a shrine that honors Japan’s war dead, including a number of senior war criminals.
China and South Korea have accused Tokyo of failing to adequately atone for aggression in World War Two, including its wartime use of s** slaves, known euphemistically as “comfort women”.
They also accuse Japan of whitewashing wartime atrocities in schoolbooks.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed hope that South Korea would join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and South Korea’s Yun Byung-se said Seoul was reviewing its options, a South Korean official told Reuters after the meeting of the two ministers.
Fumio Kishida met his South Korean counterpart ahead of the trilateral meeting, and said that “despite difficult issues between the two countries”, the two sides would “continue communicating at various levels in order to strengthen our co-operation”.
The resumption of the foreign ministers’ meeting has fuelled hopes that a summit of the counties’ three leaders could be held later this year.
The poor relationship between Japan and South Korea has become a concern for the US, which sees the two countries as its main military allies in Asia.
Last week, US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel described the tension between its “two friends” as a “strategic liability”.
Saturday’s meeting comes just days after China and Japan held their first high-level security talks in four years.
Those discussions are believed to have centered on the creation of a maritime communication hotline between the countries, following tensions over islands in the East China Sea.
There have been several disputes in recent years over the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, and officials have expressed fears that a clash could trigger a full-blown conflict.
On the last day of the annual US-South Korea military exercise, North Korea has fired seven ground-to-air missiles into the sea, South Korea’s defense ministry says.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was present during the launch, a ministry spokesman from South Korea said.
The annual exercises, which Pyongyang calls a rehearsal for invasion, are always a trigger for a surge in tensions between the two Koreas.
North Korea showed its opposition to this year’s drills by firing two short-range ballistic missiles when they began earlier this month.
South Korea said the missiles fired on March 13 were believed to be SA-2 or SA-3s, with a range of “dozens of kilometers”, as well as one SA-5 with a range of 120 miles.
“We see this as another show of force by the North related to the exercises,” a spokesman told AFP news agency.
There were no reports of tests in North Korean media.
One of the US-South Korean exercises, Key Resolve, ended on March 13 while other, Foal Eagle, continues into April. The US and South Korea say they are for defense training purposes.
The missile launch comes as North Korea and South Korea are already involved in a row over wages at their jointly run Kaesong industrial zone.
Kaesong area lies just over the border into North Korea and is the only area of co-operation between the North and South.
Last month, Pyongyang said it would raise the basic salary of more than 50,000 North Koreans working there, but South Korea rejected this saying any wage rise had to be agreed by a joint committee overseeing the management of the industrial area.
US ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert is in a stable condition after being slashed on the face by a militant Korean nationalist at a breakfast meeting in Seoul.
Mark Lippert, 42, was also cut on his left hand, with blood spattered over the breakfast table.
Security officers subdued the attacker, one pinning him down with a shoe on his neck, until he was arrested.
Mark Lippert had hospital treatment but later said he was “doing well”.
“Doing well and in great spirits!” the ambassador tweeted.
“Will be back ASAP to advance US-ROK [Republic of Korea] alliance!”
President Barack Obama called his ambassador to wish him “the very best for a speedy recovery”, a US official said.
The US state department said it strongly condemned the incident which South Korean President Park Guen-hye described as an “attack on the South Korea-US alliance”.
Witnesses say the attacker, a 55-year-old man with a history of militant Korean nationalistic activism, shouted demands for North and South Korea to be reunified.
It took 80 stitches to close the ambassador’s facial wound, which was just more than 4 in long, doctors said.
The cut did not affect his nerves or salivary gland, hospital spokesman Chung Nam-sik said.
The attack happened at about 07:40 local time, as the ambassador was at a performing arts centre in central Seoul, South Korean police say.
The assailant, named as Kim Ki-jong, reportedly shouted “South and North Korea should be reunified!” before lashing out at the envoy.
He also reportedly condemned annual military exercises held jointly by South Korea and the US, which are currently under way.
North Korea has described the exercises – which involve more than 200,000 troops – as a rehearsal for an invasion and has vowed retaliation.
