South Korea

Lockheed Martin Corp said on March 3 it was talking to the governments of Spain, Switzerland and Belgium about selling its F-35 fighter jets to the European nations.

Bringing new customers could help significantly reduce the cost of the military aircraft after several blowouts and production delays. The United States and 10 allies are clients of the F-35 currently.

Investors reacted positively from President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average above 21,000 points Wednesday for the first time in its history.

North Korea said March 2 it is ready to be "merciless" in the face of joint South Korean-United States military drills that began a day earlier. 

The weeks-long annual military exercises in the South have also previously provoked Pyongyang, which views them as a preparation for invasion. 

Over the last five years, the world trade in arms has reached a level not seen since 1990. The Middle East and Asia remain the key markets for weapons, according to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Prosecutors on Feb. 17 arrested the de facto head of South Korea's largest conglomerate, Samsung, on bribery and other charges related to a political corruption scandal that triggered the impeachment of President Park Geun-Hye.

The U.N. Security Council denounced North Korea's weekend missile launch, urging members to "redouble efforts" to enforce sanctions against the reclusive state, but gave no indications of any action it might take. 

A new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Independent Task Force report, A Sharper Choice on North Korea: Engaging China for a Stable Northeast Asia, finds that the United States’ policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea will neither halt that country’s recurring and dangerous cycle of provocation nor ensure the stability of Northeast Asia in the future.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry on Feb. 12 "strongly" condemned North Korea's test-firing a ballistic missile, which triggered a U.S.-led call for an urgent U.N. Security Council meeting after the launch was seen as a challenge to President Donald Trump.

A Turkish-Korean consortium has been invited to sign a contract after winning the tender of the planned 1915 Çanakkale Bridge to be built over the Dardanelles Strait, a top Turkish official said Feb. 11. 

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile in the first such test since Donald Trump took office as US president.
Mr Trump assured Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that “America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100%”.
The missile flew east towards the Sea of Japan for about 500km (300 miles), South Korean officials say.