Yonhap News Summary

The following is the first summary of major stories moved by Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday.

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(LEAD) Yoon expresses hope for future-oriented ties with Japan in brief encounter with Kishida

MADRID -- South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol talked briefly with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a gala dinner for NATO summit participants in Madrid on Tuesday and expressed hope for the future-oriented development of relations between the two countries, officials said.

The encounter, which lasted three to four minutes at the dinner party hosted by Spain's King Felipe VI, began as Kishida offered greetings to Yoon with congratulations on his inauguration and the local election victory of Yoon's ruling party, according to Yoon's office.

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Yoon to promote export of S. Korean nuclear power plants, weapons

MADRID -- President Yoon Suk-yeol will seek to promote the export of South Korean nuclear power plants and arms during his bilateral meetings with world leaders in Spain this week, a senior presidential official said Tuesday.

Yoon is in Madrid to attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit on Wednesday and has begun a series of bilateral summits on the sidelines, including with Australia's prime minister earlier Tuesday.

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PM says China's opposition to Yoon's attendance at NATO summit 'lack of courtesy'

SEJONG -- Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has said it would be a lack of courtesy for China to take issue with President Yoon Suk-yeol taking part in a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Han made the remarks during a dinner meeting with reporters Tuesday as Yoon was in Madrid to attend the NATO summit. South Korea is not a member of NATO but was invited to the summit along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand as the organization's Asia-Pacific partners.

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(LEAD) BOK likely to lean more toward 'big-step' rate hike should June inflation hit 6 pct: official

SEOUL -- Demand for an unprecedented "big-step" rate hike among policymakers of the Bank of Korea (BOK) will likely intensify ahead of an upcoming rate-setting meeting should the country's consumer prices in June rise 6 percent or higher, a high-ranking central bank official has said.

It is rare for a BOK official to predict such an aggressive rate hike, though a growing number of market watchers are speculating that the central bank will lean more toward the possibility of a 0.5 percentage-point hike when monetary policy board members gather on July 13 in the face of the fast-rising inflation pressure.

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U.N. rapporteur says N. Korea responsible for 2020 death of S. Korean fisheries official

SEOUL -- The outgoing U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea's human rights situation made clear Wednesday that North Korea is responsible for the killing of a South Korean fisheries official in 2020 and stressed that the bereaved family has the right to know details of how the death occurred.

"I have said that the government of North Korea is responsible for violating the right and killing this fisheries official," Tomas Ojea Quintana said in a press conference in central Seoul. "It is the responsibility of the government of North Korea to disclose information about what happened to him, to punish those who shot him in the sea and to provide reparations to the family."

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(LEAD) S. Korea marks 2002 inter-Korean naval skirmish with 'victory' ceremony

PYEONGTAEK -- South Korea's Navy on Wednesday held a ceremony to commemorate the sacrifices of sailors killed in an inter-Korean naval skirmish near the western sea border two decades ago.

The memorial event took place at the Navy's Second Fleet in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, with the attendance of some 300 people, including the sailors' families and fellow troops.

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(LEAD) S. Korea's new COVID-19 cases back up over 10,000 after 20 days

SEOUL -- South Korea's new coronavirus cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time in 20 days Wednesday, though in recent months the pandemic has shown a downward trend.

The country added 10,258 new COVID-19 infection cases, including 205 cases from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 18,349,756, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

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(LEAD) IEEE investigating Seoul Nat'l University AI paper accused of plagiarism: spokesperson

SEOUL -- The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest technical professional organization, said Wednesday it has launched an investigation into a South Korean research paper accused of plagiarizing multiple papers published in the past.

The move came just days after a research team led by Yoon Sung-roh, a professor at the department of electrical and computer engineering at Seoul National University, admitted to engaging in plagiarism when producing the paper recognized as an outstanding thesis at the 2022 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) that ended in New Orleans last week.
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