A small group of South Koreans believe that the American military presence prevents unification of the two Koreas.
The assailant previously threw concrete at the Japanese ambassador to South Korea.
Mark Lippert – a former US assistant secretary of defense – was appointed ambassador to South Korea in 2014.
The ambassador’s wife gave birth in South Korea, and the couple gave their son a Korean middle name, according to the Associated Press.
The North Korean army fired two short-range missiles into the sea as annual US-South Korea drills got under way, officials in Seoul say.
The two missiles, with a range of 305 miles, were fired from the western city of Nampo into the sea east of the Korean peninsula, the South Korean military said.
The drills, involving tens of thousands of troops, always anger Pyongyang.
It traditionally shows its displeasure with missile tests and louder rhetoric.
Seoul and Washington describe the military exercises as defensive in nature. North Korea calls them a rehearsal for invasion.
Key Resolve, a largely computer-simulated exercise, lasts 12 days and Foal Eagle, which has ground, air and sea components, lasts eight weeks.
In a statement, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles, fired on March 2, were probably Scud Cs or Scud Ds.
The military remained “vigilant against any additional launches”, it said.
South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Min-seok vowed a stern response to any provocation.
“If North Korea takes provocative actions, our military will react firmly and strongly so North Korea will regret it in its bones,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Earlier in the day the North Korean military condemned the joint exercises as “undisguised encroachment” on national sovereignty.
Aggression should be dealt with by “merciless strikes”, it said in a statement carried by KCNA news agency.
In 2013 the joint exercises led to a prolonged surge in tensions, with North Korea threatening pre-emptive nuclear strikes and cutting a military hotline with the South.
Drills in 2014 passed off relatively quietly, however.
In January 2015, North Korea said it would offer a moratorium on nuclear testing if the joint exercises were cancelled. The US rejected this suggestion as an “implicit threat”.
Kim Jong-un has urged the North Korean army to prepare for war with the US and its allies, state media said on February 28, ahead of US-South Korea military drills.
The North Korean leader’s comments came after South Korea and the US on February 27 conducted a joint naval drill involving 10 South Korean warships and a US Aegis destroyer, ahead of the launch of large-scale military exercises that have enraged the North.
“The prevailing situation where a great war for national reunification is at hand requires all the KPA (Korean People’s Army) units to become (elite) Guard Units fully prepared for war politically and ideologically, in military technique and materially,” Kim Jong-un was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying.
North Korea regularly ratchets up hostile rhetoric at times of joint US-South Korea military exercises that spark a sharp surge in tensions on the divided peninsula.
Kim Jong-un called on the military to train hard in order “to tear to pieces the Stars and Stripes”, in comments made while opening a new hall at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, KCNA said.
The drill on February 27 was a prelude to an eight-week exercise, Foal Eagle, involving air, ground and naval field training, with around 200,000 Korean and 3,700 US troops that begins on March 2.
A week-long, largely computer-simulated joint drill, Key Resolve, will also get under way.
Seoul and Washington insist the exercises are defense-based in nature, but they are condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for invasion.
The communist country had offered a moratorium on carrying out nuclear tests if this year’s joint drills were cancelled – a proposal rejected by Washington as an “implicit threat” to carry out a fourth atomic drill.
North Korea claims it won the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war.
South Korea’s top court has revoked a 1953 law under which cheating spouses could be jailed for up to two years.
South Korea was one of only three Asian countries to criminalize adultery.
About 5,500 people have been convicted in the country since 2008.
Out of the nine-judge panel, seven deemed the law unconstitutional.
Presiding judge Park Han-Chul said public conceptions of individuals’ rights had changed.
“Even if adultery should be condemned as immoral, state power should not intervene in individuals’ private lives,” he said.
In recent years, while hundreds of people have been convicted under the law, very few have actually gone to prison.
“Recently, it was extremely rare for a person to serve a prison term for adultery,” Lim Ji-bong, a law professor at Sogang University in Seoul, told the Associated Press.
