North Korea just signaled its immense disdain for a top American leader. And no, it’s not President Donald Trump.

In a Tuesday statement, the state-run Korean Central News Agency published a scathing article targeting top Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden. While it contains bombastic language, the piece also includes pointed, insulting remarks about the former vice president and references the controversy over how he has interacted with women.

The reason North Korea is lashing out dates back to Biden’s campaign launch last Saturday, where he rhetorically asked a Philadelphia crowd, “Are we a nation that embraces dictators and tyrants like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un?” That comment referred to Trump’s admiration of autocrats and apparent preference for them over democratic leaders.

North Korea's U.N. ambassador says the Trump administration should consider the possible consequences its seizing of a North Korean cargo ship could have on relations between the two countries and immediately return the vessel.

Kim Song said at a news conference Tuesday that the "heinous act" of seizing the ship was aimed at bringing maximum pressure on North Korea to make it "kneel down."

He said it was "an outright denial of the underlying spirit" of the June 12, 2018, joint statement by President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "that has committed to establish new bilateral relations."

Kim reiterated that he has asked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to take "urgent measures" to contribute to stability on the Korean peninsula.

If the current war of words between Iran and the United States has strange echoes of 2017, it's because the same US strategy is at work.

The Trump administration is using its North Korea playbook on Iran: Use a "maximum pressure" campaign -- the same nomenclature was used for Tehran and Pyongyang -- to box the adversary into a corner, then try to negotiate. Respond to a threat by escalating your own threat. Then negotiate to alleviate tensions and claim a win.

In North Korea's case, it was US President Donald Trump's now-infamous "fire and fury" ultimatum that kicked off the biggest tensions: "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen... he has been very threatening beyond a normal state."

South Korea vowed Monday to move quickly on plans to provide $8 million worth of medical and nutritional aid for North Korean children through U.N. agencies while it also considers sending broader food aid to the country, which says it is suffering its worst drought in decades.

Lee Sang-min, spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, said the government will discuss its plans with the World Food Program and the United Nations Children's Fund, through which the aid would be provided, so it reaches North Korean children and pregnant women quickly. South Korea is also trying to build public and political support for providing wider food aid to North Korea, either directly or through the WFP.

North Korea's state media said last week that the country was suffering its worst drought in more than a century amid reported food shortages.

South Korea plans to set up a joint nuclear energy research centre in Saudi Arabia, the South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology said.

The project aims to boost cooperation between the two countries in the field of nuclear energy research and development, Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.

The agency noted that the two countries are expected to sign an agreement to establish the centre after administrative procedures have been completed.

North Korea on Tuesday called the U.S. seizure of a North Korean cargo ship involved in banned coal exports a "robbery" and demanded that the vessel be returned immediately.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, carried a statement by an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman who accused the United States of betraying the spirit of a summit agreement last June between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump.

Kim and Trump agreed then to a vague statement calling for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and improved bilateral ties, but a second meeting between the leaders collapsed in February over mismatched demands in sanctions relief and disarmament.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said North Korea is unlikely to ever give up all its nuclear weapons, and that President Donald Trump was right to walk away from deal with leader Kim Jong-un in February.

In an interview with CBS that taped on May 10, Gates said North Koreans have come to see some modest nuclear capabilities as “essential to their national survival.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the military to boost its strike capability a day after he directed a successful long-range strike drill amid stalled nuclear negotiations with the United States.

Kim “stressed the need to further increase the capability of the defense units in the forefront area and on the western front to carry out combat tasks and keep full combat posture to cope with any emergency,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Friday.

He noted "genuine peace and security of the country are guaranteed only by the strong physical force capable of defending its sovereignty,” it said, adding Kim "set forth important tasks for further increasing the strike ability."

President Donald Trump's attempt to make a "great deal" with North Korea over its nuclear program appears increasingly in peril as Kim Jong Un has ordered new missile tests and directed his country's military "to cope with any emergency."

"Nobody's happy," Trump said Thursday after North Korea launched short-range missiles for the second time in less than a week. On Friday, Kim told his forces to be on high alert after the U.S. seized a large cargo ship that was attempting to smuggle coal out of North Korea in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions.

"(Kim) stressed the need to further increase the capability of the defense units in the forefront area and on the western front to carry out combat tasks and keep full combat posture," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a state media outlet that rarely quotes Pyongyang's leader directly, reported. KCNA said Kim "set forth important tasks for further increasing the strike ability" of North Korea's weapon systems.

