S. Korea to end some military activity on border with North
In a speech yesterday to mark the 80th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, Lee said he would restore the so-called Sept 19 Comprehensive Military Agreement, a de-escalation measure that halted some military activities at the border between North Korea and South Korea.
The pact was signed at an inter-Korean summit in 2018, but broke down as cross-border tensions spiked.
How Pyongyang will respond to Seoul's latest overture remains unclear.
Top North Korean officials in recent weeks have dismissed other moves taken by Lee, a liberal who won a snap election in June, to ease tension between the two countries.
The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty and entrenched the peninsula's division.
'Everyone knows that the long drawn-out hostility benefits people in neither of the two Koreas,' Lee said in Seoul.
Lee cited his government's efforts to lower tensions, including halting the launch of balloons floated by activists with anti-North Korea leaflets and dismantling loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across the heavily militarised border. — Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
Trump says Putin agrees with him US should not have mail-in voting
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump pose on a podium on the tarmac after they arrived to attend a meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., August 15, 2025. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agrees with him that letting voters send in ballots by mail puts honest elections at risk. "Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can't have an honest election with mail-in voting," Trump told Fox News Channel's "Hannity" after a nearly three-hour meeting between the leaders in Alaska. "He said there's not a country in the world that uses it now." Trump, who promoted the false narrative that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, won the 2020 election, cited his agreement with Putin over absentee voting as he pressed his fellow Republicans to try harder to advance overhauls to the U.S. voting system that he has long sought. Trump has voted by mail in some previous elections and urged his supporters to do so in 2024. Putin, who has been Russia's president or prime minister since 1999, was elected to another term in office with 87% of the vote in a 2024 election that drew allegations of vote rigging from some independent polling observers, opposition voices and Western governments. The most formidable opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony in 2024. Russia's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his conversation with Trump. The Russian president has previously said some U.S. elections were marred by fraudulent voting, without presenting evidence. The position mirrors Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election. Justice Department and Senate investigations found that Moscow tried to influence campaigns to help Trump win in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe Russia tried to do the same in 2020 elections and preferred Trump to win in 2024. Trump and some of his top aides long have asserted that he and his presidential campaigns were falsely accused of colluding with Russia, a claim he brought up again in Alaska on Friday. The U.S. intelligence community never reached such a conclusion. Trump, who has not ruled out seeking a third term in office despite a constitutional prohibition, on Friday showed impatience with Republicans for not prioritizing election reform legislation. "The Republicans want it, but not strongly enough," Trump said during the interview. "You can't have a great democracy with mail-in voting." Some Republicans, echoing Trump's claims, argue that changes like restricting absentee voting and requiring identification could reduce the risks of ballot tampering, impersonation or other forms of fraud that independent analysts say is rare. Nearly three dozen countries from Canada to Germany and South Korea allow some form of postal vote, though more than half of them place some restrictions on which voters qualify, according to the Sweden-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental advocacy group. The Trump administration has stepped back from commenting on the fairness or integrity of elections conducted by many foreign countries in a significant departure from Washington's traditional approach of promoting democratic elections overseas. (Reporting by Reuters Washington bureau; Editing by William Mallard)
Barnama
2 hours ago
- Barnama
46 Killed In Israeli Attacks Across Gaza: Civil Defence
A girl runs from the scene after Israeli strikes on a school sheltering displaced people at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, July 17, 2025, in this screen grab from video obtained by Reuters. Reuters TV/via REUTERS GAZA, Aug 16 (Xinhua) -- At least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday, the Civil Defence said, reported Xinhua. Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defence Authority, said seven people were killed in an airstrike that targeted a tent housing displaced persons in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood in western Gaza City. He said that six others, including two children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a school building where displaced people were staying in the al-Daraj neighbourhood, east of Gaza City. bootstrap slideshow At least 24 people, including a woman and two children, were killed by the Israeli army while waiting to receive food in front of aid distribution centres north of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, at the Netzarim junction in the centre of the Strip, and the Zikim crossing in the north, according to Basal. He added that four people, including a girl, were killed in Israeli shelling that targeted Palestinian gatherings and a residential house in the Zeitoun and Tuffah neighbourhoods in eastern Gaza City. Two were killed in an airstrike on a tent housing displaced persons on the roof of the outpatient clinic building at al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Basal noted. Three Palestinians, including an infant, were also killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a tent housing displaced persons west of Gaza City, according to Basal. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said in statements on Friday that IDF troops, in coordination with the Air Forces, continue operational activity against "terrorist organisations" throughout the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City and Khan Younis. Since Israel resumed its intensified military campaign on March 18, at least 10,300 Palestinians have been killed and 43,234 injured, bringing the overall death toll in Gaza since the war began in October 2023 to 61,827 and 155,275 people injured, according to health authorities in Gaza on Friday.
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Melania Trump sends letter to Putin about abducted children
FILE PHOTO: U.S. first lady Melania Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 8, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis/ File Photo ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump, raised the plight of children in Ukraine and Russia in a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, two White House officials said on Friday. President Trump hand-delivered the letter to Putin during their summit talks in Alaska, the officials told Reuters. Slovenian-born Melania Trump was not on the trip to Alaska. The officials would not divulge the contents of the letter other than to say it mentioned the abductions of children resulting from the war in Ukraine. The existence of the letter was not previously reported. Russia's seizure of Ukrainian children has been a deeply sensitive one for Ukraine. Ukraine has called the abductions of tens of thousands of its children taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide. Previously Moscow has said it has been protecting vulnerable children from a war zone. The United Nations Human Rights Office has said Russia has inflicted suffering on millions of Ukrainian children and violated their rights since its full scale invasion of Ukraine begun in 2022. Trump and Putin met for nearly three hours at a U.S. military base in Anchorage without reaching a ceasefire deal in the war in Ukraine.
