‘My Name Is Khan’ releases in South Korea

Fox Star Studios has planned the widest release ever for an Indian film in South Korea for MY NAME IS KHAN. The film will be released in 2 stages there. First, a platform release in 12 theaters of 8 major cities on March 24 and then expanded to 200 theaters on April 7. The list of cities is Seoul, Incheon, Suwon, Daejeon, Seongnam, Gwangju, Daegu and Busan.

The film is being aggressively promoted with a P&A spend of $ 1 million. This is the highest marketing spend for an Indian film. The film has been sub-titled in South Korean language.

The film has performed very well in test screenings and the distributors are very confident about the film and find the story and content to be exceptional for the South Korean audience.

North Korea border guards kill five defectors to China: report

SEOUL: North Korean border guards, in a rare cross-border pursuit, shot dead five defectors and wounded two others who fled the reclusive state into China, a South Korean newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Chosun Ilbo reported that North Korean border guards had never before shot at defectors once they had reached the Chinese side of the border, adding that guards could have been issued with new instructions for dealing with defectors.

The daily quoted a high-level source in Changbai in the Chinese province of Jilin as saying the seven had left Hyesan in Yanggang province and walked across the frozen Yalu River and reached the Chinese side on Dec. 14.

Five were shot dead by North Korean border guards who were in pursuit and two were wounded and taken to the North, it said.

N Korea nuclear talks must be revived: S Korea

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called for new international talks with North Korea on shutting down its nuclear programme, apparently softening his stance towards the negotiations.(We) have no choice but to resolve the problem of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program diplomatically through the six-party talks, Lee said of the discussions, which began in 2003 and have been stalled for two years. Lee has taken a tough line with the North since its deadly bombardment last month of a South Korean border island, which caused outrage in Seoul.His government, along with the United States and Japan, has been cool in response to efforts by Russia and China to resuscitate the six-party forum in an attempt to ease high tensions. Seoul and its allies say the North must first mend ties with the South and show sincerity about denuclearization. The president said the international community is pressed for time because the North has set 2012 the centenary of the birth of founder Kim Il-Sung as the year to become a great, powerful and prosperous nation.

S.Korea ship sinks off Antarctic, at least 5 dead

SEOUL/WELLINGTON: A South Korean fishing boat sank on Monday in freezing waters near Antarctica and five members of the crew were killed and 17 missing, New Zealand and South Korean authorities said.

Twenty members of the crew of the 614-tonne toothfish boat No 1 In Sung had been rescued by a ship.

The boat sank at 6.30 a.m. (1730 GMT) about 1,000 km (620 miles) north of Antarctica and 2,700 km (1,700 miles) south of New Zealand, the country’s Rescue Coordination Centre said.

It was not known what caused the ship to sink and no distress call had been made, the centre said.

Two New Zealand and three South Korean vessels were searching for survivors. A New Zealand air force aircraft may be sent, but it would take about 8 hours to get there.

The water temperature is about 2 Celsius (35 Fahrenheit) which means someone would survive

South Korea Raises Rhetoric Against the North

South Korea on Friday threatened to bomb North Korea if it tries a repeat of last week’s attack, raising its rhetoric after the United States warned of an “immediate threat” from Pyongyang.

Kim Kwan-jin, a retired general, was speaking at a parliamentary meeting confirming him as new defense minister, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea threatened the region and the world.

“If there are further provocations, we will definitely use aircraft to bomb North Korea,” Kim said when asked how he would respond to another attack after last week’s North Korean bombardment of an island near their disputed border, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians.

The North alone has more than 5,000 multiple-launch rockets pointed at the capital Seoul which, with its satellite cities, is home to some 25 million people. South Korea has about 490 combat aircraft.

For nearly 60 years, the two Koreas have faced each other across one of the world’s most heavily armed borders. They have never signed a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

China says North Korea ties have survived "tempest"

SEOUL: China, pushed again by Washington to bring North Korea to heel after last week’s artillery attack on the South, told Pyongyang their relationship had withstood international “tempests.”

On Wednesday, South Korea’s spy chief said it was highly likely the isolated North would attack its wealthy neighbour again. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week’s bombardment threatened the stability of the region, home to three of Asia’s biggest economies.

China has refused to blame its ally for shelling the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong which destroyed dozens of houses and killed four people, or for the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in March.

“The traditional friendship of China and North Korea has withstood the tests of international tempests and changes and replenished itself over time,” Wu Bangguo, China’s

Escalation of Korean tensions must be prevented: China

BEIJING: China’s foreign minister on Wednesday called for all parties involved in the Korean peninsula crisis to avoid actions that “inflame the situation”, state-run Xinhua news agency said.

The comments came as the US and South Korean navies ended a major exercise in the Yellow Sea intended as a warning to North Korea following last week’s deadly artillery strike on the South — war games strongly opposed by China.

“The parties concerned should keep calm and exercise restraint, and work to bring the situation back onto the track of dialogue and negotiation,” the agency quoted Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi as saying.

