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highlights
As tensions grow over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, three Democratic senators in the US House of Representatives have announced a bill that would prohibit US President Donald Trump from striking North Korea without obtaining Congressional approval first.
Handcuffed, wearing bulletproof vests and under heavily armed guard, the two women accused of murdering the half-brother of North Korea’s leader were pushed around a Malaysian airport in wheelchairs on Tuesday during a court visit to the crime scene, reports Reuters.
Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Doan Thi Huong, 28, a Vietnamese, are charged with murdering Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX, a chemical nerve agent, at Kuala Lumpur’s budget international terminal on Feb. 13.
Defense lawyers say the women thought they were involved in a prank for a reality TV show when they encountered a man at the airport and did not know they were handling poison.
The two women were brought back to the scene as part of an entourage of court officials, led by trial judge Azmi Ariffin and accompanied by over 200 police officers and dozens of journalists, on a visit to retrace the events that unfolded before, during and after Kim Jong Nam’s death.
A UN committee has added 32 items that have both civilian and military uses to a list of prohibited goods and technologies banned from sale or transfer to North Korea, reports PTI.
The committee that monitors sanctions against North Korea says in a report to the Security Council circulated today that the additions range from boxes that can use used to carry radioactive materials to continuous cooling systems, flash X- ray machines and seismic detection equipment.
A resolution adopted unanimously by the Security Council on September 11 imposing new sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests asked the sanctions committee to come up with new designations of so-called dual- use items.
The threat from North Korea has grown to a “critical and imminent level” and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told his US and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday, reports Reuters. “(The) threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level. Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat,” he said.
Britain said on Friday it believed North Korea was behind the “WannaCry” cyber attack in May that disrupted businesses and government services worldwide, including the National Health Service (NHS) in England.
Security Minister Ben Wallace said Britain believed “quite strongly” that the ransomware attack came from a foreign state.
WannaCry infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries in a matter of days, demanding victims pay ransoms starting at $300 to regain access to their machines.
India's diplomatic ties with North Korea could act as a "conduit for communications", US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said.
India had informed the US that it has "minimal" trade with North Korea, and that there was a small Indian embassy in Pyongyang which should stay there so that some channels of communication remain open.
Answering a question about India's refusal to close its embassy in Pyongyang, Tillerson said: "I think they just indicated they think that office has a value as a conduit for communications".
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday there has been no change in U.S. policy protecting South Korea, in the face of missile and nuclear threats from the reclusive North, after a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
In a press release distributed by South Korea's presidential office after the meeting, Mattis was also cited as saying North Korea's obsession with its weapons programmes presented a threat to the United States as well as South Korea.
The decades-long strategic relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang is looking increasingly strained. Find out why.
Mattis has also accused North Korea of building a nuclear arsenal to “threaten others with catastrophe.”
Mattis has also accused North Korea of building a nuclear arsenal to “threaten others with catastrophe.”
US Secretary of Defense James Mattis said on Friday during his visit to the inter-Korean border that the goal of the United States is not a war with North Korea, but complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, reports Yonhap.
The rights report details the country's programs for sending Korean workers abroad for jobs under conditions it compared with slavery in order to reap foreign exchange for the state.
It says the Ch'olhyo'n Overseas Construction Company, working in Algeria, had Korean government security officials working with it to withhold the salaries and passports of the Korean workers, and to strictly limit their movements.
The United States has layered a new round of sanctions on North Korea, blacklisting individuals and organisations involved in security and forced labour policies for "ongoing and serious human rights abuses."
Amid the ongoing standoff over Pyongyang's threatening nuclear posture towards Japan and the United States, the US Treasury sought to boost pressure by placing the financial restrictions on seven senior officials and three state units.
The move came as the State Department released its "Report on Serious Human Rights Abuses and Censorship in North Korea" which details allegations of a national forced labour system and the government's confiscation of the wages of North Koreans sent abroad as contract labour.
South Korea said on Friday it will accept the release of a South Korean fishing boat captured by North Korea later in the day, with a government spokesman saying it is “a relief” the crewmen on board would be returned.
The South’s Unification Ministry’s spokesman Baik Tae-hyun said the North’s message via its state agency early on Friday was the first contact Seoul had received regarding the vessel, Baik told a regular media briefing.
The fishing boat, which left port on Oct. 16, had been reported as missing from Oct. 21 and relevant authorities had been searching for the vessel, Baik added. North Korea said it had captured the boat on Oct. 21 and will release it at 0930 GMT on Friday in waters off the east coast.
Pentagon boss Jim Mattis arrived in South Korea to meet with the nation's top defense officials and American military commanders on the front line in countering North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Mattis is emphasizing the Trump administration's push for a diplomatic solution to the problem. But he also has said the US is prepared to take military action if the North does not halt its development of missiles that could strike the entirety of the United States, potentially with a nuclear warhead.
Making his second trip as defense secretary to the US ally, Mattis will meet with South Korean officials as part of an annual consultation on defense issues on the Korean peninsula. He'll be joined in Seoul by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the city next month.
Democratic Senators are trying to prevent President Donald Trump from being able to launch a nuclear first strike against North Korea.
Senators Chris Murphy, Corey Booker, and Brian Schatz will introduce a bill that would give Congress alone the ability to call in a first strike after a vote, Murphy announced yesterday.
The US Navy has three aircraft carriers and their assorted missile-carrying vessels deployed to the western Pacific Ocean for the first time in a decade as tensions with North Korea remain high and US President Donald Trump prepares to depart for Asia next week.
