U.S. President Barack Obama pledged Thursday that America’s commitment to peace and stability in South Korea “will never waver,” lauding his country’s armed forces for contributing to the South’s ascent to a global leadership position.

“America’s commitment to the Republic of Korea … will never waver,” Obama said while addressing some 1,500 U.S. military servicemen in South Korea who gathered in Osan, 55 kilometers south of Seoul. The Republic of Korea is the official name of South Korea.

The U.S. has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

The U.S. president arrived here Wednesday as part of a four-nation Asia tour that also took him to Singapore for the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, while in South Korea last month, also pledged to mobilize his country’s war fighting assets to their maximum capacity, if needed, to defend South Korea against North Korea, which continues to develop its nuclear and missile capabilities.

Earlier in the day, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Obama held a summit and urged North Korea to immediately return to negotiations aimed at denuclearizing the communist country, vowing joint efforts to fully denuclearize the North under a package deal.

Obama said that he was told by Lee that the American people should understand how “grateful” South Koreans are for U.S. deterrence against the North Korean threats.

“Allowing families to live in peace … is a direct result of the work that you do,” Obama said. To see the results of America’s commitment to South Korea, Obama told the gathered troops to “look around.”

“You see the result of your service … you only have to look around,” Obama said, describing South Korea as sharing “common values” and “mutual interests” with his country. (PNA/Yonhap)
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 occurred in the Vanuatu region on Thursday local time, triggering an expanding regional tsunami warning from the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for parts of the Pacific located closer to the quake.

According to a report on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) website, the quake occurred at about 9:03 a.m. local time Thursday (7:03 a.m. in Manila), and the epicenter was 295 km north-northwest of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu at a depth of 35 km.

The USGS originally reported that the quake had a magnitude of 8.1, but soon revised it down to 7.8.

Just 15 minutes later a second quake with a magnitude 7.3 hit at the same depth but 21 miles (35 kilometers) farther north of Santo and Port Vila.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center immediately issued a regional tsunami warning for nations and territories in this region, including Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Fiji, Kiribati, Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand.

“An evaluation of the Pacific wide tsunami threat is underway and there is a possibility that Hawaii could be elevated to a watch or warning status,” said a statement from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

A strong earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale struck the South Pacific on September 30 with at least 165 killed by tsunami after the earthquake. (PNA/Xinhua)
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South Korea was preparing Tuesday morning to send its first rocket into space and become the 10th country in the world to send a homegrown satellite into orbit from its own soil.

The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) was scheduled to blast off from the Naro Space Center on the southern coast at around 5:00 p.m. (Seoul Time) following a series of delays, including a technical glitch that halted Wednesday’s countdown with less than eight minutes remaining before blastoff.

The rocket, also called the Naro-1, was developed with help from Russia and originally slated to be launched in 2005. The launch was pushed back to October 2007 and again to late 2008 before being scheduled for liftoff in second quarter of this year.

A “definitive” date was set for July 30, but this was pushed back to Aug. 11 and again to last Wednesday.

Seoul’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said a successful liftoff could bring the country to the cutting edge of aerospace technology, an area currently dominated by the United States, Russia and the European Union. It added that by showing the world that South Korea can launch a powerful rocket, Seoul can expand cooperation with other countries in the future.

“In the past, there was almost no country willing to work with South Korea because we did not have first-hand experience in the field of space exploration and had nothing to offer in terms of technology sharing,” an official said.

The ministry, which is in charge of the country’s science and technology policies, said a full launch “rehearsal” conducted Monday showed the rocket was ready for liftoff. Seoul has notified both the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization of the launch so ships and airplanes can stay clear of the rocket’s trajectory.

South Korea spent 502.5 billion won (US$ 402.3 million) on the 140-ton Naro-1, which stands 33m tall and has a diameter of 2.9m. Its main first stage liquid-fuel rocket, made in Russia, can generate 170t of thrust. The second stage rocket, made domestically, is able to generate 8t of thrust and is designed to push the satellite — which will gather basic information on the Earth’s atmosphere — into orbit.

Experts at the state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said that while the first stage of the Naro-1 was made in Russia, South Korea has gained valuable know-how that can enable it to construct a full rocket by 2018.

Park Jeong-joo, head of KARI’s KSLV Systems Office, said cooperating with Russia helped reduce the amount of trial-and-error that usually comes with making a rocket, and pointed out that South Korea built the second stage, solid fuel rocket that houses the satellite.

“Even the last minute delay (which we) experienced last week was a meaningful learning experience since it showed the need to be ready for all contingencies,” he said.

KARI plans to launch a second Naro-1 rocket in 2010, carrying another scientific satellite. It hopes to develop an engine with 75t of thrust that can send a 1.5t payload into space.

