North Korea said yesterday a pro-unification activist who visited Pyongyang without Seoul’s permission would return home in the coming week, an event likely to deepen inter-Korean tensions.
Reverend Han Sang-ryol will walk across the border to the South on Friday, five days later than originally scheduled, the North’s Red Cross Society said in a notice to its South Korean counterpart.
He will cross the military demarcation line at Panmunjom at 3pm on Friday, the notice said, according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Panmunjom, the Joint Security Area that straddles the border between the two Koreas, is controlled by North Korea and the US-led UN Command.
Crossing through Panmjunjom is rare.
Han, who traveled to Pyongyang on June 12 on an unauthorized trip, was initially set to come home today through Panmjunjom to underline his wish for inter-Korean reconciliation and to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Korean Peninsula from Japanese rule.
The delay came after a Seoul official said the pastor’s border-crossing at Panmunjom would constitute a breach of the armistice as it would require UN Command approval, a remote possibility. Prosecutors have obtained a warrant to arrest Han the moment he sets foot on South Korean soil.
Han visited the North for celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2000 inter-Korean summit. He also gave speeches praising North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and denouncing South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
RSS