“The number of indictments has decreased as charges are frequently dropped.”
The law has previously been reviewed four times by the court and upheld.
The most recent was in 2008, when actress Ok So-ri petitioned the court after being given an eight-month suspended sentence for adultery.
Although she was unsuccessful, it was a narrow loss. Five of the judges deemed the law to be unconstitutional, saying that adultery could be condemned on moral grounds but not as a criminal act. Six judges needed to oppose the law for it to be revoked.
The Constitutional Court said on February 26 that anyone convicted since 2008 could have their case reconsidered.
However, some in South Korea have defended the law, saying its loss would encourage depravity.
Judge Ahn Chang-Ho, who read the dissenting opinion at the constitutional court, said that the statute was a key protector of family morals and warned that its abolition would “spark a surge in debauchery”.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has announced she is prepared to hold talks with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un without setting pre-conditions.
In a nationally televised press conference, Park Geun-hye said she would “meet with anyone if necessary to open the path of a peaceful unification”.
Kim Jong-un offered talks with South Korea if the conditions were right in his New Year address.
Leaders of South Korea and North Korea have only met twice, in 2000 and 2007, since the Korean War which divided the peninsula.
Kim Jong-un had said on January 1 that “depending on the mood and circumstances”, there would be “no reason” not to hold a high-level summit on the reunification of the two Koreas.
On January 12, Park Geun-hye delivered her own New Year message saying she would set no conditions to the talks, but added that North Korea should take “sincere” steps towards denuclearization.
North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests in recent years, aggravating relations with the South.
It has offered to put a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons if South Korea halts military exercises it holds with American forces. That offer was rejected and the two allies plan to hold a joint naval drill this week, reported South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Park Geun-hye also called on North Korea to “come forward for dialogue without hesitation” on efforts to reunite families separated since the end of 1950-53 Korean War.
The last formal high-level talks were in February 2014, leading to rare reunions for Korean families separated for over 60 years.
However, further talks planned in October were dropped after North Korea accused South Korea of not doing enough to stop activists sending anti-Northern leaflets across the border on balloons.
The two Koreas have technically been at war since the Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Park Geun-hye also addressed the use of a controversial law to deport Korean-American Shin Eun-mi on January 10.
South Korea has put in place a National Security Law which states that anyone who praises North Korea can be jailed for up to seven years.
The law was used to deport Shin Eun-mi for speaking positively about life in North Korea in speeches and in online posts. Shin Eun-mi has denied she praised North Korea.
Critics say the controversial law suppresses freedom of speech.
Park Geun-hye defended the law’s use, saying it was needed to “ensure security in this country as we remain in a standoff with the North”.
North Korea has rejected South Korea’s call for resuming bilateral talks, after Kim Jong-un made a surprise New Year call for a summit.
South Korea’s parliament called last month for a resumption of negotiations on various issues including North Korea’s human rights, and families still separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
An official at South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said North Korea had rejected the proposal, without giving a reason.
South Korea has also proposed inter-Korean talks be held this month, but North Korea has not yet responded to that specific offer.
The rejection of the South Korean parliament’s call comes during a period of heightened tension between North Korea and the US, which is South Korea’s main ally.
On January 8, North Korea warned the US of a “war disaster” if it did not withdraw sanctions imposed by Washington following a crippling hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.
North Korea has denied it had any involvement in the attack.
North Korea has made progress in creating deliverable nuclear weapons, South Korea’s defense ministry has speculated.
In a white paper, the ministry said enough time had passed since North Korea’s first nuclear test for it to have acquired the technology.
A ministry official, however, told the Yonhap News agency that there was no intelligence to support the assessment.
Meanwhile North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he was open to talks with South Korea.
“North Korea’s capabilities of miniaturizing nuclear weapons appear to have reached a significant level,” the paper said.
Miniaturizing a nuclear device would allow it to be fitted on the tip of a long-range missile which could, in theory, reach South Korea or even the US.
An unnamed defense ministry official told Yonhap: “We don’t have any intelligence that North Korea completed the miniaturization.”
