SEOUL, May 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korea again called on North Korea Friday to repay millions of dollars in loans provided in the form of food since 2000, the Unification Ministry said. The impoverished North missed the June 7, 2012 deadline to repay South Korea US$5.83 million in the first installment of the $724 million food loan extended to the North in rice and corn. The latest call is the South's fifth demand made on the North to repay its debt.

North Korea has released 16 Chinese fishermen and their boat, Chinese state-run media said Tuesday, after reports that armed assailants had taken the sailors hostage and demanded a ransom. "All the fishermen with the boat are safe on their way back," China's Xinhua news agency said, citing a Chinese embassy official in Pyongyang it said had heard the news from the shipowner. Xinhua said the fishermen had been detained "by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea side", using the North's official name, and without giving further details.

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea released a Chinese fishing boat on Tuesday after it was taken from waters between the two countries, the boat's owner said, in an incident that had proved a new irritant in ties between the often uneasy allies. Chinese counselor to North Korea Jiang Yaxian had told state media earlier that North Korea had "grabbed" the private vessel from off the northern city of Dalian in waters between China and the Korean peninsula.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon voiced hope Sunday that North Korea will avoid future missile tests, after the Stalinist state fired three short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan. "I hope that North Korea will refrain from such further actions," Ban told the RIA Novosti news agency in comments translated into Russian. Ban was in Moscow following talks Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. North Korea sometimes launches short-range missiles for tests or as part of military drills. It carried out its latest launches on Saturday.