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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Don't believe the name: The Demilitarized Zone between the two rival Koreas might be the most heavily armed place on earth. Two million mines, barbed wire fences, tank traps and tens of thousands of troops from both countries patrol a divided swath of land 248 kilometers (154 miles) long and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) wide. So how are North Korean soldiers continuing to wander over the line separating North from South, causing South Korea to fire warning shots for the third time this month? The short answer appears to be...
TOKYO (AP) — Will she make it in time? Taylor Swift's last song was still ringing in the ears of thousands of fans at the Tokyo Dome on Saturday night when the singer rushed to a private jet at Haneda airport, presumably embarking on an intensely scrutinized journey to see her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, play in the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. "We're all gonna go on a great adventure," Swift earlier told the crowd. She was speaking of the music, but it might also describe her prospective race against time, which was to cross nine time z...
TOKYO (AP) — The death of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger drew both admiration and scorn Thursday from political leaders around the world, highlighting the complicated legacy of Kissinger's views about what it meant to serve America's interests during the Cold War — and how the country should exert its influence. Kissinger, who died Wednesday at 100, was one of America's most powerful diplomats. During his years serving under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, he shaped the country's foreign policy in ways that led to bre...
CHEORWON, South Korea (AP) — To the steady rat-tat-tat of machine guns and exploding bursts of smoke, amphibious tanks slice across a lake not far from the big green mountains that stand along the world's most heavily armed border. Dozens of South Korean and U.S. combat engineers build a pontoon bridge to ferry tanks and armored vehicles across the water, all within easy range of North Korean artillery. For seven decades, the allies have staged annual drills like this recent one to deter aggression from North Korea, whose 1950 surprise i...
TOKYO (AP) — Top diplomats from the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies announced a unified stance on the Israel-Hamas war on Wednesday after intensive meetings in Tokyo, condemning Hamas, supporting Israel's right to self-defense and calling for "humanitarian pauses" to speed aid to desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip. In a statement following two days of talks, the nations sought to balance unequivocal criticism of Hamas' attacks against Israel and "the need for urgent action" to help civilians in the besieged Palestinian e...
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — President Joe Biden told allies Friday he was approving plans to train Ukrainian pilots on U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, according to two people familiar with the matter, as leaders of the world's most powerful democracies worked to toughen punishments on Russia for its 15-month invasion of Ukraine. The Group of Seven leaders are meeting in Hiroshima, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set to take part in their summit on Sunday. The green light on F-16 training is the latest shift by the Biden administration a...
TOKYO (AP) — Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an arch-conservative and one of the country's most divisive figures, was shot and critically wounded during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan. He was airlifted to a hospital but officials said he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. Police arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of the shocking attack in a country that's one of the world's safest and has some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Abe was in "severe condition" a...
TOKYO (AP) — Considered something of a lightweight on foreign policy issues, Japan's new prime minister has spent much of his career in the shadows, supporting previous leader Shinzo Abe with backroom bureaucratic maneuvers and in largely scripted, sometimes prickly dealings with the media. That will change Saturday morning (Friday afternoon at the United Nations) when Yoshihide Suga makes his very public debut, albeit virtually and in a prerecorded video, at the U.N. General Assembly, the world's premier international gathering of leaders. D...
TOKYO (AP) — North Korea's collapse has been predicted — wrongly— for decades. Some said it would happen after fighting ended in the Korean War in 1953. Others thought it would be during a 1990s famine or when national founder Kim Il Sung died in 1994. And when the death of his son, Kim Jong Il, thrust a little-known 20-something into power in 2011 some felt the end was near. It's no surprise then that recent rumors that leader Kim Jong Un is seriously ill have led to similar hand-wringing. South Korea believes that Kim is alive and in contr...
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — About 500 passengers left the Diamond Princess cruise ship Wednesday at the end of a much-criticized two-week quarantine that failed to stop the spread of the new virus among passengers and crew. The quarantine's flop was underlined as Japanese authorities announced 79 more cases, bringing the total on the ship to 621. Results were still pending for some other passengers and crew among the original 3,711 people on board. Japan's government has been questioned over its decision to keep people on the ship, which some expert...
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — Fear. Surprising moments of levity. Soul-crushing boredom. Life on the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship quarantined in a Japanese port with scores of cases of a new virus, means experiencing all these things, according to interviews by The Associated Press with passengers and a growing stream of tweets and YouTube videos. At times there's an almost festive atmosphere, as when locals on Jet Skis buzz the ship, shouting greetings. Other times, there's deep worry, like on the days when new cases of the illness are c...
BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — A notorious South Korean facility that kidnapped, abused and enslaved children and the disabled for a generation was also shipping children overseas for adoption, part of a massive profit-seeking enterprise that thrived by exploiting those trapped within its walls, The Associated Press has found. The AP, which previously exposed a government cover-up at Brothers Home and a far greater level of abuse than earlier known, has now found that the facility was part of an orphanage pipeline feeding the demand of private a...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A day after two North Korean missile launches rattled Asia, the nation announced Friday that its leader Kim Jong Un supervised a test of a new-type tactical guided weapon that was meant to be a "solemn warning" about South Korean weapons introduction and its rival's plans to hold military exercises with the United States. The message in the country's state media quoted Kim and was directed at "South Korean military warmongers." It comes as U.S. and North Korean officials struggle to set up talks after a recent m...
