World News

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s impeached president will appear at a hearing in a Seoul court on Saturday to oppose a formal arrest over last month’s imposition of martial law, his lawyers said.

Yoon, who has been in detention since he was apprehended on Wednesday in a massive law enforcement operation at his residence, faces potential rebellion charges linked to his declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, which set off the country’s most serious political crisis since its democratization in the late 1980s.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, which is leading a joint investigation with police and the military, requested the Seoul Western District Court to grant a warrant for Yoon’s formal arrest. Yoon is expected to argue that there’s no need for him to be in custody during an investigation at a hearing set for 2 p.m. this afternoon. The judge is anticipated to make a decision by late Saturday or early Sunday.

After meeting Yoon at the detention center, Yoon Kab-keun, one of the president’s lawyers, said in a text message that Yoon had accepted his legal team’s advice to appear personally before the judge. The president plans to argue that his decree was a legitimate exercise of his powers and that accusations of rebellion would not hold up before a criminal court or the Constitutional Court, which is reviewing whether to formally remove him from office or reinstate him, his lawyer said.

Hundreds of supporters rallied overnight at the court, calling for Yoon’s release.

If Yoon is arrested, investigators can extend his detention to 20 days, during which they will transfer the case to public prosecutors for indictment. If the court rejects the investigators’ request, Yoon will be released and return to his residence.

Nine people, including Yoon’s defense minister, police chief, and several top military commanders, have already been arrested and indicted for their roles in the enforcement of martial law.

The crisis began when Yoon, in an attempt to break through legislative gridlock, imposed military rule and sent troops to the National Assembly and election offices. The standoff lasted only hours after lawmakers who managed to get through a blockade voted to lift the measure. The opposition-dominated assembly voted to impeach him on Dec. 14.

If Yoon is formally arrested, it could mark the beginning of an extended period in custody for him, lasting months or more.

If prosecutors indict Yoon on rebellion and abuse of power charges, which are the allegations now being examined by investigators, they could keep him in custody for up to six months before trial.

Under South Korean law, orchestrating a rebellion is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Yoon’s lawyers have argued that there is no need to detain him during the investigation, saying he doesn’t pose a threat to flee or destroy evidence.

Investigators respond that Yoon ignored several requests to appear for questioning, and that the presidential security service blocked an attempt to detain him on Jan. 3. His defiance has raised concerns about whether he would comply with criminal court proceedings if he’s not under arrest.

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OTTAWA (Reuters) – Former Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland on Friday announced that she would take part in the contest to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the ruling Liberal Party.

Freeland, who was one of Trudeau’s closest political allies for a decade, quit last month after resisting his demands for more spending and wrote a letter denouncing his governing style.

Her unexpected departure prompted an uproar from Liberal legislators already unhappy about the party’s miserable showing in the polls after nine years in power and widespread voter unhappiness about high prices and a housing crisis.

The mutiny forced Trudeau to announce that he would step down once the party had chosen a replacement. He will stay in office until March 9, when the new leader is due to be unveiled.

“I’m running to fight for Canada,” Freeland said in a post on X, saying her formal campaign launch would be on Sunday.

Trudeau’s replacement is unlikely to be in office long, given polls show that the Liberals are set to be crushed by the official opposition Conservatives. The next election must be held by Oct 20 and could happen as early as May.

The challenge for Freeland, 56, will be to portray herself as different from Trudeau, given how closely they worked together after the Liberals took power in November 2015 and how often she backed him in public.

Her likely main opponent is former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who has never been part of the government and portrays himself as an outsider. He announced on Thursday he would be running.

Freeland had been finance minister since August 2020 and helped craft the government’s multibillion-dollar social spending program to help fight the pandemic.

She had previously been foreign minister and led the Canadian team that successfully renegotiated a trilateral trade deal with the United States and Mexico after then-President Donald Trump threatened to tear up the agreement.

She joined the government in November 2015, first serving as trade minister.