North Korea conducted a new weapons test overnight, firing two missiles into the sea between North Korea and Japan, according to reports from the South Korean military. The U.S. military conducted its own missile test just ten minutes later.

It was the second weapons test for North Korea in the past week, following the launch of what are believed to be several short-range missiles on Saturday. The U.S. military’s latest test was also its second in the past week, though the Air Force stresses that the timing is coincidental.

On May 9th, the US seized a North Korean coal carrier ship called the M/V Wise Honest for violating US sanctions on the country, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The civil forfeiture complaint that led to the seizure of the ship was announced by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman for the Southern District of New York, Assistant Director John Brown of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division and Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. of the FBI’s New York Field Office.

The 17,061-ton bulk carrier ship, one of North Korea’s largest, was used to illicitly ship coal from North Korea and to deliver heavy machinery to the DPRK.

North Korea's newest missile has a striking resemblance to an advanced Russian design, according to experts analyzing images from a test of the weapon on Saturday morning.

The missile, which North Korea describes as a "tactical guided weapon," appears superficially to be nearly identical to Russia's Iskander missile — a highly accurate short-range weapon capable of striking targets more than 150 miles away.

Such a system has the potential to challenge missile defenses in South Korea and further escalate tensions in the region. It also shows that North Korea is developing new weapons systems, even as President Trump expresses optimism about a future deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Dozens of North Korean submarines that supposedly disappeared off South Korea's military radar on Monday have now apparently started returning to their bases, according to a military official quoted by Asian news sources on Tuesday.

South Korea said on Sunday that more than 50 of North Korea's submarines, about 70 percent of the country's known fleet, had left their home ports and could not be located, heightening fears that Pyongyang might be poised to attack.

A new satellite image obtained by CNN shows the smoke trail of a Friday rocket launch by North Korea that is likely a short-range missile, according to the group that analyzed the picture.

"The location of the launch, the thick, smoky appearance of the exhaust and the fact that there is only one rocket trail all suggest this was the short-range ballistic missile that North Korea showed in its propaganda," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute.

The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey provided CNN with two images of the smoke trail.

A US official tells CNN that an early analysis says the launches "appear to have been both MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) and what is being looked at as a possible short range ballistic missile."

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE
Analysts have studied a report from North Korea's Korean Central News Agency, which was accompanied by a few images, and determined that the "projectile" fired by North Korea Saturday morning, was, in fact, a short-range ballistic missile.

In addition to images released by KCNA, independent analysts managed to capture images of the launch.

Our friends at @planetlabs got a shot of a North Korean short-range ballistic missile just after launch at 10:54 am local time. @DaveSchmerler found it. pic.twitter.com/aIZ0Dcc1u1

— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) May 5, 2019
Lucky shot! Captured by @planetlabs Planetscope satellite at 0154 UTC (1054 local) on Saturday as it overflew Wonsan, North Korea. pic.twitter.com/g5QgVI8hJf

— Martyn Williams (@martyn_williams) May 5, 2019

North Korea fired several short-range projectiles off its east coast on Saturday, in a move likely to raise tensions as denuclearization talks with the United States remain stalled.

The North fired the projectiles between 9:06 a.m. and 9:27 a.m. from near Wonsan, a coastal town east of Pyongyang, the capital, the South Korean military said in a statement. They flew 70 to 200 kilometers before landing in the sea between North Korea and Japan, the statement said.

On Monday night, the Department of Justice issued a “wanted” poster for the leader of Free Joseon, a shadowy group of Korean exiles suspected of leading a violent assault on the North Korean embassy in Madrid on February 22. A suspect, Adrian Hong Chang, “is considered to be armed and dangerous,” says the poster, which includes a color photo of the fugitive and instructs arresting police officers or anyone who knows his whereabouts to contact the US Marshals Service.

The public notification from the DOJ underscores the seriousness of the US government’s efforts to track down two Koreans sought for possible extradition to Spain under a criminal warrant issued in March by Judge José de la Mata of Spain’s high court. The very unusual move has stirred a backlash from US foreign-policy hard-liners on North Korea who say the Trump administration’s manhunt for the suspects amounts to support for that country’s 34-year-old dictator.

