The Latest Breaking News from Yonhap

South Korea's national security adviser has said he and his counterparts from the United States and Japan have agreed there will be no soft response if North Korea conducts a nuclear test, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

South Korea will from Saturday no longer require travellers to the country to test for COVID-19 before departure, although they will still need to take a PCR test within 24 hours of arrival.

Using a plastic bowl, Ha In-sik bailed water out of his lower ground apartment in the low-income housing district of Sillim in southwestern Seoul on Wednesday, where flooding caused by torrential rain forced his family to sleep at a nearby park.

Heaviest rainfall in 80 years submerges homes and metro system, triggers landslides and knocks out power in capital.

Fifty-five Thais who flew to South Korea's Jeju island with a package tour group last week have disappeared and it is suspected they were illegal job seekers, known as "little ghosts".

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's office expressed deep regret over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's criticism of Yoon, the Yonhap news agency said on Thursday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country is ready to mobilise its nuclear war deterrent and counter any U.S. military clash, and criticised South Korea's new president for the first time, warning Seoul was pushing towards the brink of war.

South Korea's prime minister said on Wednesday he would recommend to the president a pardon for Jay Y. Lee, vice chairman of the world's biggest memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics.

Contract shipyard workers striking at Daewoo Shipbuilding Marine Engineering (DSME) are willing to end their strike and accept a wage increase offered by the company if lawsuits seeking damages from the strikers are dropped, a union official representing the strikers told Reuters on Thursday.