Before entering politics in 2013, Freeland worked as a journalist and in senior editorial roles with several media companies, including the Financial Times, the Globe and Mail, and Reuters, where she worked from 2010 to 2013.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Mark Porter)

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BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday that Elon Musk’s support for the far-right in Europe is “completely unacceptable,” adding to his previous criticism of Musk’s interventions in the German election campaign.

Musk has said over the past month that only the far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, can “save Germany.” Last week, the tech billionaire livestreamed on his social media platform X a chat with Alice Weidel, the party’s candidate for chancellor in Germany’s Feb. 23 election, amplifying its message ahead of the vote.

His interest in Germany and politics elsewhere in Europe, after he poured money and energy into helping Donald Trump win the U.S. election, has set off alarm bells among politicians across the continent. The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive also has demanded the release of jailed U.K. anti-Islam extremist Tommy Robinson and called British Prime Minister Keir Starmer ‘s government tyrannical, claiming Starmer should be in prison.

Scholz has said it’s important to “stay cool” over personal attacks, but that Germany’s way forward “will not be decided by the owners of social media channels” but by German voters.

Asked on Friday about Musk’s interventions, he said it’s important to “criticize the right thing.”

“What we must criticize is not that a billionaire, or a billionaire from other countries in a global world, expresses his opinion — but what he says,” Scholz said at a news conference. “He supports the extreme right throughout Europe, in Britain, in Germany, in many, many other countries, and that is something that is completely unacceptable.”

“This endangers the democratic development of Europe, it endangers our community, and that must be criticized,” Scholz said.

Polls show AfD in second place ahead of the election, with support of about 20%, but Weidel has no realistic chance of becoming chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the party.

Center-right opposition leader Friedrich Merz also has criticized Musk’s endorsement of AfD. Merz’s Union bloc leads polls and he is the favorite to become Germany’s next leader.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Ukraine launched an attack on Russia’s Belgorod region with six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles on Thursday, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday.

It said that Russia would retaliate, but that all the missiles had been intercepted, resulting in no casualties or damage.

Moscow has said it will respond every time Ukraine fires ATACMS or British-supplies Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia.

Ukraine first used those weapons to strike at Russian territory in November after obtaining permission from Washington and London. Russia replied by firing a new intermediate-range hypersonic missile, the Oreshnik, and has said it may do so again.

The defence ministry said that over the past week, Russia shot down 12 ATACMS, eight Storm Shadows, 48 U.S. HIMARS rockets, seven French-made Hammer guided bombs and 747 drones. Reuters could not verify those figures.

It reported for the first time that Russian forces had captured the village of Slovianka in eastern Ukraine, one of eight Ukrainian settlements it said had been taken in the past week.

The statement said Russia had carried out eight major strikes in the past week on parts of Ukraine’s gas and energy infrastructure that it said were supporting military facilities and the Ukrainian defence industry.

Ukrainian officials said a Russian missile attack killed at least four people and partially destroyed an educational facility in the city of Kryvyi Rih in southern-central Ukraine on Friday. At least seven others were hurt, some of them seriously, Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram.

(Reporting by Maxim Rodionov, Writing by Mark Trevelyan, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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By Michael Holden and Sam Tobin

LONDON (Reuters) – Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group officially begins at the High Court in London on Tuesday, with King Charles’ younger son set to appear as a witness himself at the trial next month.

Harry is suing News Group Newspapers over alleged unlawful activities carried out by journalists and private investigators working for its papers, the Sun and the defunct News of the World, from 1996 until 2011.

Harry has said he wants to get to the truth, after about 40 other claimants, including actor Hugh Grant, settled cases to avoid the risk of a multi-million pound legal bill that could be imposed even if they won in court but had rejected NGN’s offer.

“They have settled because they’ve had to settle,” he told the New York Times Dealbook Summit last month. “One of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability because I’m the last person that can actually achieve that.”

