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1. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. KIM Seung-Kyum met with Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley at the Pentagon on Wednesday during the 47th Republic of Korea and United States Military Committee Meeting. Gen. Milley reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to providing extended deterrence to South Korea.

2. At a session of the UN General Assembly's Third Committee on Wednesday, the EU along with South Korea has begun drawing up a draft resolution condemning North Korea's human rights abuses.

3. U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that his administration will release 15 million barrels of oil from the country's already depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserves in December, in a bid to bring fuel prices down.

1. KakaoTalk’s co-CEO, Namkoong Whon, offered to resign on Wednesday after a massive server outage which locked 53 million users. The company will accept damage reports through a dedicated channel on its KakaoTalk mobile messenger service from today.

2. North Korea fired 3 rounds of artillery shots into the maritime buffer zones spreading the two Koreas and into the East Sea from last night to this afternoon. The first 100 shells were fired last night at around 10 PM, followed by another 150 rounds an hour later, and another 100 on Wednesday at around 12:30 PM.

3. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that 30% of Ukraine’s power stations had been destroyed by Russian strikes as more missiles hit Kyiv in the past eight days. 1,162 towns and villages across are left without power as of today.

1. Kakao Corp. said Tuesday that most of its services are almost in full operation after the fire disaster at its data center Saturday, but the recovery process for the mailing service on Daum is still underway.

2. Amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the Chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kim Seung-kyum, left for Washington today to meet his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Koji Yamazaki, to discuss ways to boost security cooperation.

3. According to the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Tuesday, South Korea is putting a temperature cap of 17 degrees Celsius in public buildings this winter, in a bid to trim electricity consumption.

1. Kakao Talk, the most popular mobile messenger in South Korea suffered a massive service malfunction due to a fire at its data center on Saturday, affecting all sectors of the country, including transportation and finance.

2. The Hoguk drill, South Korea’s annual military drill, kicked off Monday, following North Korea’s provocations, including the firing of a short-range ballistic missile on Friday. Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson, Col. Kim Jun-rak, said South Korea is closely monitoring the movements of the North.

3. At China’s 20th Communist Party Congress on Sunday, Chinese President Xi Jinping put heavy emphasis on the nation’s security in his speech, as he mentioned the words, ‘safe’ and ‘security’ 73 times in total according to the state news agency Xinhua’s transcripts.

1. In response to North Korea’s latest provocations, South Korea has imposed new unilateral sanctions on North Korea, specifically, fifteen individuals and sixteen institutions, for the first time in five years.

2. At China’s 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party slated for October 16, China’s President Xi Jinping is expected to emphasize “balance development and security” and drop the long held “development first” slogan according to a Chinese policy expert and RAND corporation, Howard Wang.

3. The Ministry of Economy and Finance said Friday in its latest Green Book that despite recovering domestic demand and employment, external risks still threaten to hurt exports, leading to slow economic growth.

1. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Thursday that his administration is looking into a wide range of options when he was asked about the possibility of extended deterrence of nuclear weapons in South Korea from the U.S. 

2. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Wednesday in regards to the first national security strategy of the Biden administration that the US will pursue “sustained diplomacy to completely denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, while strengthening extended deterrence”.

3. South Korea’s ambassador to the U.S., Cho Tae-yong(조태용), said at a parliamentary audit session in Washington on Wednesday that South Korea and the U.S. are negotiating ways to mitigate concerns over the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act taking a heavy toll on South Korean electric vehicle makers.

1. The Bank of Korea delivered yet another big-step of 50 basis point rate hike from 2.5% to 3% on Wednesday as an effort to bring down inflation. It is the first time in about 10 years that the key policy interest rate has risen to the 3 percent range.

2. The U.S. government on Tuesday allowed South Korean memory chip makers SK hynix and Samsung Electronics operating in China, to obtain restricted goods and services without license for a year.

3. The National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said, on Tuesday that the U.S. remains open to talks with North Korea. He added that U.S. President Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to provide extended deterrence to South Korea. 

1. Amid growing nuclear threats from North Korea, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Tuesday that he believes his denuclearization roadmap, or the so-called audacious initiative, is still valid and that he will bolster the trilateral security cooperation with the US and Japan.

2. The  U.N. General Assembly’s special session started Monday to discuss the passing of the resolution that demands that Russia “immediately and unconditionally" scrap its supposed annexations.

3. The benchmark KOSPI closed at 2,192.05 on Tuesday, down 1.8% from the previous trading day. Seoul stocks opened on a sharp decline this morning to dip to a low of 2,174.06 during intraday. 

1. According to the North's state media on Monday, it was North Korean leader Kim Jong-un himself who took command of a series of military exercises of the regime's tactical nuclear weapon units over the past two weeks. Kim also said he has nothing to talk about with his enemies, and vowed to bolster the nuclear force of the regime.

2. South Korea reported 8-thousand 9-hundred-81 new COVID-19 infections on Monday. Authorities are on guard as an increase in influenza cases could coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the emergence of the new metapneumovirus.

3. During a meeting with the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blaimed Ukraine of attacking the Crimea bridge, saying that it was an “act of terrorism”.

1. According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, in response to the escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea and the United States have begun a combined naval exercise in the East Sea on Friday for two days. 

2. On Thursday night, South Korea’s ruling People Power Party’s ethics committee decided to suspend former chairman Lee Jun-seok from the party for one year in addition to the six-month suspension announced in July.

3. According to the latest data released by the Bank of Korea on Friday, South Korea posted a current account deficit of roughly 3 billion US dollars in August for the first time in four months amid soaring import prices.