• North Korean leader sends special envoy to China
• China-based company promotes North Korea day trip
• North Korea looks inward for founder's birthday, tensions ease

• North Korea fires projectile into eastern waters
• North Korea sentences American to 15 years hard labour
• North Korea rejects South Korea's calls for talks

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Short Summaries of Top Stories

North Korean leader sends special envoy to China
22 May 2013 - After months of ignoring Chinese warnings to give up nuclear weapons, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a high-level confidant to Beijing on Wednesday, in a possible effort to mend strained ties with his country's most important ally and a sign that he may be giving diplomacy a chance. The trip by Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae, a senior Workers' Party official and the military's top political officer, is taking place as tensions ease somewhat on the Korean Peninsula. The United States, Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia have been busy discussing how best to engage with the North Koreans. (more)

China-based company promotes North Korea day trip
14 May 2013 - A Western tour company in China said Tuesday it has obtained permission from North Korea for Westerners to make day trips into the country from the Chinese border. The Xi'an-based company received Pyongyang's approval to organize tours for non-Chinese foreigners to the North Korean border town of Sinuiju, which so far has been open only to Chinese tourists. (more)

North Korea looks inward for founder's birthday, tensions ease
15 April 2013 - North Korea celebrated the anniversary of its founder's birth on Monday and abandoned its shrill threats of war against the United States and the South, easing tensions in a region that had seemed on the verge of conflict. Many Pyongyang watchers has expected a big military parade to showcase North Korea's armed forces on the 'Day of the Sun', the date the North's founder Kim Il-Sung was born. But on Monday, the 101st anniversary of Kim's birth was marked in the North's capital, Pyongyang, with a festival of flowers named after Kim. (more)

North Korean leader dials down hostile rhetoric
2 April 2013 - North Korea's leader appeared to tamp down hostile rhetoric that had threatened impending war with the United States and South Korea in a key speech published on Tuesday that implied the isolated country was shifting its focus to development. (more)

North Korea loosens restrictions on foreign cellphones
21 January 2013 - North Korea is loosening some restrictions on foreign cellphones by allowing visitors to bring their own phones into the country. However, security regulations still prohibit mobile phone calls between foreigners and locals. For years, North Korea required visitors to relinquish foreign cellphones at the border until their departure, leaving most tourists without a way to communicate with the outside world. Now, foreigners can bring qualifying phones into the country and purchase a SIM card for use in North Korea, or rent a handset with a SIM card that allows them to call most foreign countries, foreign embassies in Pyongyang and international hotels in the North Korean capital, according to 3G cellphone service provider Koryolink. (more)

North Korea seeks to reopen embassy in Australia
16 January 2013 - Australia's government says North Korea is seeking to reopen its embassy in the nation's capital. Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Wednesday that he has welcomed the request by Pyongyang. North Korea closed its embassy in Canberra in 2008, citing financial reasons. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says a timeframe for the reopening of the embassy has not been set. (more)

North Korean leader, in rare address, seeks end to confrontation with South
31 December 2012 - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a surprise New Year speech broadcast on state media. The New Year address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader after the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather. Kim Jong-il rarely spoke in public and disclosed his national policy agenda in editorials in state newspapers. (more)

North Korea plans agriculture reforms - source
29 September 2012 - North Korea plans to allow farmers to keep more of their produce in an attempt to boost agricultural output, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said, in a move that could boost supplies, help cap rising food prices, and ease malnutrition. The move to liberalize agriculture under new leader Kim Jong-un would reverse a crackdown on private production that started in 2005. It comes amid talk that the youngest Kim to rule the impoverished North is considering reforms to boost the economy. (more)

North Korean Parliament holds second session this year
25 September 2012 - North Korea's Parliament convened Tuesday for the second time in six months, passing a law that adds one year of compulsory education for children in the socialist nation, the first publicly announced policy change under leader Kim Jong Un. The Supreme People's Assembly's second meeting of the year was notable mainly as a departure from how Kim's father did business. Before he died in December, Kim Jong Il convened his legislature just once in most years, and during one three-year period after his own father's death it didn't meet at all. (more)

