Live now
Oct 16, 2017 08:31 PM IST IST | Source: Moneycontrol.com
Select Language
- Home
- News
- Markets
- Portfolio
- Watchlist
- Forum
- Live TV & Shows
- Videos
- Commodities
- Currencies
- Mutual Funds
- Personal Finance
-
Property
Specials
Subscriptions
The North Korea vs US rhetoric has picked pace in the past few weeks. It threatens to destabilise the global balance. Both countries have, in the recent weeks, exchanged verbal volleys prompting comments from Japan and China too. US President Donald Trump has called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un "Rocket Man" while Pyongyang has likened the US President to a "barking dog".
Catch up with all the updates in the Trump vs Kim Jong Un episode here.
Russia reopens ferry route to North Korea
Russia has resumed sea trips to isolated North Korea after a two-month break, the RIA news agency reported on Monday quoting the head of the company operating the route, according to a Reuters report.
The vessel, North Korean-flagged Mangyonbong, left the Russian port of Vladivostok for North Korea's Rajin on Sunday, RIA said citing the company's director general Vladimir Baranov.
The ferry line, the only one between the two countries, was opened in May to carry passengers, predominantly Chinese tourists, and cargoes.
But it stopped operating in August because the port in Vladivostok refused to provide services to the vessel after the company failed to pay for them, RIA reported citing a port official.
Putin signs decree imposing restrictions on North Korea
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a decree imposing restrictions on North Korea in order to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution, according to Reuters.
The resolution, about special economic measures, was a response to Pyongyang's missiles tests in late 2016.
US military to practice evacuating Americans out of South Korea
The US military on Monday said that it would practice evacuating non-combatant Americans out of South Korea in the event of war and other emergencies, as the two allies began a joint naval exercise amid heightened tensions with North Korea, according to a The New York Times report.
The evacuation drill, known as Courageous Channel, is scheduled from next Monday through Friday and is aimed at preparing US “service members and their families to respond to a wide range of crisis management events such as non-combatant evacuation and natural or man-made disasters,” the US military said in a statement.
Trump to tour Asia with focus on North Korea
US President Donald Trump will travel to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Hawaii between November 3-14, the White House said on Monday, amid rising tensions over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, according to Reuters.
Trump will "call on the international community to join together in maximizing pressure on North Korea," the White House said in a statement, and will meet family members of Japanese citizens who have been abducted by North Korea.
North Korea's missiles have a range of starting from 150 kilometres to upwards of 10,400 kilometres. Its hunger for power is evident and it does have nuclear weapons in its arsenal. But how dangerous is the threat?
Click here to find out.
North Korea allows racetrack gambling as a new source of hard currency amid sanctions
Punters in North Korea who once risked three years hard labour for gambling are now able to bet on local horse races as the isolated country scrambles to unearth new sources of hard currency amid intensifying international sanctions, according to Reuters.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un has been building resorts, swimming pools and other luxurious leisure facilities in what experts say is a bid to capture some of the individual wealth generated by growing private markets for goods and services.
A series of races took place at the Mirim Horse Riding Club, one of Kim's flagship leisure developments, near Pyongyang on Sunday, according to North Korea's official KCNA news agency.
South Korea and the United States began week-long joint Navy drills
South Korea and the United States began week-long joint Navy drills in the waters around the Korean peninsula on Monday, amid high tensions over North Korea's nuclear and missile programme, according to Reuters.
About 40 Navy ships from both countries, including the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, are taking part in the exercises on the east and west coasts of the peninsula from October16 to October 20, a spokesman for the South's defence ministry said on Monday.
Russia condemns North Korea's nuclear tests
Moscow has condemned North Korea’s nuclear tests and has calls on North Korea and the international community to comply with all United Nations (UN) resolutions, Russian news agencies quoted the speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house as saying on Monday, according to a report by Reuters.
The joint naval exercises that began on Monday in the waters off the Korean Peninsula involve fighter jets, helicopters and 40 naval ships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.
South Korean navy spokesperson Jang Wook told reporters the drills are aimed at practicing how to respond to a potential naval provocation by North Korea and improving the allies' combined operational capability.
Joe Lieberman, who was Democrat Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 US Presidential elections, suspects collusion between North Korea and Iran.
"The extent to which Iran and North Korea are working together is the only question. It is not whether they are working together, it is how much they are working together," he said in an interview to Fox News. "We know that North Korean designs for intercontinental ballistic missiles have been reflected in the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran has put up."
Those joint naval drills between the US and South Korea have not drawn any immediate reaction from North Korea. However, the North’s foreign ministry accused the United States of provoking the country by mobilising the aircraft carrier and other war assets near the peninsula.
“Such military acts compel (North Korea) to take military counteraction,” said Kim Kwang Hak, a researcher at the Institute for American Studies at the ministry, told Associated Press. “We have already warned several times that we will take counteractions for self-defense, including a salvo of missiles into waters near the U.S. territory of Guam.”
Moscow condemns North Korea’s nuclear tests and calls on North Korea and the international community to comply with all UN resolutions, Russian news agencies quoted the speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house as saying on Monday.
Valentina Matvienko’s comments came at a meeting with a South Korean parliamentary delegation in St Petersburg. Russia has been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to persuade the delegations of North and South Korea to hold direct talks.
