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North Korea's Kim orders stronger control over military

North Korea's Kim orders stronger control over military

NHK5 days ago

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered stronger ruling party control over the military, following a warship accident during its launch last week.
State-run Korean Central Television reported on Friday that Kim attended an expanded meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party on Wednesday.
At the meeting, Kim said the roles of the party's organizations in the military should be strengthened to solve all problems arising from military development and operations.
The commission reportedly appointed new senior military officials, although details have not been disclosed.
South Korea's Unification Ministry said photos released so far indicate that Jong Kyong Thaek, head of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, has been demoted. Jong oversees ideological education in the military.
South Korean media say the measures taken in the meeting appear aimed at tightening party control over the military in the wake of last week's warship accident.

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Liberal Lee Jae-myung wins South Korean presidential election
Liberal Lee Jae-myung wins South Korean presidential election

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Liberal Lee Jae-myung wins South Korean presidential election

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Yoon was impeached by the National Assembly on Dec. 14, with the country's Constitutional Court upholding his ouster in April. "Even if politics divides us, the people themselves should not need to be divided,' Lee said in his speech. 'It is the president's duty to unify the country.' He added: "I will never forget that my responsibility is not to be a ruler, but to be a leader who brings people together.' Lee also pledged to revive the country's flagging economy and seek peace with nuclear-armed North Korea through both dialogue and strength. Kim Moon-soo, the presidential candidate for South Korea's conservative People Power Party, delivers a concession speech at the party's headquarters in Seoul on Wednesday. | AFP-JIJI The PPP's Kim, meanwhile, conceded defeat in the early hours of Wednesday, congratulating Lee on his victory and saying that he "humbly accepts the people's choice." The commission said that 79.4% of the country's 44.39 million eligible voters had cast their ballots in the vote, the highest rate since the 1997 election, when the turnout hit 80.7%. The result will be certified later Wednesday and the new president's inauguration is expected within hours. DP leaders and campaign officials had gathered at the National Assembly on Tuesday evening, erupting into cheers as the exit poll results showed Lee ahead by more than 12 percentage points, livestreamed footage showed. Park Chan-dae, acting party leader, hailed the exit poll numbers, saying that voters had made a "fiery judgment against the insurrection regime," local media reported. Speaking after the exit poll announcement, the co-chair of the PPP's election committee expressed dismay over Kim's electoral trouncing. "We expected to be either slightly behind or in a slight lead but it is very disappointing that there is such a significant gap ... we find it to be somewhat shocking," local media quoted Rep. Na Kyung-won as saying. Lee, who lost by a razor-thin margin to Yoon in the 2022 election, had consistently held commanding leads in opinion polls since entering the race, making his victory all but preordained. Lee — who will take office immediately for a single, five-year term and will not have the advantage of a formal transition, unlike his predecessors — will face the immediate challenge of stabilizing the country after months of political turmoil that fractured South Korea along ideological lines and threw the economy into a state of limbo. 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Lee has said in recent months that he would take a 'pragmatic' approach to ties if elected and wouldn't reverse the agreements that led to a thaw in ties under Yoon, including boosted trilateral military cooperation with South Korea and Japan's mutual ally, the U.S. 'There is a preconception that I am hostile toward Japan,' Lee said two weeks ago. 'Japan is a neighboring country, and we must cooperate with each other to create synergy.' North Korean leader Kim Jong Un leads a party meeting on strengthening the military in this image released on Friday. | KCNA / via REUTERS On North Korea, Lee said in his speech Wednesday that he would work to build a "peaceful and stable" Korean Peninsula. "While maintaining strong national defense capabilities to deter North Korea, I will push for inter-Korean dialogue and communication, with the firm belief that true security lies not in winning wars, but in preventing the need to fight at all," Lee was quoted as saying. "The two Koreas must coexist and cooperate to find a path to shared prosperity," he added. "I will work to stabilize the peninsula's situation to minimize the ... risk and ensure that national security issues do not worsen people's livelihoods." In the run-up to the election, Lee had sought to appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump, backing any rekindling of summit diplomacy between the American leader and North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un. Trump met with Kim three times during his first stint in office. Though denuclearization talks ultimately faltered, Trump has expressed an interest in meeting with Kim again at some point during his second term. The DP has also laid the groundwork for appealing to Trump's ego by filing paperwork recommending that the Norwegian Nobel Committee consider nominating the U.S. leader for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his 'promotion of peace on the Korean Peninsula.' 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The U.S. president was set to sign a directive on Tuesday in Washington formally raising the tariffs, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the same day without elaborating on the timing of the order. South Korea had agreed in late April to draft a package deal on trade by the end of a 90-day pause on Trump's reciprocal tariffs in July, but negotiators in Seoul have emphasized the difficulty of reaching such a deal due to the political leadership vacuum there. On China, Lee is expected to break from the policies of Yoon, who nudged Seoul closer to Washington's tough policies toward Beijing amid a growing Sino-U.S. rivalry. Lee has publicly signaled that he would have a softer touch with Beijing — a stance unlikely to engender goodwill from the Trump administration.

Fuji TV third-party panel: Will no longer communicate with ex-TV star's side
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NHK

time12 hours ago

  • NHK

Fuji TV third-party panel: Will no longer communicate with ex-TV star's side

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