Security of the state internet network being used by Central and local administrations will be beefed up, the home affairs ministry said today, after the country came under a massive cyber attack, known as the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, early in March.

South Korea's largest automaker, Hyundai Motor Co., has recalled 190,000 cars with faulty airbags in the United States, a news agency report said on Saturday.

President Lee Myung-Bak said on Tuesday that South Korea must be ready for a surprise North Korean attack, as well as deadly natural and nuclear disasters.

Pyongyang urged Seoul on Monday to bring four North Korean would-be defectors to the border so they can confirm in front of their families that they want to stay in South Korea.

Recent satellite images show that North Korea has completed a launch tower at its new missile base, a key step in efforts to test a missile which could eventually reach the United States, experts say.

A South Korean sailor freed last week from four months' captivity by Somali pirates died on Thursday in an apparent fall from his Kenya hotel room, Seoul's foreign ministry said.

Somali pirates have released a South Korean fishing vessel that was hijacked four months ago with 43 sailors aboard, the country's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

South Korea's coastguard plans to wrap up within days their investigation of five Somali pirates captured in a raid on a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea in January, an official said on Saturday.

Seoul newspapers on Saturday heaped praise on South Korean navy commandos who battled pirates off the coast of Somalia to release captured crew.

A South Korean pastor was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for travelling to North Korea without Seoul's permission and praising its regime.