North Korea sends 5,000 construction troops to Russia: Seoul

SEOUL: North Korea has sent about 5,000 construction troops to Russia since September to help with “infrastructure reconstruction,” a South Korean lawmaker said Tuesday after a briefing by Seoul’s spy agency. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Moscow after sending thousands of troops […]

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North Korea and China tighten diplomatic embrace as Kim seeks global relevance

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on Sunday during her second visit to the Chinese capital in just one month, both countries’ official news agencies reported. Wang told Choe that “China is willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea […]

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Seoul estimates North Korea has up to 2 tonnes of highly enriched uranium

North Korea is believed to possess up to two tonnes of highly enriched uranium, South Korea’s unification minister said Thursday. “Intelligence agencies estimate Pyongyang’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium – more than 90 per cent pure – at up to 2,000 kilogrammes,” South Korea’s unification minister Chung Dong-young told reporters. “Even at this very hour, […]

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North Korea threatens ‘unfavourable consequences’ over US-led drills

By Park Chan-kyong North Korea has threatened military retaliation in response to joint drills by South Korea, the United States and Japan, with the powerful sister of ruler Kim Jong-un and a top military official issuing parallel statements. Both denounced the ongoing drills and signalled that Pyongyang was prepared to answer with its own show […]

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Kim Jong-un weeps for North Korea’s Ukraine war dead in display of calculated grief

By Park Chan-kyong For the first time since its founding in 1948, North Korea has openly acknowledged the deaths of its soldiers fighting on foreign soil with a carefully staged ceremony that analysts say betrays supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s deepening domestic anxieties. Kim embraced weeping children, affixed medals to portraits of the dead and even […]

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Kim’s sister says North Korea will never see the South as a diplomatic partner

By KIM TONG-HYUNG SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ’s powerful sister yet again taunted South Korean efforts to improve ties, state media reported Wednesday, saying that her country will never accept Seoul as a diplomatic partner. Kim Yo Jong’s remarks fit a longstanding pattern of aggressive language during ongoing […]

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