Yonhap News Summary

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

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(LEAD) N. Korea fires 1 SRBM toward East Sea: S. Korean military

SEOUL -- North Korea launched one short-range ballistic missile toward the East Sea on Wednesday, South Korea's military said.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch from the Sukchon area in South Pyongan Province at around 3:31 p.m.

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(LEAD) Hotel adjoining Itaewon crowd crush site raided over suspected illegal construction

SEOUL -- A special investigation team raided a hotel adjoining the site of the deadly Itaewon crowd crush and two other locations Wednesday over suspicions that its illegally extended structures made the narrow place even narrower, officials said.

The investigation team sent 14 investigators to Hamilton Hotel, the home of the hotel's head and another location to seize documents on hotel management and administrative licenses, the officials said.

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(2nd LD) Yoon to visit Cambodia, Indonesia for ASEAN, G-20 summits

SEOUL -- President Yoon Suk-yeol will visit Cambodia and Indonesia starting later this week to attend a series of regional summits involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Group of 20 (G-20), his office said Wednesday.

Yoon will leave for Phnom Penh on Friday and attend a South Korea-ASEAN summit, an ASEAN Plus Three summit and the East Asia Summit during a three-day stay, national security adviser Kim Sung-han said during a press briefing.

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Central banks should stop series of rate hikes amid deepening recession risks: U.S. expert

SEOUL -- South Korea and other major economies should stop a string of interest rate hikes to fight inflation, as the extended monetary tightening would exacerbate recession risks, a U.S. expert said Wednesday.

Robert Barro, an economics professor at Harvard University, stressed that the central banks around the world, with the U.S. Federal Reserve at the forefront, are "overreacting" to inflation with the string of interest rate increases.

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DP leader calls for Yoon's apology over aides' gaffe

SEOUL -- Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Wednesday called for President Yoon Suk-yeol to apologize after his aides came under fire over an inappropriate memo that opposition lawmakers claimed was seen as demeaning a parliamentary audit session on the Itaewon crowd crush.

Kim Eun-hye, senior presidential secretary for press affairs, and Kang Seung-kyoo, senior presidential secretary for civil society, were asked to leave a parliamentary audit session Tuesday evening after press cameras caught a memo that read, "Hilarious," on Kang's notepad.

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(2nd LD) N. Korea's 'SA-5 missile' fired across NLL similar to Russia's missile used in Ukraine war: S. Korean military

SEOUL -- The North Korean missile that flew across its de facto maritime border with South Korea last week has been found to be an "SA-5" type similar to that used by Russia in the Ukraine war, South Korea's military said Wednesday.

The defense ministry announced the results of an interagency analysis of the debris of a missile that North Korea fired southward on Nov. 2 past the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the East Sea.

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(LEAD) Opposition parties submit request for parliamentary probe into Itaewon tragedy

SEOUL -- The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) and two minor progressive parties submitted a joint request Wednesday for a parliamentary investigation into the Itaewon crowd crush despite opposition from the ruling party.

The DP, the Justice Party (JP) and the Basic Income Party submitted the request to the National Assembly's Bills Division on Wednesday afternoon, with an aim to have the request reported at a parliamentary plenary session scheduled for Thursday.

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