The official said acquiring such technology took between two and seven years, and it had been eight years since North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.
Pyongyang has conducted three nuclear tests with the most recent in February 2013.
Expert opinion is split on how much progress North Korea’s ballistic missile development program has made.
The white paper also said that North Korea was “presumed to have [missiles] capabilities that could threaten the US mainland, having fired off long-range missiles five times”.
However, the official said no signs had been seen yet that Pyongyang had put long range missiles into service.
In his New Year address, Kim Jong-un has offered to hold talks at the highest level with South Korea.
The North Korean leader was giving his New Year message broadcast on state television.
Kim Jong-un said if Pyongyang’s conditions were met, he would even be prepared to hold a summit meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
South Korea said the move was “meaningful”, and talks should include “practical and frank discussions on all issues of mutual concern”.
“Our government hopes for dialogue between the South and North Korean authorities in the near future without limits on format,” said Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, quoted by the South’s Yonhap news agency.
On December 29, Ryoo Kihl-jae had called for dialogue to resume on issues including reunions for families separated by the Korean War, adding that he hoped North Korea would respond positively.
Ryoo Kihl-jae offered to meet in Seoul, Pyongyang or any other South or North Korean city agreed with North Korean officials.
In his address, Kim Jong-un said the “tragic” division of Korea could no longer be tolerable and acceptable.
“Depending on the mood and circumstances, there is no reason not to hold a high-level summit,” he said.
Later in his speech, Kim Jong-un condemned joint US-South Korean defense drills for deepening tensions on the peninsula.
“In a tense mood of such war-preparatory exercises, trust-based dialogue can’t be possible, and North-South relations can’t move forward,” he said.
North Korea has previously seen South Korea’s unification plans as an attempt to take it over.
The last formal high-level talks were in February 2014, leading to rare reunions for Korean families separated for over 60 years since the end of 1950-1953 Korean War.
More talks planned in October were dropped after North Korea accused South Korea of not doing enough to stop activists sending anti-Northern leaflets across the border on balloons.
South Korea’s Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae has offered to resume high-level talks with North Korea in January 2015.
The talks are meant to focus on a range of issues, to prepare for a “peaceful unification”.
Ryoo Kihl-jae said he especially hoped to discuss the reunion of families separated by the Korean War more than 60 years ago.
There has been no response yet from Pyongyang.
North Korea has previously seen South Korea’s unification plans as an attempt to take it over.
“North and South Korea should meet face to face to draw up a plan for a peaceful unification,” Ryoo Kihl-jae told a news conference.
“For this purpose, we make an official proposal for the North Korean government to have a conversation about mutual concerns between North and South in January next year.”
Ryoo Kihl-jae said he hoped North Korea “responds positively” to the suggestion.
He offered to meet in Seoul, Pyongyang or any other South or North Korean city agreed with North Korean officials.
The last formal high-level talks were in February, leading to rare reunions for Korean families.
More talks planned in October were dropped after North Korea accused South Korea of not doing enough to stop activists sending anti-Northern leaflets across the border on balloons.
North Korea and South Korea have technically been at war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
For the first time in decades, South Korea has banned a political party with a court ordering the organization accused of supporting North Korea to disband.
The government had petitioned the constitutional court last year to ban the leftist Unified Progressive Party (UPP), which has five members in parliament.
Some UPP members were previously arrested for plotting a rebellion.
The move has sparked concern about freedom of expression and association in South Korea.
The decision was closely watched by political groups, with hundreds gathered near the constitutional court in Seoul amid a tight security presence of about 1,000 riot police.
Both UPP supporters and its opponents held demonstrations, shouting slogans and waving signs, reports said.
It is the first time South Korea’s constitutional court has banned a political party since it was established in 1988, said AP news agency.
Eight out of nine judges agreed on December 19 to accept the government’s petition to disband the UPP, order it to forfeit its seats in parliament and ban an equivalent party from forming.
Chief Judge Park Han-chul said: “There was an urgent need to remove the threat posed by the party to the basic order of democracy.”