The NGN case is the latest lawsuit in Harry’s war with the British press which began shortly after his marriage to his American wife Meghan in 2018.

Harry and Meghan stepped down from royal duties in March 2020 and moved to California, where they now live with their two children, a decision the prince says was largely due to intrusion, harassment and incitement to hatred from the tabloids.

Critics say he is seeking vengeance on papers for their coverage about him and his barbed comments against other members of the royal family after he used documentaries, his memoir and interviews to criticise editors and senior executives.

The eight-week trial will at first consider “generic issues” such as phone hacking and unlawful information gathering at the papers, whether senior NGN figures knew about it, and whether incriminating evidence had been deliberately destroyed.

It will also examine allegations NGN misled police and provided false statements to a public inquiry into media ethics held from 2011-12.

Specific evidence relating to Harry and another claimant, Tom Watson, a former Labour Party deputy leader, will then be scrutinised, with the prince himself expected to give evidence for at least two days, while former prime minister Gordon Brown is also expected to appear as a witness.

“His claim will be fully defended, including on the grounds that it is brought out of time,” a spokesperson for NGN said of Harry’s lawsuit.

The spokesperson said Watson had never been a target of hacking, and the allegation that emails had been unlawfully destroyed was “wrong, unsustainable, and is strongly denied”.

PHONE HACKING

The fifth-in-line to the throne has already successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers for hacking voicemail messages on his phone and for other unlawful invasions of privacy, winning substantial damages.

That case saw him become the first senior British royal for 130 years to appear as a witness in court when he provided testimony over two days in June 2023.

There is potentially more at stake for Murdoch’s newspaper group. In 2011 it issued an unreserved apology for widespread phone hacking carried out by journalists at the News of the World which Murdoch shut down.

Since then NGN has paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering by the News of the World, and settled claims brought by more than 1,300 people.

But it has always denied any unlawful activity at the Sun, and the upcoming trial will be the first to examine specific allegations against the paper which was previously edited by Rebekah Brooks, now head of News Corp’s British arm.

She was found not guilty in 2014 of phone hacking following a criminal trial, and NGN’s lawyers have accused Harry’s legal team and others of trying to turn the lawsuit into a re-run of old cases and the public inquiry.

The judge previously ruled that Harry could not bring allegations against Murdoch himself. Brooks will not be giving evidence but other current and former NGN staff will be appearing.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Alison Williams)

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LONDON (Reuters) -The trial to determine Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group begins at the High Court in London on Tuesday with King Charles’ younger son set to appear as a witness once again.

The case is one of several Harry and his U.S. wife Meghan have brought against media organisations since 2019 in what he has described as his mission to rid the British press of senior executives and editors he accuses of abusing their power.

Here is a summary of their cases:

NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS – UNLAWFUL INFORMATION GATHERING 

Harry is suing News Group Newspapers over alleged unlawful information gathering by journalists or private investigators working for its papers, the Sun and the defunct News of the World, from 1996 until 2011.

The High Court has ruled that Harry could not sue NGN for allegations of phone hacking, nor pursue allegations against Rupert Murdoch himself and also rejected his argument that there had been a secret deal between the publisher and senior royals. But the judge allowed most of Harry’s case to continue.

Initially Harry was one of about 40 claimants, but all the others have since settled with the exception of former Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson.

The eight-week trial will consider the specific claims of the fifth-in-line to the throne and Watson, as well as generic allegations of wrongdoing by NGN staff, including editors and other senior figures. NGN has always denied unlawful activity at the Sun.

MIRROR GROUP NEWSPAPERS OVER PHONE HACKING

Harry won substantial damages and legal costs after he successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, for hacking his voicemails and other unlawful information gathering between 1996 and 2011.

The prince, who was one of about 100 claimants, became the first senior British royal for 130 years to appear as a witness in court during the trial in June 2023.

The High Court ruled in his favour in December 2023, agreeing that editors had known about the wrongdoing.

ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS – NUMEROUS ALLEGED UNLAWFUL ACTS

Seven high-profile public figures, including Harry and singer Elton John, are suing Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, over allegations of phone tapping and other unlawful activities.

ANL, which denies any wrongdoing, unsuccessfully tried to have the cases thrown out on the basis that they were brought too late. 

The trial is due to take place in early 2026 with the legal costs in the case set to exceed 38 million pounds ($48 million).

ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS – LIBEL CLAIMS

Harry successfully sued ANL for libel over a 2020 Mail on Sunday article which accused him of having snubbed the Royal Marines, with ANL apologising and paying damages.

The prince launched another lawsuit against ANL in February 2022, over a Mail on Sunday article that accused him of trying to mislead the public about a separate legal battle with the government over his police protection.

He withdrew his claim in January last year, having failed to have ANL’s defence thrown out.

ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS – PRINTING MEGHAN’S LETTER

Meghan won a privacy claim against ANL in February 2021 after its Mail on Sunday tabloid printed extracts of a letter she had written to her estranged father in 2018. The publisher’s appeal was rejected.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

As well as his cases against the press, Harry has also been involved in a High Court fight with the British government after the specialist police protection he had previously received in Britain was removed when he and Meghan stepped down from their royal duties and moved to California in 2020.

In February last year, the court ruled the decision was lawful and two months later refused him permission to challenge that decision.

However, the Court of Appeal said last June it would hear his challenge following a direct application from his lawyers. The appeal is due to be heard in April.

($1 = 0.7974 pounds)

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Alison Williams)

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STILFONTEIN, South Africa. (AP) — Dozens of men sat and lay together in small caves, some so shallow they couldn’t stand up. The air was wet and stuffy, and wracking coughs echoed in the confined space.

Bodies wrapped in fabric and twine were set aside in rows nearby. Bad odors permeated everything, so it was hard to distinguish what smells were coming from the dead versus the unwashed bodies or the damp rock.

The miners were emaciated from lack of food, which was hard to come by since police cracked down on their illegal mining and for a time halted the supply deliveries.

Usually the men would eat meat, bread, and porridge cooked over camp stoves run by propane, but all of these had run out. With no mining work to distract them, they smoked cigarettes and marijuana for a while, when they still had it.

The description, from a miner and from cellphone videos sent to the surface earlier this month, sheds some light on the horror hundreds of men suffered deep underground in an abandoned mine in South Africa, after a police operation cut off food and supplies to “smoke them out” because they were digging illegally for gold. The videos were released publicly by a group representing the miners.

Police finally launched a rescue effort earlier this week, under court order, and said no one was left underground. Dozens of bodies were pulled out and at least 87 confirmed dead.

The miner, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said he surfaced on Christmas Day after entering the shaft in July, spending months underground where he experienced extreme hunger and saw many of his fellow diggers dying from starvation and illnesses.

He is one of nearly 2,000 illegal miners who have surfaced from the mine near the town of Stilfontein since August last year when police targeted it as part of an operation that aims to tackle the widespread illicit mining trade. The trade bled the South African economy of more than $3 billion last year, according to the mines minister.

At the worst of times, said the miner, they ate rough salt, the only thing leftover to stanch the hunger.

“I felt like I have some bad luck because I had only been underground for two weeks when the operation started. That is when things started going bad, we stopped receiving food and we lost contact with the outside world, that could only mean that the police have arrived and probably arrested or scared off the people lowering the food,” he said.

The miner said the months that followed were horrendous.

“By September, things were really bad. People started getting hungry, they started getting sick, some started dying. We started having dead bodies. There is nothing worse than seeing somebody die and there is nothing you can do about it,” he said.

The miner, a 40-year-old father of six children, exited the mine in December through a separate shaft that had steel stairs. It is extremely difficult to navigate, and he bruised his hands badly on his way out.

“As we were climbing out, we saw dead bodies of other guys who had attempted to exit the same way. Others had fallen down, others were full corpses but there were also lots of bones, almost like skeletons. It’s not easy to exit there, many people died trying to do that,” he said.