To the mothers, the 13-year-old boy appeared largely unsupervised as he roamed among the clusters of townhomes on the U.S. Air Force base in Japan. It would have been unremarkable — the neighborhood was full of kids — except that young girls were starting to report the boy had led them from play and molested them. "We were like, 'How is this OK?'" the mother of one 5-year-old girl told The Associated Press, which granted her anonymity to protect her daughter's privacy. She locked her kids inside. The first girl to report had to wait six day...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean newspaper reported Friday that North Korea executed a senior envoy involved in nuclear negotiations with the U.S. as well as four other high-level officials. But as ever with North Korea, a country that closely guards its secrets, there are reasons to be cautious about the purported purge. While North Korea hasn't used its propaganda services to comment, the report in the conservative Chosun Ilbo daily could be true. North Korea has previously executed scapegoats to atone for high-profile political f...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Thursday that it had test-fired a new type of "tactical guided weapon," in what may be an attempt to register displeasure with a deadlock in nuclear talks with the United States without causing those coveted negotiations to collapse. Leader Kim Jong Un observed the unspecified weapon being fired Wednesday by the Academy of Defense Science, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said. Kim was reported to have said "the development of the weapon system serves as an event of very weighty s...
What's in a name? Quite a lot if you're a Japanese citizen awaiting the official announcement Monday of what the soon-to-be-installed new emperor's next era will be called. It's a proclamation that has happened only twice in nearly a century, and the new name will follow Emperor Naruhito, after his May 1 investiture, for the duration of his rule — and beyond, becoming his official name after death. An era name is an inextricable part of public life and shared memory in Japan. A lot of what happens in the years to come — births, deaths, nat...
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The nightmare scenario heading into the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un isn't so much "fire and fury" and millions dead. Rather, some experts fear the meeting could result in an ill-considered deal that allows North Korea to get everything it wants while giving up very little, even as the mercurial leaders trumpet a blockbuster nuclear success. There's little argument that just sitting down together again in the same room this week in Hanoi is a positive sign for two men w...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — To hear a beaming Donald Trump at his June summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the solution to North Korea's headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons, a foreign policy nightmare that has flummoxed U.S. leaders since the early 1990s, was at hand. Since the remarkable claims made during the first-ever meeting of leaders from the archrival nations, however, there have been recriminations, simmering bad blood — and very little progress. In other words, just what skeptics in Seoul and Washington have come to expect from Nor...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un observed the successful test of an unspecified "newly developed ultramodern tactical weapon," state media reported Friday, in an apparent bid to apply pressures on the United States and South Korea amid a stalemated nuclear diplomacy. It didn't appear to be a nuclear device or a long-range missiles targeting the mainland U.S., a string of which last year had many fearing war before the North turned to engagement and diplomacy early this year. Still, any mention of weapons testing could i...
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — As Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un stand on the brink of a widely expected Summit No. 2 to unstick deadlocked nuclear diplomacy, a crucial but often overlooked question looms: Is North Korea actually a nuclear power? Kim and his well-amplified propaganda specialists certainly say it is. And most casual observers, after watching last year's run of increasingly powerful weapons tests, would probably agree. But Washington has always refused to accept that as fact. It is wary that doing so would allow Pyongyang to follow the p...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A beaming South Korean President Moon Jae-in, freshly returned home Thursday from a whirlwind three-day summit with Kim Jong Un, said the North Korean leader wants the U.S. secretary of state to visit Pyongyang soon for nuclear talks, and also hopes for a quick follow-up to his June summit with President Donald Trump. Only hours after standing with Kim on the peak of a volcano that's at the heart of Kim dynasty propaganda, Moon told reporters in Seoul that he will be carrying a private message from Kim to Trump a...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Wednesday canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatened to scrap a historic summit next month between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over military exercises between Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang has long claimed are invasion rehearsals. The surprise declaration, which came in a pre-dawn dispatch in North Korea's state media, appears to cool what had been an unusual flurry of outreach from a country that last year conducted a provocative series of w...
GOYANG, South Korea (AP) — With a single step over a weathered, cracked slab of concrete, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made history Friday by crossing over the world's most heavily armed border to greet his rival, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, for talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons. Kim then invited Moon to cross briefly north with him before they returned to the southern side. Those small steps must be seen in the context of the last year — when the United States, its ally South Korea and the North seemed at times to be on the...
GOYANG, South Korea (AP) — The leaders of North and South Korea vowed Friday to seek a nuclear-free peninsula and work toward a formal end to the Korean War this year, though their historic summit concluded with few specifics on how they will reach those ambitious goals. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in set aside a year that saw them seemingly on the verge of war. They grasped hands and strode together across the cracked concrete marking the Koreas' border. The sight, inconceivable just months ago, may n...