Justice Minister Hwan Kyo-ahn, making the government’s final argument before the court last month, said the UPP has attempted to “establish a pro-communist government and unification to realize North Korean-style socialism”.
However, the UPP has said it only wants greater reconciliation with North Korea.
The government’s petition was prompted by the arrest of several UPP members in 2013.
Seven members were eventually convicted of plotting to overthrow the South Korean government in the event war broke out with North Korea.
UPP’s leader Lee Jung-hee told reporters on December 19 that the decision “opened a dark age with an authoritarian decision” and had turned South Korea into a “dictatorial country”.
Amnesty International’s East Asia research director Roseann Rife said the ban “raises serious questions as to the authorities’ commitment to freedom of expression and association.”
“Security concerns must never be used as an excuse to deny people the right to express different political views,” she said.
South Korea has taken down a tower used to construct a Christmas tree at the border with North Korea.
The ritual, in which the 60ft tower was covered in colorful lights and topped with a cross, was seen by the North as propaganda by the South.
North Korea repeatedly demanded its demolition and threatened to shell it.
The move came a week after senior military officials from the two Koreas held talks for the first time in seven years.
Two weeks ago, the two countries briefly exchanged gun fire across their land border, in a rare incident.
Gunfire was also exchanged recently when a North Korean patrol ship crossed the disputed western maritime border.
South Korea has taken down a tower used to construct a Christmas tree at the border with North Korea (photo AFP/Getty Images)
The tower, which stood about 2 miles from the border, could be seen by North Koreans living in nearby towns.
Citing a defense official, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the tower, built in 1971, was being removed because it could collapse.
The official refuted speculation that the demolition had to do with relations with North Korea, and said the tower had been awarded a low grade during a safety check.
In 2004, South Korea stopped allowing groups to erect the Christmas tree after dialogue with North Korea in which both sides agreed to stop propaganda activities by the border.
However, it allowed Christian groups to put up the tree in 2010 when a South Korean warship was sunk by, Seoul says, a North Korean submarine.
News of the tower’s demolition came as North Korea freed Jeffrey Fowle, one of three US citizens currently detained.
North Korea and South Korea have held talks for the first time in seven years, South Korean Yonhap news agency reports.
The news agency, citing an unnamed source, said the talks began at 10:00 at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone.
In recent weeks the two Koreas have exchange limited gun fire across both their land and sea borders.
South Korean ministry officials have not formally confirmed the talks.
Yonhap, citing its parliamentary source, said it was because North Korea did not want the talks made public.
An opposition lawmaker gave the same information to a party meeting, a statement from his party said.
North Korea and South Korea have held talks for the first time in seven years
The talks were widely expected to focus on reducing tensions after two small military incidents across the border that divides the two nations – which remain technically at war.
Last week, gun fire was exchanged after a North Korean patrol ship crossed the disputed western maritime border, South Korea said.
On October 10, there was also an exchange of fire across the land border, something that happens rarely.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing military officials, said North Korea fired towards balloons carrying propaganda leaflets that had been launched across the border by South Korean activists.
South Korea responded after some shots landed south of the border, its officials said.
The two sides last held working-level military talks in February 2011 and general-level talks in December 2007, Yonhap said.
In February, Pyongyang and Seoul also had two rounds of high-level meetings in Panmunjom, without providing any details on how the talks went.
North Korea and South Korea have agreed to resume formal high-level talks, the South Korean media reported.
The talks between the two countries had been suspended since February 2014.
The agreement came during a surprise visit to South Korea by North Korean officials for the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in Incheon.
The visit was led by two top-ranking North Korean officials seen as close aides to leader Kim Jong-un.
Both sides were said to have agreed to meet again within the next few weeks.
Hwang Pyong-so, seen as the second-most powerful man in North Korea, held talks with Ryoo Kihl-jae, the South’s reunification minister, on October 4 after flying to Incheon to attend the sporting event.
Hwang Pyong-so, seen as the second-most powerful man in North Korea, held talks with Ryoo Kihl-jae, the South’s reunification minister
He is the top political officer at the Korean People’s Army.
