South Korea’s new president-elect Lee Myung-bak said today he would not shy away from criticising North Korea’s authoritarian regime.

South Korea’s presidential election was won by runaway favourite Lee Myung-bak by a landslide today.

South Koreans voted for a new president today in an election widely expected to end a decade of liberal rule.

North Korea’s premier arrived in Seoul today for the first prime ministerial talks with South Korea in 15 years to discuss a reconciliation agreement by their leaders.

Leaders of North and South Korea pledged in a reconciliation pact today to finally seek a peace treaty to replace the Korean War’s 1953 cease-fire, and expand projects to reduce tension across the world’s last Cold War frontier.

South Korea’s president reported differences between the two sides in historic summit talks today with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, while Kim gave a signal that the meeting be extended for an extra day.

Leaders of the two Koreas began formal talks today at the first summit between the divided countries in seven years.

NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong Il showed scant enthusiasm for the visiting South Korean president yesterday, while orchestrated crowds of thousands cheered the start of the second summit between the divided Koreas since World War II.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il greeted South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun in Pyongyang today to begin the second summit between the two countries since the peninsula’s division after the Second World War.

The hard-line Taliban militia claimed today to have killed two German and five Afghan hostages but said it was willing to release 22 South Korean Christians in exchange for the freedom of imprisoned Taliban fighters.

President Roh Moo-hyun held a special meeting with aides today to discuss the US campus shooting, as the public expressed shame over a South Korean citizen being identified as the gunman.

The two Koreas agreed to resume stalled high-level talks later this month, officials said today, in the first concrete sign of easing tensions on the divided peninsula after the North signed a breakthrough disarmament agreement.

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea expressed concern over North Korea’s nuclear test and called for “effective steps” to break a stand off in talks to de-nuclearise the Korean peninsula, a joint statement said today.

South Korea’s president has dismissed claims from North Korea that US nuclear weapons are deployed in the South, a news report said today.

US President George Bush today backed Pacific Rim leaders in demanding that the communist regime abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

South Korean officials today said they believed North Korea tested a nuclear weapon as it claimed, but determining whether the atomic explosion was successful would take a couple weeks.

SOUTH KOREA and Russia were yesterday stepping up efforts to prevent North Korea from carrying out a nuclear test.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has ordered his government to send a “grave warning” to North Korea about the consequences of a threatened nuclear weapons test.

Neighbouring countries today cautioned North Korea against carrying out a planned nuclear test, while a top South Korean security official said there was no sign a test was imminent.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the international community must take “very urgent steps” to deal with the dual problems of North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Japanese and South Korean negotiators today raced to avert a clash over a set of disputed islets as Seoul accused Tokyo of neo-colonial ambitions and warned of a possible confrontation at sea.

Lee Hae-chan formally stepped down as South Korea’s prime minister today, a day after the president accepted his resignation following strong opposition criticism over Lee playing golf during a national railway strike.

South Korea’s prime minister offered his resignation today after drawing a firestorm of criticism for playing golf rather than overseeing the government’s response to a railway strike, the president’s spokesman said.

South Korea’s president lashed out today at hardliners in Washington seeking to force the collapse of North Korea’s totalitarian regime, as the Foreign Ministry criticised a US account of a meeting on preventing criminal activity by the North.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is expected to accept the resignation of an aide over the scandal surrounding disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk.

A former colleague of embattled South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk said today he has asked his university to widen its investigation into the stem cell researcher’s work, and to review earlier purported breakthroughs.

South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk stood by his purported breakthroughs in stem cell technology today despite accusations he falsified key evidence.

A doctor who provided human eggs for research by cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk claimed today that the South Korean scientist admitted most of the stem cells he produced and documented in a journal article were faked, according to news reports.

Southeast Asian nations pressed Myanmar’s (Burma’s) generals to get serious about democracy as they opened a summit today aiming for broader Asian integration – an uphill task as shown by a feud raging between China and Japan.

Britain's Prince Andrew discussed economic co-operation with South Korea at a meeting with President Roh Moo-hyun today, Roh’s office said.

South Korea’s foreign minister today said it was inappropriate for him to travel to Japan now because of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s recent visit to a controversial war shrine, scuttling tentative plans for talks in Tokyo later this month.

Reaction to North Korea’s demand for civilian reactors before dismantling its nuclear programme ranged from harsh to calm today, though none of the parties to international talks said they expected the negotiating process to break down.

The chief US envoy to talks on ending North Korea’s atomic weapons programme met today with his North Korean counterpart seeking to break a stalemate, and said afterward that the negotiations are still “in business".

North Korean officials visited South Korea’s National Assembly for the first time today in a symbolic gesture of reconciliation with their democratic rivals during joint celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

The Koreas were outlining agreements for aid and boosting cooperation at high-level talks scheduled to wrap up today, with the North Korean delegation also planning a rare meeting with South Korea’s president.

Six elephants escaped from an amusement park today and injured a woman as they rampaged through the South Korean capital of Seoul.

South Korea told US officials it has no plans to launch “large-scale” economic co-operation with North Korea before the dispute over the communist state’s nuclear weapons programmes is resolved, the country’s foreign minister said today.

South Korea’s president said his nation was “wrenched with grief” over the beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq.

South Korea said today it will go ahead with its plan to send troops to Iraq despite the abduction of a South Korean man and the televised broadcast of his desperate pleas to stay alive.

The impeachment of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun will go ahead, the country’s Constitutional Court said today, insisting that it will not be influenced by a stunning parliamentary election win for the party that supports the embattled head of state.

South Koreans voted today in tightly contested parliamentary elections that could determine the future of impeached President Roh Moo-hyun.

South Korea’s two main opposition parties submitted the country’s first ever impeachment motion today in a bid to remove embattled President Roh Moo-hyun for violating election laws.

SOUTH KOREAN President Roh Moo-Hyun said yesterday that claims that North Korea is close to developing a nuclear weapon are “exaggerated,” and that trilateral talks are the best way to address Pyongyang’s demands for security guarantees from the US.

THE United States says it is taking conflicting North Korean statements on its nuclear capability very seriously despite the South’s insistence that there was no real proof its neighbour had such weapons.