About 10 Japanese former residents of what is now North Korea embarked Friday on a 12-day trip to the reclusive country to visit grave sites believed to contain the remains of their family members. The visit is the fifth of its kind since North Korea allowed a tour last August on humanitarian grounds to study burial sites of people who died in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula around the end of World War II.

The son of a Japanese woman abducted by North Korea in the 1970s was among the group of nine defectors recently sent from Laos back to the reclusive country, a South Korean daily reported Thursday. Quoting diplomatic sources, the Donga Ilbo daily said the nine men and women were captured in Laos, where they arrived via China, and sent back to North Korea, with one of them being the son of a woman who went missing at age 29 and whom the Japanese government officially designated as an abductee of the North Korean authority.

Nigeria failed Wednesday to reach the final round of 2014 World Cup qualifiers in Africa after a 1-1 draw in Namibia. The African champions needed a win in Windhoek to take an unassailable four-point Group F lead with one game to spare. But the 'Super Eagles' had to settle for a point when Godfrey Oboabona equalised seven minutes from time at Sam Nujoma Stadium. Deon Hotto Kavendji had put the 'Brave Warriors' ahead on 77 minutes as they threatened to avenge a 1-0 loss in Calabar last June.

By Lee Chi-dong WASHINGTON, June 12 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter made clear Wednesday the Pentagon will not cut its spending in Korea despite the so-called sequester, an automatic massive defense budget reduction that took effect on March 1. In a speech at the annual conference of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), he said the Barack Obama administration will not apply sequester to a war in Afghanistan nor to the stationing of around 28,500 troops in South Korea.