The other two members of the North’s delegation were Choe Ryong-hae and Kim Yang-gon – key members of the ruling Workers’ Party.
It is not known what was discussed at the meeting and neither party has commented publicly on the talks.
Relations between North Korea and South Korea have been practically non-existent for four years, but the North’s economic troubles seem to have forced a change of tack.
The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict was ended with a truce.
The surprise meeting comes amid ongoing speculation about the health of Kim Jong-un.
Kim Jong-un has not been seen in public since September 3. A recent official documentary showed him overweighed and limping.
A delegation of three senior North Korean officials arrived in South Korea for the closing ceremony of this year’s Asian Games.
The North Korean visit in South Korea is seen as a rare opportunity for high-level talks.
The North Korean team is led by Hwang Pyong-so, who is considered to be the second most important official after leader Kim Jong-un.
Hwang Pyong-so is expected to meet South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and a senior security adviser.
The visit comes as speculation continues about the health of Kim Jong-un.
Kim Jong-un has not been seen in public since September 3. A recent official documentary showed him limping and being overweight.
Hwang Pyong-so is considered to be the second most important official in North Korea after leader Kim Jong-un (photo AP)
The three North Korean officials arrived in the city of Incheon – the venue of the Asian Games.
They will take part in the closing ceremony of the major sporting event later on Saturday, October 4.
They are also expected to hold talks over lunch with Ryoo Kihl-jae and Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin before returning home.
Hwang Pyong-so is the top political officer at the Korean People’s Army. The other two officials are Choe Ryong-hae and Kim Yang-gon – key members of the ruling Workers’ Party.
Despite that harsh rhetoric of recent years, the visit indicates a desire for economically-pressed North Korea to have closer relations with the South.
The visit has also caused speculation about Kim Jong-un, who has been absent from public view for a month.
What the closest members of his inner circle tell the South Korean government will be analyzed to try to discern the health and views of Kim Jong-un back in Pyongyang.
Pope Francis has urged for reconciliation between the two Koreas, on the final day of his visit to South Korea.
Koreans, Pope Francis said, should reject a “mindset of suspicion and confrontation” and find new paths to build peace.
The pontiff spoke at a Mass in Seoul’s main cathedral attended by President Park Geun-hye and North Korean defectors.
The service coincided with the start of major US-South Korea military exercises.
The annual drills, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, last for 12 days and involve some 80,000 US and South Korean service personnel.
The exercises always enrage North Korea, which has in recent weeks conducted a series of short-range missile tests – including one as the Pope arrived.
It has threatened a “merciless” retaliatory strike in response to the drills.
North Korea and South Korea remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty.
Pope Francis has urged for reconciliation between the two Koreas, on the final day of his visit to South Korea (photo EPA)
Speaking at Myeongdong Cathedral, Pope Francis said all Koreans were “brothers and sisters, members of one family, one people”.
“Let us pray for the emergence of new opportunities for dialogue, encounter and the resolution of differences,” he said.
He also called for generosity in providing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and urged Koreans to work together as one, “with no victors or vanquished”.
Representatives from North Korea’s state-run Korean Catholic Association were invited to attend the Mass, but Pyongyang rejected this offer.
Also at the service were seven elderly women forced to work as prostitutes for Japanese troops during World War Two.
One of the women gave Pope Francis a gold butterfly pin – a symbol of their continuing struggle for justice – which he wore during the Mass.
Pope Francis, who on Saturday beatified 124 Koreans who died for their faith in the 18th and 19th Centuries, later flew out of Seoul.
The pontiff will visit the Philippines and Sri Lanka in January.
En route to Rome, Pope Francis sent a telegram to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a follow-up to a message he had sent when he flew over China to South Korea on Thursday.
“Returning to Rome after my visit to Korea, I wish to renew to your Excellency and your fellow citizens the assurance of my best wishes, as I invoke divine blessings upon your land,” Pope Francis said.
