Off the wire
• Two young sisters poisoned in central China  • Roundup: Uganda's opposition forms coalition for 2016 polls  • Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, June 12  • 10,000 Taiwan students may be unable to graduate  • China Focus: Chinese applaud anticorruption progress as Zhou Yongkang in jail  • U.S. producer prices surge in May  • 1st LD: Westerners jailed for 3 days over nude photos on Mt Kinabalu in Malaysia  • AU orders court to try former Chadian president: official  • Northern India continues to swelter under heat  • Ukraine expects IMF decision on 2nd loan tranche in July: PM  
You are here: 　 Home

S. Korean president postpones U.S. visit due to MERS outbreak: White House

Xinhua, June 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye have agreed to reschedule the latter's planned June 16 visit to the U.S., the White House said Friday, without disclosing a new date for the visit.

In a phone conversation late Thursday, Obama expressed his understanding of Park's decision to postpone the visit in order to deal with the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in South Korea, which has claimed the lives of 10 people in the country so far.

"The president and President Park agreed that the visit would be rescheduled so that the two leaders can discuss important issues of mutual interest," the White House said in a statement.

Obama also offered condolences to the Korean people and the families of those who have lost their lives during the MERS outbreak, while underscoring that the U.S. stands ready to provide additional assistance as needed, the statement added.

The MERS infections in South Korea have raised to a total of 122 as of Thursday since the first case was found on May 20.

The MERS is a respiratory illness caused by a new type of corona-virus, similar to the SARS virus that killed more than 770 people worldwide following a 2003 outbreak. There is no known vaccine or treatment for the MERS, of which the fatality rate reaches 40.7 percent.

The first MERS case was spotted in Saudi Arabia in 2012. The World Health Organization has reported more than 1,000 cases of MERS globally and more than 400 deaths. Endi