So why do the miners go into this subterranean purgatory in the first place?

It mostly comes down to money. Illegal mining is one of the biggest sources of income for poor households in townships located near an estimated 6,100 disused mines around the country where illegal mining is rife.

The miner said he was told he could earn about $5,300 for working for a few weeks to a month in one of the country’s deepest gold mines, where there are no longer any official operations. It’s a huge sum in South Africa, which has deep inequality and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.

Many other miners come looking for work from neighboring countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi and Congo, and children are sometimes roped in. There were 13 children among those who came out of the Stilfontein mine last year.

Mmastona Mbizana, a community member of Khumo township, told The Associated Press that two of her sons were involved in illegal mining because of unemployment and poverty.

Her 22-year-old son was arrested after coming out of the mine during the police operation in December and is currently out on bail.

“I heard from somebody in the neighborhood that he had gone underground. His father died last year and he was not even here for the funeral because he was underground for months. They say they are doing it because of the situation here at home, things are tough,” said Mbizana.

Mbizana’s other son, Lucky, was arrested at the same mine while working as a runner on the surface sending food and other supplies down to the miners. Walking on crutches, he said he had been convicted for involvement in illegal mining.

“Out of the blue the police came, firing rubber bullets and teargas. The teargas blinded me and I fell, broke my leg and collapsed,” he said.

Lucky said he used to make $424 a month for lowering food and other parcels into the shaft daily, including tinned vegetables and fish, loaves of brown bread, porridge, meat, cigarettes and liquor.

Activists blame the South African government for the loss of lives that occurred at Stilfontein, saying authorities should have acted earlier.

However, the government has maintained that while the deaths were a tragedy, illegal mining is a criminal activity that is detrimental to the country’s economy.

Illegal mining in South Africa is known to cause far-reaching problems for nearby communities, including violent crime and destruction of community infrastructure.

Community members also speak of hearing gun battles between rival mining groups.

“The people who must take responsibility for the deaths that have happened here are those who are benefitting from illegal mining,” Mines Minister Gwede Mantashe said in Stilfontein this week.

According to South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, authorities are investigating the entire value chain of illegal mining, including who the main beneficiaries are.

“Where these products go is a subject of our investigation,” said Mchunu, adding illegal mining is “robbing South Africa of a lot of money.”

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Mark Carney, the first non-Brit to run the Bank of England since it was founded in 1694 and the former head of Canada’s central bank, said Thursday he is entering the race to be Canada’s next prime minister following the resignation of Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau will remain prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen on March 9.

Carney, 59, is a highly educated economist with Wall Street experience, widely credited with helping Canada dodge the worst of the 2008 crisis while heading the country’s central bank. He also helped the U.K. manage Brexit during his 7-year tenure as governor of the Bank of England.

“The prime minister and his team let their attention on the economy wander too often,” Carney said in Edmonton, Alberta, of Trudeau where he made his announcement. “I won’t lose focus.”

The front-runners for the Liberal Party leadership are Carney and ex-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose abrupt resignation last month forced Trudeau’s exit.

The next Liberal leader could be the shortest-tenured prime minister in the country’s history. All three opposition parties have vowed to bring down the Liberals’ minority government in a no-confidence vote after parliament resumes on March 24. An election is expected this spring.

Carney said he knows the Liberals are “well behind,” but said he would win the general election.

Trudeau announced his resignation Jan. 6 after facing an increasing loss of support both within his party and in the country.

Carney quickly launched into an attack on opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who the polls show has a large lead over the Liberals.

He also highlighted the threats by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has said Canada should become the 51st state and has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods.

“This is no time for life-long politicians such as Pierre Poilievre,” he said. “Sending Pierre Poilievre to negotiate with Donald Trump is the worst possible idea.”

Poilievre painted Trudeau, Carney and Freeland with the same brush during a news conference in Vancouver earlier Thursday.