Under a 2002 agreement with Russia, a third rocket will be launched if either the first and second attempts to place a satellite in space end in failure.

In the long run, South Korea aims to build an unmanned space probe by 2025 that can reach the moon. (PNA/Yonhap)
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(PNA/Xinhua) — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on Tuesday that an additional 30 million U.S. dollars will be spent along the U.S.-Mexico border to support security measures. The money will go to Operation Stonegarden and will be used to deter violence, enforce immigration law and combat illegal trafficking of humans and drugs along the southwestern border, Napolitano said at a conference in the border city of El Paso, Texas, according to local media reports. The funds, which supplement the 60 million U.S. dollars in grants announced by Napolitano in June, will go to the U.S. border states of Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico. “Operation Stonegarden grants direct critical funding to state, local and tribal law enforcement operations across the country,” Napolitano said. “I am proud to announce an additional 30 million dollars in funding specifically for the southwestern states to ensure our first responders are equipped with the resources they need to confront the complex and dynamic challenges that exist along our southern border.” Napolitano said the United States and Mexico are “winning” the war against drug cartels that operate across the U.S.-Mexico border. She highlighted a number of drug and weapons seizures as evidence that the war against border drug cartels was successful. So far this year, the U.S. law enforcement officers have seized one million kilograms of drugs, more than 95,000 rounds of ammunition and more than 500 assault rifles and handguns, she said. Napolitano also offered support for the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon. “We have a strong partner in President Calderon,” she said. “We are fighting this fight together with the government of Mexico.” (PNA/Xinhua) ALM/ebp

(PNA/RIA Novosti) — Official World Health Organization (WHO) figures recorded 1,550 deaths from A(H1N1) flu worldwide and more than 200,000 confirmed cases, Russia’s consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said on Friday.

As of August 7, the total number of laboratory confirmed human cases of A(H1N1) virus reached 202,151, including 1,550 lethal cases, according to data from WHO regional bureaus.

On Thursday, the number of deaths from A(H1N1) flu stood at 1,444, Rospotrebnadzor reported.

Russian sanitary officials are continuing with checks on the condition of airline passengers who arrive from countries with confirmed cases of A(H1N1) flu.

Rospotrebnadzor said that in the previous 24 hours it had examined about 14,000 passengers and 880 crew members on 124 flights arriving at 17 Russian airports from North, South and Central America, Spain, Japan, the Dominican Republic, China, Thailand, Cyprus, Britain and Turkey. Transit flights are also being checked.

Since the beginning of monitoring, Rospotrebnadzor has examined over 10,000 flights, about 840,000 passengers and over 67,000 crew members, officials said.

Russian health officials said on Monday that the number of confirmed A(H1N1) flu cases in Russia had reached 55.

One more case has been officially confirmed in the city of Lipetsk, about 370 kilometers (230 miles) south of Moscow.

Local sanitary officials said on Friday that a 16-year-old had returned from Malta with symptoms of the disease. (PNA/RIA Novosti)
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Phuket, July 18 (PNA/Bernama) — Foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Saturday issued a statement condemning Friday’s bombings in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in which many people were killed and wounded, the Thailand news agency reported.

“The ASEAN Foreign Ministers strongly condemn the bombings in Jakarta on July 17, 2009, which caused loss of innocent lives and injuries,” said the statement.

The statement said the ministers supported the Indonesian government’s effort to “bring the perpetrators of these heinous acts to justice.”

It said: “ASEAN stands united with the government and people of Indonesia and remains steadfast in our continued fight against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.”

Thailand will host the 42nd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), the Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) and the 16th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) beginning Friday and running through next Thursday (July 23). (PNA/Bernama)
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SEOUL, July 15 (PNA/Yonhap) — A South Korean destroyer will leave Thursday for waters off the Somali coast to replace a 300-strong naval unit that has operated there as part of a multinational anti-piracy drive, the Navy said.

The 4,500-ton Dae Jo Yeong will take over from the Munmu the Great destroyer, which has escorted South Korean vessels in the Gulf of Aden since April and conducted six rescue operations.

The 300-crew destroyer is expected to join the U.S.-led Combined Task Force in the region in mid-August, according to the South Korean Navy.

“The next group of Cheonghae unit soldiers is to depart Thursday for the Gulf of Aden from Jinhae port” located on South Korea’s southern coast, the Navy said in a release.

Approximately 500 South Korean ships ply the Gulf of Aden each year. About 150 of them are vulnerable to pirate attacks because of their low speed, according to the ministry.

Somalia has not had a functional government since its dictator was overthrown by warlords in 1991. Poverty has driven a large number of locals to piracy, and black market sales of weapons run rampant.

The Dae Jo Yeong was commissioned in 2003 and can travel at a maximum speed of 29 knots. (PNA/Yonhap)
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