S KOREA ABSTAINS IN UN VOTE ON ENDING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

South Korea abstained from voting on a UN resolution to end the death penalty worldwide, despite a decade-long suspension of executions in the country, officials said. Seoul refrained from backing the UN General Assembly Third Committee's resolution in a vote in New York, which calls for a global moratorium on death penalty, officials at the foreign ministry and Amnesty International said. "The death penalty was not practiced here for the past 11 years in honour of life and human rights, but (its) abolition is not an official position of the Korean government. Capital punishment still exists in terms of law," Jang Jae-bok, a foreign ministry official, said. "We had expected Korea to join in the moratorium resolution. Its decision is regretful," Park Seung-ho of Amnesty's Korea office said.