Punters in North Korea who once risked three years hard labour for gambling are now able to bet on local horse races as the isolated country scrambles to unearth new sources of hard currency amid intensifying international sanctions, reports Reuters.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been building resorts, swimming pools and other luxurious leisure facilities in what experts say is a bid to capture some of the individual wealth generated by growing private markets for goods and services.
Read the full story here.
Former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has criticised Donald Trump’s approach to North Korea, saying his words have rattled allies.
“We will now have an arms race – nuclear arms race in East Asia,” Clinton told CNN. “We will have the Japanese, who understandably are worried with missiles flying over them as the North Koreans have done, that they can’t count on America.”
Of late, North Korea has also been directing its anger at Australia over its relationship with South Korea and the US.
“Should Australia continue to follow the US in imposing military, economic and diplomatic pressure upon the DPRK despite our repeated warnings, they will not be able to avoid a disaster,” the state-run news agency KCNA said in a statement two days ago.
But foreign minister Julie Bishop said her country would not give in to the threats.
“North Korea’s threats only strengthen our resolve to find a peaceful solution to the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula caused entirely by North Korea’s illegal, threatening and provocative behaviour,” she said.
Speaking at a military conference in Seoul on Monday, General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, commander of US Pacific Air Force, said North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile development programme was “truly a threat to us all” and the United States remains poised to defend allies.
“Although countries like North Korea threaten regional peace and security, our allied air power must be ready to respond with rapid, lethal and overwhelming force to respond to preserve our interests,” O’Shaughnessy said.
South Korean intelligence officials and analysts have said that North Korea might time its next provocation to coincide with China’s all-important Communist Party Congress which begins on Wednesday.
Nikki Haley, America's Permanent Representative to the UN, told ABC News that the US’s new policy on Iran sends a perfect message to North Korea that if it enters a deal with the US, it should adhere to it.
Trump announced that he would not continue to certify the Iran deal, but stopped short of immediately cancelling US participation in the deal and left its fate in the hands of Congress.
"These are all lessons learned from North Korea, every single one of them. Had this been done with North Korea over the last 25 years, we would not be in this situation. What you see is, the president is trying to make sure that Iran doesn't become the next North Korea," she said.
North Korea is preparing to test a long-range missile which it believes can reach the west coast of the United States, said a Russian lawmaker who returned from a visit to Pyongyang earlier this month.
North Korea’s state-run media agency KCNA had criticised the joint military exercise, calling it a “reckless act of war maniacs".
US President Donald Trump will be travelling to Asia from November 3-14 and the issue of North Korea is likely to feature prominently on the agenda.
South Korean media reports over the weekend said North Korean missile vehicles “kept appearing and disappearing” from the map and “transporter erector launchers” had been spotted carrying ballistic missiles from near Pyongyang and North Pyongan province.
The exercise will continue through Friday on waters on both sides of the Korean Peninsula, according to a South Korean defense official, who asked not to be named due to internal policy.
The US and South Korean navies on Monday began a joint drill involving around 40 warships, amid signs North Korea is preparing for another provocation such as a missile launch, reports Bloomberg.
North Korea's missiles have a range of starting from 150 kilometres to upwards of 10,400 kilometres. Its hunger for power is evident and it does have nuclear weapons in its arsenal. But how dangerous is the threat? Read this to find out.
Politicians from North and South Korea will not hold direct talks in Russia on Monday about Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programme despite attending the same event and being urged to do so by Moscow, Russian news agencies said on Sunday.
Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, is due to discuss the missile crisis in separate talks with a deputy head of North Korea's legislature and the head of South Korea's parliament on the sidelines of a congress of parliamentarians in St Petersburg on Monday.
Moscow has called on the two countries to use the opportunity to have their own direct talks to try to narrow their differences. — Reuters
Despite their disagreements in the recent past over nuclear tests, China is North Korea's go-to friend when it comes to business. North Korea imported 85 percent of its goods worth USD 3.47 billion from China in 2015. In the same year, North Korea exported about 83 percent of goods worth USD 2.83 billion to the manufacturing superpower.
On the global front, India has been a critic of North Korea's nuclear tests and has also criticised its ties with Pakistan and its support for the Kashmir conflict.
The more surprising fact is that India comes right after China as North Korea's second biggest trade partner among all other countries who maintain trade relations with the communist state.
Find out more: India is North Korea's second biggest trade partner after China
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that President Donald Trump had instructed him to continue diplomatic efforts to calm rising tensions with North Korea, saying "those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops." Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Tillerson downplayed messages that President Trump had previously posted on Twitter suggesting Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with "Little Rocket Man," a derogatory nickname Trump has coined for North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un. Trump "has made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts," Tillerson said.
RECAP | Whether North Korea will launch a nuclear missile attack on the US mainland is best left to its conscience. A potential offensive against the world's most powerful military, however, raises a question: Can the US protect itself from such an occurrence?
Read to find out: Can the US intercept a North Korean missile flying towards it?
Chung Sye-kyun, the speaker of South Korea's parliament, on Sunday called on North Korea to resume talks over its nuclear and missile programme, saying its nuclear tests were a threat to the Korean Peninsula, the Interfax news agency reported.