The Vatican and Beijing have no formal ties, but the decision to let Pope Francis fly through Chinese airspace is being seen as a possible sign of warmth.
When Pope John Paul II visited Seoul in 1989, he had to fly through Russian airspace to get to South Korea.
Pope Francis has beatified 124 of South Korea’s first Catholics at a large open-air Mass in Seoul on Saturday.
The pontiff paid tribute to the Koreans, who died for their faith in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
It comes on the third day of his visit to South Korea – his first trip to Asia since becoming pope in March 2013.
Pope Francis also met survivors of the Sewol ferry disaster and delivered his first public mass in the region on Friday.
The beautification ceremony was held at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance.
Beatification, or declaring a person “blessed”, is the necessary prelude to full sainthood.
Pope Francis is spending five days in South Korea, where the Catholic Church is growing. It currently has just over 5.4 million members, some 10.4% of the population.
Crowds of worshippers lined the streets leading up to Gwanghwamun Plaza for Saturday’s ceremony. The square was the site where unrepentant Catholics were paraded before they were publicly executed.
Pope Francis has beatified 124 of South Korea’s first Catholics at a large open-air Mass in Seoul (photo EPA)
“They were willing to make great sacrifices and let themselves be stripped of whatever kept them from Christ – possessions and land, prestige and honor – for they knew that Christ alone was their true treasure,” Pope Francis told the crowd in his sermon.
“They challenge us to think about what, if anything, we ourselves would be willing to die for.”
the people who were beatified today were the founders of the Catholic Church in South Korea 200 years ago .
They were also unique because they were not converted by missionaries who came to Korea but they learnt about Catholicism themselves and brought the books back to Korea to spread the Catholic Church and were executed by the royal authorities for doing so.
On Friday, Pope Francis held Mass for tens of thousands of people gathered at a football stadium in Daejeon, his first public event since arriving in South Korea.
In his address, the pope warned Catholics of a “cancer” of despair in materially-obsessed societies, saying that materialism was spreading like a spiritual desert across the affluent world.
Before Mass got underway, he met with some of the survivors and relatives of the Sewol ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people in April this year.
He was later greeted by a rapturous crowd of some 10,000 youths in Dangjin, where he spoke briefly off-the-cuff in English, acknowledging his difficulties with the language.
There he urged South Koreans to pray for unification with the north.
“Let us pray for our brothers in the north,” Pope Francis said.
Meanwhile, China’s leadership failed to receive a telegram sent by the Pope as he flew over the country on his way to South Korea, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said on Friday.
It is traditional for the pontiff to send blessings to the leadership of a country he flies over, but this was the first time a pope had been permitted to use Chinese air space.
The gesture is seen as significant because the Vatican and China have had no formal ties since the Communist party took power in 1949.
A technical glitch was thought to have stopped the message from being received, which was later resent via the Italian embassy in Beijing, Father Federico Lombardi said.
Pope Francis left Seoul airport in a compact black Kia that many South Koreans would consider too humble a conveyance for a globally powerful figure.
In a live television broadcast, Pope Francis climbed into the backseat of the boxy Kia Soul, rolled down the window and waved.
Pope Francis‘ frugality and humble demeanor have received wide coverage in South Korea, a fiercely competitive country that celebrates ostentatious displays of status and wealth. This national trait can be seen in booming industries such as private tutoring and plastic surgery.
Pope Francis left Seoul airport in a compact black Kia that many South Koreans would consider too humble a conveyance for a globally powerful figure (photo AP)
The images of the smiling pope in his little car struck a chord online, with many playing on the car’s name.
For the man called “The People’s Pope” the choice makes sense. Pope Francis has eschewed the bulletproof “popemobiles” that his predecessors used on foreign trips and urged priests around the world to travel in low-key cars.
Inside the Vatican City, Pope Francis prefers a blue Ford Focus, or when he’s out in St. Peter’s Square, a white open-topped vehicle that allows him to literally reach out and touch the masses.
South Korean media widely reported that the pope requested the smallest South Korean car during his visit. The Soul is Kia’s second-smallest model and reportedly provides more leg room than other compact cars.