Sweeping new changes expected at North Korean farms
24 September 2012 - North Korean farmers who have long been required to turn most of their crops over to the state may now be allowed to keep their surplus food to sell or barter in what could be the most significant economic change enacted by young leader Kim Jong Un since he came to power nine months ago. Farmers currently must turn everything over to the state beyond what they are allowed to keep for their families. Under the new rules, they would be able to keep any surplus after they have fulfilled state-mandated quotas -- improving morale and giving farmers more of a chance to manage their plots and use the crops as a commodity. (more)

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Short Summaries of Top Stories

North Korea fires projectile into eastern waters
19 May 2013 - North Korea fired a projectile into waters off its eastern coast Sunday, a day after launching three short-range missiles in the same area, officials said. North Korea routinely test-launches short-range missiles. But the latest launches came during a period of tentative diplomacy aimed at easing recent tension, including near-daily threats by North Korea to attack South Korea and the US earlier this year. North Korea protested annual joint military drills by Seoul and Washington and UN sanctions imposed over its February nuclear test. The Korean Peninsula officially remains in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. South Korea's Defence Ministry said Sunday it has deployed dozens of Israeli-made precision guided missiles on front-line islands near the disputed western sea boundary as part of an arms buildup begun after a North Korean artillery strike on one of the islands in 2010 killed four South Koreans. (more)

North Korea sentences American to 15 years hard labour
2 May 2013 - North Korea sentenced an American citizen to 15 years of hard labour on Thursday for crimes against the state, prompting a US call for his amnesty in hopes of avoiding him becoming a bargaining chip between the two countries. Pyongyang has previously tried to use American prisoners as bargaining chips in talks with Washington. A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington was not currently looking for an envoy to try to secure Bae's release as it sometimes has done. Bruce Klingner, a retired CIA North Korea analyst, dismissed the idea that Bae's release would trigger the renewal of long-stalled diplomacy. A North Korean defector said Bae will likely serve his sentence in a special facility for foreigners, not in one of the repressive state's forced labour camps. More than 200,000 people are incarcerated in these camps, beaten and starved, sometimes to death, according to human rights groups. 'If an American served jail together with North Korean inmates, which won't happen, he could tell them about capitalism or economic developments. That would be the biggest mistake for North Korea,' said Kwon, a North Korean sentenced to one of its camps for seven years until 2007. (more)

North Korea rejects South Korea's calls for talks
14 April 2013 - North Korea on Sunday rebuffed a South Korean proposal to resolve rising tensions through dialogue, dismissing it as a 'crafty trick' by its rival. Tensions have been high on the Korean Peninsula for weeks, with Pyongyang threatening to attack Seoul and Washington for conducting joint military drills and for supporting UN sanctions imposed on North Korea for a February nuclear test. While the threats are largely seen as rhetoric, US and South Korean officials have said they believe North Korea may test-fire a mid-range missile designed to reach the US territory of Guam. Pyongyang also took a direct shot at Seoul by pulling more than 50,000 North Korean workers from their joint factory park in the border city of Kaesong and denying South Koreans access to the complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone. The move has brought the South Korean-run factories to a standstill, threatening a shutdown of the last joint project left between the two Koreas. (more)

North Korea vows to restart nuclear facilities
2 April 2013 - North Korea said Tuesday it will restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material, in what outsiders see as its latest attempt to extract US concessions by raising fears of war. The reactor began operations in 1986 but was shut down as part of international nuclear disarmament talks in 2007 that have since stalled. North Korea said work to restart the facilities would begin 'without delay.' Experts estimate it could take anywhere from three months to a year to reactivate the reactor. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that North Korea appears to be 'on a collision course with the international community.' Speaking in Andorra, the former South Korean foreign minister said the crisis has gone too far and international negotiations are urgently needed. China, North Korea's only major economic and diplomatic supporter, expressed unusual disappointment with its ally. 'We noticed North Korea's statement, which we think is regrettable,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. South Korea also called it 'highly regrettable.' (more)