He blamed the Liberals for high taxes and slammed the government for suggesting it may put tariffs on energy exports to the U.S., saying it would hurt the oil-rich province of Alberta.

“Not only have the Liberals weakened our economy, now they’re resorting to dividing our people,” said Poilievre. “We don’t need to be divided; we need to be united.”

A major plank in Poilievre’s campaign has been removing the carbon tax, introduced by the Trudeau government as a fee on the amount of carbon emitted by fuels like gas.

Carney said if the carbon tax is removed, it should be replaced by something that is “at least if not more effective” in having the same impact of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while making Canadian companies more competitive and creating jobs.

An official close to Freeland said she would scrap the consumer carbon tax and instead make big polluters pay. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of her announcement.

When Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, was named the first foreigner to serve as governor of the Bank of England it won bipartisan praise in Britain.

“I have helped manage multiple crises and I have helped save two economies,” Carney said. “I know how business works, and I know how to make it work for you.”

More recently he served as the U.N.’s special envoy for climate change and led an alliance of international financial institutions pushing for carbon-cutting measures. Carney has long championed the notion that making companies accountable for their impact on the planet is the first step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When Carney led Canada’s central bank he was credited with keeping money flowing through the Canadian economy by acting quickly in cutting interest rates to their lowest level ever of 1%, working with Canadian bankers to sustain lending through the crisis and, critically, letting the public know rates would remain low so they would keep borrowing. He was the first central banker to commit to keep them at a historic-low level for a definite time, a step the U.S. Federal Reserve would follow.

Like other central bankers, Carney is a former Goldman Sachs executive. He worked for 13 years in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto, before being appointed deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. He has both financial industry and government credentials.

He has long been interested in entering politics and becoming prime minister but lacks political experience. The Liberal Party has tried to recruit him for years.

“Being a politician is quite different from being a policy adviser or a central banker,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at Montreal’s McGill University.

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By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A SpaceX Starship prototype failed in space on Thursday, minutes after launching from Texas, setting back the company’s speedy rocket development efforts in a mission that was expected to debut a key satellite deployment demonstration.

SpaceX’s Starship system, a heavily upgraded version standing roughly 37 stories tall, lifted off from the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, launch facilities at 5:38 p.m. EST (2238 GMT) in the company’s seventh test mission, and first such test this year.

SpaceX mission control in Texas lost contact with Starship eight minutes into flight after it separated in space from its Super Heavy first stage booster, SpaceX Communications Manager Dan Huot said on a live stream.

“We did lose all communications with the ship – that is essentially telling us we had an anomaly with the upper stage,” Huot said, confirming minutes later that the ship was lost.

The Starship upper stage, two meters (6.56 feet) taller than previous versions, was a “new generation ship with significant upgrades,” SpaceX said in a mission description prior to the test. It was due to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean roughly an hour after its launch from Texas.

SpaceX has not seen a Starship second stage fail since its second test mission in March last year, when the rocket was reentering Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart.

The towering Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, returned to its launchpad roughly seven minutes after liftoff, as planned, slowing its descent from space by reigniting its Raptor engines as it hooked itself on giant mechanical arms fixed to a launch tower.

The landing success was SpaceX’s second across three attempts.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)

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SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea denounced the United States for sending military aircraft over the Korean peninsula several times this month, as well as the U.S., Japan and South Korea for holding an air military exercise, state media KCNA reported on Friday.

North Korea also denounced the joint Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) between the U.S. and South Korea that seeks to manage North Korea’s nuclear threat, the report said.

North Korea will “strongly curb any military provocations” by exercising its thorough right to self-defence, KCNA reported, citing the country’s foreign ministry.

During the latest NCG meeting held last week, the U.S. reaffirmed its commitment to enhance the regular visibility of U.S. strategic assets on the Korean peninsula, according to a joint statement from the U.S. and South Korea.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Jamie Freed)

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