Pope Francis has arrived in South Korea, beginning his first visit to Asia since he took over the papacy in March 2013.
During his trip, Pope Francis will beatify Korean Catholics who died for their faith and attend a Catholic youth festival.
The South Korean Catholic Church is one of the fastest growing in the world, with just over 5.4 million members, some 10.4% of the population.
North Korea fired short-range rockets off its east coast around the time of the Pope’s arrival.
It fired three rockets on Thursday morning as the pope’s plane approached South Korean airspace, and another two in the afternoon, according to news agencies.
Pyongyang has engaged in several such launches in recent months in what it says is a response to US and South Korean provocations – in the latest case, a military drill due to start on Monday.
South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye was at the airport to greet the pontiff.
The pontiff is expected to pay tribute to some of South Korea’s first Catholics when he beatifies 124 Koreans who died in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
After an individual is beatified, he or she is given the title “blessed”.
Pope Francis has arrived in South Korea, beginning his first visit to Asia since he took over the papacy in March 2013
The beatification ceremony will be held on Saturday at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, with up to one million people expected to attend.
Pope Francis is also attending Asian Youth Day, a festival for young Catholics from across the region.
He is also scheduled to meet students who survived the Sewol ferry disaster that claimed more than 300 lives.
A Mass for Peace and Reconciliation will be held in the Myeong-dong cathedral in Seoul on Monday, on the final day of his trip.
There Pope Francis will deliver a message of peace for the divided Koreas and East Asia, according to Yonhap News Agency.
North Korea rejected an invitation by the Archdiocese of Seoul for 10 North Korean Catholics to attend the final mass, South Korean officials say.
It is not clear how many Catholics there are in North Korea.
According to a UN Human Rights Council report released in February 2014, apart from the few organized state-controlled churches, Christians were prohibited from practicing their religion and were persecuted.
The trip is the first visit by a pope to Asia in almost 20 years. Pope Francis is due to visit again in January when he travels to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, one of only two Asian countries with a Catholic majority – the other being East Timor.
Pope John Paul II was the last pope to visit South Korea in 1989, where he prayed for reunification between the North and the South.
Meanwhile, on his way to South Korea Pope Francis also sent a telegram to China’s leaders, a tradition when the pontiff flies over a country.
“I extend my best wishes to your excellency and your fellow citizens, and I invoke divine blessings of peace and well being upon the nation,” the telegram said.
The Vatican has no ties with Beijing, which does not recognize the Vatican’s authority and runs its own Catholic Church.
The last time a pope visited the region, he had to avoid Chinese air space.
In what a Church spokesman has called “a sign of detente”, the papal plane was given permission to use Chinese air space.
More than 100 Chinese people were due to attend Asian Youth Day, but about half were unable to attend due to “a complicated situation inside China”, said a spokesman for a committee organizing the Pope’s visit.
Two suspected short-range missiles have been launched by North Korea, South Korea says, in the fourth such test in two weeks.
The projectiles were fired from a western province into waters east of the Korean peninsula in the early hours of Wednesday, officials said.
The move follows a recent visit by the Chinese president to South Korea.
Chinese leaders traditionally go to Pyongyang before Seoul, and the visit has been seen as a snub to North Korea.
North Korea has fired two suspected short-range missiles into the sea
“North Korea fired two short-range missiles presumed to be Scud-type ones… from a site in Hwanghae province in a north-easterly direction,” South Korean spokesman Um Hyo-sik was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.
“They flew some 500km [310 miles] and landed in international waters,” he added, without giving further details.
North Korea has carried out several such launches in recent months, including four within the last two weeks.
It has interspersed these launches with apparently conciliatory moves towards the South, including a recent offer to suspend provocative military activities and cross-border slander.
Previous similar offers have come to nothing and South Korea has dismissed this latest offer.
The latest launch also comes days after Chinese President Xi Jinping and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye reaffirmed their opposition to North Korean nuclear tests during talks in Seoul.
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