China had come under growing international pressure to step in forcefully to restrain the unpredictable regime in Pyongyang after the shelling, which left four people dead and led to increased tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Beijing has

US and South Korea Push Ahead With war Games

The sound of new artillery fire from North Korea just hours after the U.S. and South Korea launched a round of war games in Korean waters sent residents and journalists on a front-line island scrambling for cover Sunday.

None of the rounds landed on Yeonpyeong Island, military officials said, but the incident showed how tense and uncertain the situation remains along the Koreas’ disputed maritime border five days after a North Korean artillery attack decimated parts of the island and killed four South Koreans.

As the rhetoric from North Korea escalated, with new warnings of a “merciless” assault if further provoked, a top Chinese official made a last-minute visit to Seoul to confer with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Lee and State Councilor Dai Bingguo, a senior foreign policy adviser, discussed the North Korean attack and how to ease the tensions, according to Lee’s office. Dai also met with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said.

Meanwhile, the chairman of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, Choe Thae Bok, was due to visit Beijing starting Tuesday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.

Washington and Seoul have urged China, North Korea’s main ally and biggest benefactor, to step in to defuse the situation amid fears of all-out war.

The Korean peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Their border is one of the world’s most heavily fortified, guarded by troops on both sides.

However, North Korea disputes the maritime border drawn by U.N. forces at the close of the war, and considers the waters around Yeonpyeong Island — 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the South Korean port of Incheon but just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the North Korean mainland — its territory.

The Koreas have fought three bloody naval skirmishes in the waters since 1999, as recently as a year ago. And eight months ago, a South Korean warship, which had been involved in one of those skirmishes, went down in an explosion, killing 46 sailors.

An international team of investigators concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank the ship. The two Koreas have remained locked in a standoff over that incident, with South Korea demanding a show of regret for the attack and North Korea denying any involvement.

Tuesday’s attack — on an island with a civilian population of 1,300 — marked a new level of hostility along the rivals’ disputed sea border. Two marines and two civilians were killed when the North rained artillery on Yeonpyeong Island in one of the worst assaults on South Korean territory since the Korean War.

The attack took place as North Korea carries out a delicate transfer of power from leader Kim Jong Il to a young, unproven son in what many see as the heir’s bid to win the military’s loyalty. It also may reflect Pyongyang’s frustration that it has been unable to force a resumption of stalled international talks on receiving aid in return for nuclear disarmament.

The attack also laid bare weaknesses in South Korea’s defenses against North Korea.

North Korea said Saturday that civilian deaths were “regrettable,” but blamed South Korea for staging military drills in the waters against Pyongyang’s warnings that it would consider such exercises a provocation.

Meanwhile, North Korea mounted surface-to-air SA-2 missiles on launch pads on a west coast base and aimed at South Koreean fighter jets flying near the western sea border, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified South Korean government source.

South Korea’s military said it couldn’t confirm the deployments. An official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North already deploys anti-ship missiles on its west coast bases.

The previously planned joint war games that U.S. and South Korea launched Sunday were sure to heighten the tensions.

Washington insists that the drills involving the nuclear-powered USS George Washington supercarrier are routine and were planned well before last Tuesday’s attack.

The exercises kicked off Sunday morning when ships from both countries entered the exercise zone, an official with South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.

However, a spokesman for the U.S. military in South Korea said U.S. ships were still steaming toward the area and that the drills would not officially begin until later in the day.

North Korea has expressed outrage over the Yellow Sea drills involving a U.S. nuclear-powered supercarrier, and issued a fresh warning Sunday.

“We will launch merciless counter-military strikes against any provocative moves that infringe upon our country’s territorial waters,” the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an editorial carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Sunday’s burst of artillery fire in North Korea appeared to be the second in as many days.

Officials were investigating the exact location of Sunday’s artillery fire, an official with South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.

South Korea’s Lee warns North against further attacks

SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Monday labeled North Korea’s artillery attack on a southern island a crime against humanity and said Pyongyang will pay the price for any further provocation.

Lee made his first address to the nation since last Tuesday’s attack as U.S. as South Korean war ships took part in day two of military maneuvers, prompting concern in regional power China and threats of all-out war from North Korea.

“North Korea will pay the price in the event of further provocations,” Lee said. “Attacking civilians militarily is an inhumane crime that is strictly forbidden in a time of war.”

The bombardment of the island of Yeonpyeong killed two Marines and two civilians, prompting outrage among South Koreans who say their government has been too weak in its response.

China has proposed emergency talks amid global pressure on

Firing heard near S.Korea island

YEONPYEONG: Artillery fire was heard near a South Korean border island on Sunday soon after people there were ordered to take shelter in bunkers, reports said.

“The sound of artillery fire was heard at the island and signs of shelling… have been detected,” Yonhap news agency quoted a military official as saying.

There was no immediate official confirmation.

YTN said some North Korean artillery units seemed to have opened fire towards the island.

Minutes earlier, the military had ordered people on Yeonpyeong island to take shelter, an AFP photographer said. North Korean artillery units bombarded the island last Tuesday, killing two civilians and two marines.

The photographer said he was sharing a bunker with military and police officers, residents and reporters following the loudspeaker warning. Hundreds of other villagers fled after last

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