North Korea’s vice foreign minister said on Tuesday that the United States will face undesired consequences if it fails to present a new position in denuclearization talks by the end of the year, state media reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has set a year-end deadline for the United States to show more flexibility after his second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump failed to produce a deal to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

But Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have brushed aside the deadline, calling for Kim to take action on his pledge to denuclearize after years of pursuing nuclear and rocket programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

National security adviser John Bolton insisted Sunday that the U.S. did not pay North Korea $2 million for the medical care of Otto Warmbier, despite a U.S. official signing a document pledging to do so.

Speaking to Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday," Bolton said it "appears" as though North Korea presented then-U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Joseph Yun with a hospital bill for Warmbier, who fell into a coma after he was detained in 2016.

The summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Vladimir Putin was significant on various levels and reaffirms the onset of a multipolar world.

Knowing your enemies and understanding your friends is a maxim to live by. At the level of nation states, at a historic moment, defined by Gramsci’s rather overused but nonetheless prescient formulation, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born,” it is more than a rule to live by, it is a prerequisite of survival.

Failing to understand their enemies was central to the grim fate that befell Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the countries they led, Iraq and Libya. Thus far, the North Koreans, led by Kim Jong-un, have not allowed themselves to go down the same path.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the U.S. has been acting in “bad faith” since his Hanoi meeting with President Trump over the stalemated issue of North Korean denuclearization.

The North Korean leader told the Korean Central News Agency that, "the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the region is now at a standstill and has reached a critical point," the Straits Times of Singapore reported,

Kim warned that the situation "may return to its original state as the U.S. took a unilateral attitude in bad faith at the recent second DPRK-US summit talks," the Korean Central News Agency added.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is shrouded in the veil of political uncertainty, but analysts believe it could be a roundabout way to reboot denuclearization talks with the US.

The meeting is taking place in Vladivostok, 129 kilometers from the border Russia shares with North Korea. It is Russia’s shortest international border, only 17km along the Tyumen River. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, North Korea has figured little in Moscow’s geopolitical calculus, as Russia sided with the West in backing UN sanctions against Pyongyang.

The collapse of denuclearization talks between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi back in February, however, appears to have pushed Pyongyang and Moscow closer together. What does that mean for Washington?

Four North Korean officials have reportedly been executed for selling information to the US ahead of the failed nuclear arms meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, it emerged today.

The four workers, all said to be from the foreign ministry, were allegedly killed by firing squad after talks in Vietnam between the two countries broke down.

One of the four, said to have been shot dead in the capital Pyongyang earlier this month, was reportedly a diplomat from North Korea's embassy in Hanoi.

Dictator Kim, 35, blamed the failure of the summit on information leaked to the US before the meeting at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi in February, according to Japanese news agency Asia Press.

The executions were watched by members of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and Korean People's Army, according to reports by local media.

Today is a big day for Korea. The first face-to-face summit of Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un takes place.

At the same time the 2nd annual Belt and Road Forum kicks off in Beijing.

This meeting between Putin and Kim has been in the works for a while but rumors of it only surfaced last week. But don’t let the idea that this was put together at the last minute fool you.

It wasn’t.

The future of Korea could be decided by these two men today.

I know that sounds bold. But hear me out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was “pleased” with the outcome of his summit meeting Thursday in the Russian city of Vladivostok with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying he would discuss the results with China and the United States.

“We are all pleased with the outcome of the talks -- both I and my colleagues,” the Russian leader said. “Chairman Kim Jong Un is a fairly open person, leading a free discussion on all issues that were on the agenda.”

Asked if Kim would be willing to continue his contact with the US, Putin said the leader in Pyongyang would be guided by his “national interests,” but added that “we can’t resolve anything without talks” when it came to the crisis on the Korean peninsula. Putin, who travels next to Beijing, said he would discuss the summit with his Chinese counterparts.

North Korea has replaced Kim Jong Un’s right-hand man who steered nuclear talks with the United States, apparently blaming him for a failed summit between the two countries, a South Korean lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Panmunjom, South Korea – Patrick Gauchat’s workspace literally is a minefield – a thin swath of isolated territory, crowded with tanks, artillery, and thousands of tense soldiers separating North and South Korea.

The Swiss major general’s mission here is to make sure the two countries comply with the 66-year-old armistice that ended the bloody Korean War. In his spare time, Gauchat tunes in to the topsy-turvey negotiations between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un – and waits for peace to make his job obsolete.

