South Korea s National Security Advisor Suh Hoon arrived in New York on Wednesday local time ahead of security talks with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts. Speaking to South Korean broadcaster KBS, Suh said that he hopes to have in-depth discussions on the Biden administration s new North Korea policy and on finding ways to resume denuclearization talks with the regime.
It is speculated that Suh may also review any developments regarding unofficial communication between the U.S. and North Korea via what s known as the New York Channel.
The trilateral security talks will take place on Friday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
According to the head of the European Medicines Agency Tuesday, health regulators remain firmly convinced that the benefits of Astrazeneca s COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the potential risks. While the investigation is ongoing, currently, we are still firmly convinced that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing COVID-19, with its associated risk of hospitalization and death, outweigh the risks of these side effects. The remarks come as number of European countries have halted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, amid concerns the shots caused blood clots in some recipients.
However, the official shot down those concerns, saying there was no indication the vaccine caused such adverse side effects.
South Korea is now making the final payments to people eligible for the third round of relief funds that started in January.
The finance ministry on Tuesday specified the number of people who ve got them and how much money s been paid in total. As of March 15th, 4.4 trillion won has been paid out to 3-million-655-thousand people. This is a completion rate of about 96.6 percent. That s around 3.9 billion U.S. dollars.
By sector, the payments went to more than 2.8 million small business owners, or around 97 percent of those eligible, and the 681-thousand freelancers and contract workers have ALL been paid.
As the employment crisis from the pandemic continues, South Korea is seeing its worst job numbers in more than 20 years.
According to data released by Statistics Korea on Wednesday, about 26.3 million people were in employment last month 473-thousand fewer than the same period the previous year. This is the twelfth month in a row that employment has fallen the longest period of decline since April 1999.
The situation was slightly better than the previous month when the number of people employed fell by nearly one-million on-year. Compared to January, there was a smaller decline in the number of people employed in February especially in the face-to-face service sectors, as social distancing measures were eased starting February 15th.
The likely topics of discussion include the ROK-US alliance and North Korea issues.
For more, we have our foreign ministry correspondent Yoon Jung-min joining us live.
Jung-min, what have you heard there so far? Right Devin.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin landed at Osan Air Base a few hours ago.
They are the first Cabinet-level officials to visit Seoul since President Biden took office. In about at hour or so, Blinken will be meeting with his South Korean counterpart Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong.
We also hear that Austin is now meeting his own South Korean counterpart, Defense Minister Suh Wook.