As US hardens line on North Korea, South may pay
29 March 2013 - Washington's decision to fly B-52 and stealth bomber missions over Korea this week in a warning to Pyongyang risks pushing the North into staging an attack on the South just as its threats may have been on the cusp of dying down. New leaders in Seoul, Beijing, and most importantly, an untested 30-year-old in Pyongyang who has to prove he is capable of facing down a perceived threat from the United States, have raised the stakes in a month-long standoff that risks flaring into a conflict. With the looming 15 April celebrations to commemorate the birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current ruler, and large chunks of North Korea's peasant army due to head to farms for spring planting, the crisis may have been lurching to a close before the American bombers' flights on Thursday. (more)

North Korea puts artillery forces at top combat posture
26 March 2013 - North Korea's military warned Tuesday that its artillery and rocket forces are at their highest-level combat posture in the latest in a string of bellicose threats aimed at South Korea and the United States. The announcement came as South Koreans marked the third anniversary of the sinking of a warship in which 46 South Korean sailors died. Seoul says the ship was hit by a North Korean torpedo, while the North denies involvement. Seoul's Defence Ministry said Tuesday it hasn't seen any suspicious North Korean military activity and that officials are analyzing the North's warning. The North's recent threats are seen partly as efforts to strengthen internal loyalty to young leader Kim Jong Un and to build up his military credentials. But Kim will eventually be compelled to do 'something provocative to prove the threats weren't empty', said Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defence University in Seoul. (more)

Nuclear waste a growing headache for South Korea
26 March 2013 - North Korea's weapons programme is not the only nuclear headache for South Korea. The country's radioactive waste storage is filling up as its nuclear power industry burgeons, but what South Korea sees as its best solution -- reprocessing the spent fuel so it can be used again -- faces stiff opposition from its US ally. South Korea fired up its first reactor in 1978 and since then the resource poor nation's reliance on atomic energy has steadily grown. It is now the world's fifth-largest nuclear energy producer, operating 23 reactors. But unlike the rapid growth of its nuclear industry, its nuclear waste management plan has been moving at a snail's pace. A commission will be launched before this summer to start public discussion on the permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel rods, which must be locked away for tens of thousands of years. Temporary storage for used rods in spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants is more than 70 per cent full. Undeterred by Japan's Fukushima disaster or recent local safety failings, South Korea plans to boost nuclear to 40 per cent of its energy needs with the addition of 11 new reactors by 2024. (more)

Experts: North Korea training teams of 'cyber warriors'
24 March 2013 - Investigators have yet to pinpoint the culprit behind a synchronised cyberattack in South Korea last week. But in Seoul, the focus is fixed on North Korea, which South Korean security experts say has been training a team of computer-savvy 'cyber warriors' as cyberspace becomes a fertile battleground in the nations' rivalry. It may seem unlikely that impoverished North Korea, with one of the most restrictive Internet policies in the world, would have the ability to threaten affluent South Korea, a country considered a global leader in telecommunications. The average yearly income in North Korea was just $1,190 per person in 2011 -- just a fraction of the average yearly income of $22,200 for South Koreans that same year. But for several years, North Korea has poured money into science and technology. In December, scientists succeeded in launching a satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket from its own soil. And in February, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test. (more)

North Korea says it cancels 1953 armistice
11 March 2013 - A state-run newspaper in North Korea said Monday the communist country had carried out a threat to cancel the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, following days of increased tensions over its latest nuclear test. North Korea also followed through on another promise: It shut down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South Korea used for general communication, and to discuss aid shipments and separated families' reunions. Enraged over the South's current joint military drills with the United States and last week's UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its 12 February nuclear test, North Korea has piled threat on top of threat, including a vow to launch a nuclear strike on the US. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert. Tensions on the divided peninsula have reached their highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010. (more)

A look at what North Korea vow to scrap armistice means
6 March 2013 - The armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 is, at best, a fragile thing: The countries overseeing it have formally accused each other of more than 1.2 million violations. But North Korea's threat to scrap the cease-fire next Monday still matters because the armistice is the key document blocking hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, which technically has remained in a state of war for six decades. If North Korea follows through on its threat to nullify the document that set up the heavily armed buffer zone between the rival Koreas, it could drive badly frayed relations even lower. The threat comes as diplomats at the UN negotiate sanctions aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test and as allies Washington and Seoul plan massive war games set to start Monday. Here's a look at what the North's threat could mean for the Korean Peninsula's fragile peace: (more)