“I think Trump’s trying something new. He can surprise even his staff,” Gauchat said over lunch in the squat building that serves as a dining hall for the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission.

In its second scathing critique of a high-ranking US figure in less than a week, Pyongyang has described demands by the US national security adviser, John Bolton, for proof that North Korea is in the process of denuclearisation as “nonsense".

A former US Marine was arrested in connection with an "especially violent" raid on the North Korean embassy in Madrid, Spain.

Christopher Ahn - a member of a group which seeks the overthrow of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was expected to be arraigned on Friday in a Los Angeles federal court, according to Reuters, citing a law enforcement official and a source close to the group.

According to El Pais and El Confidencial, the group is tied to the CIA - however there has been no corroboration of this outside of their reporting. The CIA has denied any involvement, however Spanish government sources say their response was "unconvincing."

El Pais called the attack "especially violent."

The US does not believe North Korea successfully launched a fully operational new weapon after Pyongyang claimed it had conducted a "new tactical guided weapons firing test" on Wednesday, according to a US official directly familiar with the latest assessment.

The initial US intelligence assessment is North Korea tested components for an anti-tank weapon, rather than a fully operational new weapon, the official told CNN on Thursday.

The assessment is based on a review of information gathered from satellites and aircraft that did not register any indication of a launch of any type of short-range tactical weapon or a ballistic missile, the official said.

The highly anticipated second meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi ended abruptly earlier this year without agreement after Washington refused to offer North Korea any relief from its economic sanctions while pushing for the country’s complete nuclear disarmament.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry official has said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was “talking nonsense” in suggesting that working-level negotiations between the countries would be finished by the year’s end, reported state-run KCNA.

The official, Kwon Jong Gun added: “I am afraid that if Pompeo engages in the talks again, the table will be lousy once again and the talks will become entangled. Therefore, even in the case of possible resumption of the dialogue with the US, I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but other person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will hold a meeting in Russia before the end of the month, the Kremlin said on Thursday. Kim will visit to Russia at Putin’s invitation, according to the statement.

For the first time details of an extensive anti-smuggling surveillance operation involving eight United Nations member countries in the East China Sea, in waters near China and North Korea, have been revealed by a new Wall Street Journal investigation.

WSJ reporters accompanied the USS Milius and an allied Japanese warship, cooperating further with military surveillance aircraft, on a mission to thwart sanctions busting illegal oil transfers on the high seas to North Korean tankers.

Kim Jong Un's sister may have been kicked out of North Korea's top decision-making body, NK News reported, suggesting a fall from favor.

Kim Yo Jong was not listed as an alternate member of the ruling party's politburoduring an important party gathering last week, the North Korea news site reported.

She is widely referred to as North Korea's "princess" and has accompanied Kim Jong Un to multiple international events, including the recent summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam.

North Korea’s cyber capabilities and financial networks pose a threat to Southeast Asia’s growing, yet vulnerable, cryptocurrency sector, according to British defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute.

North Korea has been heavily sanctioned for years by the United Nations, the United States and other countries over its nuclear and missile ambitions. The reclusive state has also been accused of using cyberattacks to gain financial resources needed to keep its nuclear programs going.

President Trump will meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House on Thursday, as Moon attempts to get U.S. talks with North Korea back on track.

It will be the first meeting for Moon and Trump since the failed summit in Hanoi, which ended with no agreement from Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un on denuclearization.

For Moon, the summit was a setback. The South Korean leader has put his political legacy on the line in pursuit of better relations between the two Koreas.

North Korea will hold a plenary session of its ruling party’s central committee on Wednesday, a day after leader Kim Jong Un chaired a politburo meeting to discuss ways to make progress under the “prevailing tense situation”, state media reported.

China and North Korea on Monday opened a new “highway port” border crossing in Ji’an City on the Sino-DPRK border, the local municipal government announced in a statement. In a ceremony held in the presence of local officials, the bridge reportedly opened to the public this week, with 120 Chinese visitors then allowed to cross.

he Americans lost about eighty men killed and wounded, and about the same number captured—or almost half of Task Force Smith. North Korea suffered about 130 casualties, plus four tanks destroyed or immobilized. The American sacrifice had delayed the North Korean advance—but only for a few hours. Six years before, the U.S. Army managed to stop Hitler’s SS panzer divisions at the Battle of the Bulge. In July 1950, the Army was a speed bump.