The milestone was reached yesterday when the USS Nimitz and its strike group entered the Western Pacific region after operating in the Middle East, according to a Navy press release. The USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group, including a cruiser and three destroyers, entered the region on October 23, joining the USS Ronald Reagan.
According to an American expert on North Korea, a pre-emptive military strike on the rogue nation wouldn't remove all of its nuclear capabilities but will result in millions of casualties in the region.
The North Korea government has ordered security forces to keep a close watch on monuments and paintings of the Kim dynasty, as they fear "hostile elements" within the country may vandalize them, according to South Korea's Daily NK .
Daily NK, a Seoul-based news website that claims to have a large network of informants within North Korea, reported that US-led sanctions have affected the economy in North Korea and now its citizens may turn on the Kim government.
President Donald Trump has praised China’s efforts in helping the US contain the nuclear threat from North Korea, but criticized Russia's stance on the growing tensions with Pyongyang.
Speaking to Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs in an interview aired yesterday, the president said that Moscow’s influence in dealing with North Korea has not been beneficial to the US efforts to contain the country’s nuclear threat.
South Korea has asked Pyongyang to let South Korean businessmen who own factories in the Kaesong Industrial Complex visit their facilities after North Korea admitted to using them without their consent.
The call, relayed on Tuesday by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, came nearly two weeks after a group of local CEOs who invested in the inter-Korean venture asked the South Korean government to approve their visit to the North Korean border town. South Korean nationals need government approval to contact anyone in the North or visit the country.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has refuted reports that the State department is undergoing a morale crisis.
"I walk the halls, people smile," Tillerson told Bloomberg Businessweek in a recent interview. “If it’s as bad as it seems to be described, I’m not seeing it, I’m not getting it.”
US President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure regarding Egypt’s relationship with North Korea to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in September, a government source told Mada Masr.
In light of this discussion, which took place during a meeting between the presidents during the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Cairo has made several attempts in the past few weeks to diffuse rising tensions.
According to official statements and interviewed diplomatic and government sources, Egypt has cut off military aid to North Korea, downsized the North Korean diplomatic mission, and suspended North Korean business in Cairo.
A North Korean defector has revealed he was tortured and almost killed by Kim Jong-un's cruel henchmen because he is a Christian.
Choi Kwanghyuk, 55, managed to escape from one of the country's notorious jails, fleeing into China and is now living in Los Angeles, US. He told Fox News about how he was forced to hide his religious beliefs while living in the North Hamgyong province of the rogue nation.
North Korea continues to imprison, execute and torture Christians but opportunities are opening to weaken the totalitarian regime's grip, politicians, religious leaders and religious freedom charities heard on Wednesday.
Speakers at the International Prayer Day for North Korea, hosted in Westminster, warned 'darkness covers the entire society' and urged Christians to act, Christian Today reported. Dozens of faith leaders and NGO heads gathered for the day and were told that, despite horrendous human rights abuses continuing, opportunities were growing after North Korea's communist economy collapsed in the 1990s causing mass famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
A North Korean official told CNN in an interview that the country’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho’s warning of a possible atmospheric nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean should be taken literally.
The statement was made by Ri Yong Pil, a senior diplomat in North Korea’s Foreign Ministry. He further said that the foreign minister is pretty well aware of the intentions of our supreme leader.
North Korea leader Kim Jong-un sent a rare congratulatory message to Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday at the end of China’s Communist Party Congress, wishing him “great success” as head of the nation, North Korea's state media said.
The friendly gesture by the North Korean leader, who seldom issues personal messages, comes as China is being urged by the international community to do more to rein in the Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests that have raised tensions globally.
North Korea protested today that its sports activities were being blocked as a result of US-led sanctions, just days after Australia denied visas to North Korean football players.
The nuclear-armed North is subject to a host of UN sanctions for its weapons programme, which include restrictions on imports of sporting equipments like skis, yachts, mountaineering boots and even billiard tables.
Military relations between China and the United States are a positive force in ties, and China wants to deepen mutual trust and cooperation, China's Defence Ministry said today, ahead of a visit to Beijing by US President Donald Trump.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford landed in Seoul, South Korea on Thursday, where he’ll discuss efforts to bolster the country’s military capabilities.
Included on the list are better ballistic missile defenses and reintroducing tactical nuclear weapons to the peninsula. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is slated to arrive in the country later this week to continue the discussions.
Read this story by Stars and Stripes based on a report published by US-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. It chronicles life in North Korea's many prison camps or "re-education" camps meant for people with less severe violations of the country's penal code.
Washington is seeking a “peaceful resolution” with North Korea, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said ahead of a visit to the divided peninsula amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear threats.
Four men suspected of killing the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother at a Malaysian airport changed their clothes and appearance to escape detection, a police witness said on Thursday.
The four, who are still at large, are charged together with two women - Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam - with killing Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur airport's budget terminal on February 13.
Prosecutors in the Malaysian court say Siti Aisyah and Huong conspired with the men to murder Kim, by smearing his face with liquid VX, a chemical poison banned by the United Nations.
"What cannot be overlooked," the DPRK's Ja said, "is the fact that the US, not being contented with the joint military exercise on the Korean peninsula, is kicking up the racket of military pressure upon the DPRK on a worldwide scale and is becoming more undisguised in its attempt to introduce NATO and other armed forces of its followers into the Korean peninsula in case of emergency."
In the letter addressed to France's UN Ambassador Francois Delattre, the current Security Council president, he asked for the council to bring up the US joint military exercise as an "urgent agenda item," saying "these military exercises constitute (a) clear threat to international peace and security."