In July 1950, North Korea defeated the United States Army.

Moon Jae-in plans to ask the U.S. to ease sanctions on North Korea when he meets President Donald Trump at the White House this week, say unnamed South Korean officials cited by the Korean Times.

The South Korean president is visiting Washington D.C. for a summit on North Korean nuclear diplomacy, where the two leaders are expected to discuss how to achieve the denuclearization of the north and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

“Moon plans to embrace the risk of personal diplomacy by asking Trump to grant reciprocal measures after Seoul and Washington laid out the necessary groundwork via working-level discussions,” a South Korean official told the Korea Times.

One of the key elements of any deal to denuclearize North Korea will be easing the many-layered sanctions regime that the United Nations and countries around the world have placed on the North. On paper, these sanctions impose restrictions on financial transfers, seafood imports, oil and gas trading, and a host of other activities. In reality, North Korea has found a lot of ways to make money. One of those methods? Wired reports that an elite hacking team comprising fewer than 20 individuals pilfered $1 billion in 2018 alone.

Moscow and Beijing are working out joint actions at the UN Security Council that will give impetus to the process of resolving the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said on Thursday.

The head of the UN World Food Programme has called for the White House and other western donors to put children’s lives before politics and fund a major injection of aid to North Korea despite the failure of Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un.

David Beasley, a former Republican governor of South Carolina who backed Trump’s campaign for the US presidency, said he had heard concerns that responding to an appeal from Pyongyang would prop up the Kim regime.

But in an interview with the Guardian, the World Food Programme’s executive director said, “as we speak”, teams of experts were canvassing the North Korean countryside to provide the donors with evidence of the scale of the crisis.

Due to flooding and a heatwave last year, North Korea is facing a shortfall of 1.4m tonnes in food production this year, including wheat, rice, potatoes and soybean.

They are not widely known. And their chances at achieving their stated aim — overthrowing the North Korean government — are believed to be slim at best.

Yet the defector group that calls itself Free Joseon (Free North Korea) could be the first organization to have successfully infiltrated a North Korean diplomatic mission.

North Korean Embassy Attack Suspects Fled To U.S., Spanish Court Says
Last week, Free Joseon claimed responsibility for a Feb. 22 raid on Pyongyang's embassy in Madrid. Ten intruders armed with knives and replica pistols entered the embassy, according to Spanish authorities.

They say the Free Joseon operatives tied up North Korean diplomats and made off with computers, cellphones and other equipment — and flew to the U.S., where the group's leader shared information with the FBI. The U.S. has denied involvement in the raid.

While diplomacy seems to be slowing down in recent weeks, there are still high hopes that a peace deal with North Korea is possible, and that this may include denuclearization, even if it isn’t the US version which requires Kim to give the US all the weapons directly.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is all for that idea, and said on Tuesday that they are fully prepared to act as the monitor for any nuclear deal that might get reached.

IAEA Director Amano Yukiya tod the UN Security Council that the agency could have inspectors back in North Korea within a matter of weeks if a deal came into effect that would allow them to go there.

Amano said he believes the IAEA is the only body equipped to carry out the job at all. This may not sit well with the Trump Administration, as the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed Iran is in compliance with that nuclear deal, despite the US withdrawing from the pact and falsely accusing Iran of non-compliance.

The cast of characters will be familiar to observers of secret intelligence operations.

The embassy burglars sought information, a la Watergate. Unlike Watergate, they came by day. They invaded the Embassy in a quiet residential neighborhood, assaulted the staff, tied people up, and demanded computers and files.

A BBC report says they were especially interested in former ambassador to Madrid, Kim Hyok-chol, a confidante of Kim Jong-un.

He was a natural target for those seeking intelligence about North Korea’s nuclear program. In February Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016, described him as nuclear expert.

“At a very young age, Kim Hyok Chol was placed on the task force that wrote the drafts for North Korea’s nuclear strategy documents at its foreign ministry,” Thae told reporters at a news conference in Seoul.

El Pais on the possible motive for the brazen attack:

Mile by mile and person by person, North Korea is the most destabilizing nation on earth. The small, poor and isolated country is building nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. Americans who once felt invulnerable are worrying about the possibility of nuclear war.

While most everyone agrees that something must be done about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, there is no consensus on what to do. Military action could trigger a destructive war, sanctions might do nothing or trigger regime collapse, and negotiations aren’t likely to result in the Korean Peninsula’s denuclearization.

A North Korean official says the U.S. missed a golden opportunity at the recent summit in Vietnam, and that Kim Jong Un will soon decide whether to pull out of nuclear negotiations with the U.S.

A Spanish judge released new information about a raid on the embassy of North Korea in Spain. The leader of the raid was a shady U.S. 'activist' who earlier reports from Spain associated with the CIA.

On March 13 the Spanish newspaper El Pais Spain reported that Spanish authorities identified two CIA related persons who took part in a raid of the North Korean embassy in Madrid. The raid happened on February 22, a few days before the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, and seemed designed to influence that event. We asked Who Ordered The CIA To Assault North Korea's Embassy In Spain?

On the day that their talks in Hanoi collapsed last month, U.S. President Donald Trump handed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a piece of paper that included a blunt call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States, according to the document seen by Reuters.

Trump gave Kim both Korean and English-language versions of the U.S. position at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel on Feb. 28, according to a source familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was the first time that Trump himself had explicitly defined what he meant by denuclearization directly to Kim, the source said.

US President Donald Trump reportedly proposed that North Korea transfer all its nuclear weapons to the US, a denuclearization template borrowed from Libya before the NATO intervention and brutal murder of its leader.

The second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in February wrapped up early, ending with a big question mark over the future of the talks and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In the wake of the Vietnam meeting, Pyongyang and Washington offered different accounts of what actually transpired, with the White House alleging that North Korea demanded all sanctions be lifted from it. Pyongyang insisted that it was talking only about partial relief. The essence of the talks was kept under a veil of secrecy.

As the Hanoi summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un fell to pieces in February, Trump reportedly demanded that Kim transfer all of his nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the US.

Reuters reports that it has viewed the note detailing Trump's demands that was given to Kim February 28 at Hanoi's Metropole hotel. The note marked the first time that Trump specifically outlined his vision of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and was written in both Korean and in English, the outlet said, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

The document called for "fully dismantling North Korea's nuclear infrastructure, chemical and biological warfare program and related dual-use capabilities; and ballistic missiles, launchers, and associated facilities."

An opposition group that stormed the North Korean embassy in Spain last month says it handed over data stolen from the raid to the FBI, and a law enforcement source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News that the bureau has received the information.

Receiving intelligence stolen from a foreign embassy in a NATO country puts the FBI in a delicate position, but there is no U.S. legal prohibition against the American government making use of the material, legal experts say.

The prospects of renewed nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea will be on the table next month when the president of South Korea visits the White House.

President Donald Trump will meet with South Korea counterpart Moon Jae-in on April 11 to discuss trade, military cooperation, and North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the White House said late Thursday.

"The alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea remains the linchpin of peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the region," said a White House statement on the meeting.

The fate of North Korea's nuclear weapons – and an agreement to dismantle them – remains uncertain after the collapse of the February summit meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The top US commander in South Korea told Congress Wednesday that US forces on the peninsula wouldn’t be ready if diplomacy between the US and DPRK suddenly collapsed and the military standoff returned. His fears reflected a Western belief that Pyongyang is withdrawing from denuclearization plans, but in Korea, the situation isn’t so clear.

US Army Gen. Robert Abrams, the commander of US Forces Korea, told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that, so long as the diplomatic push for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula continues, his forces have enough intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance resources to maintain an adequate defense of South Korea and detect an attack from the North. However, if things got worse and the atmosphere suddenly returned to the hostile tension of the past, "then our stance, our posture is not adequate to provide us an unblinking eye to give us early warning and indicators."

A shadowy North Korean dissident group claimed responsibility for last month's raid on Pyongyang's embassy in the Spanish capital, Madrid on Tuesday but disputed allegations that what occurred at the diplomatic compound was an "attack" involving armed intruders.

Cheollima Civil Defense, a secretive organization whose goal is to overthrow the Kim regime in North Korea, also denied that any other foreign governments were involved in the operation or that it was related to President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's summit in Hanoi, which occurred days later.

Last Thursday, for the first time since the second U.S.–North Korea summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the end of February, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions related to North Korea, designating two China-based shipping companies that had facilitated North Korean sanctions-evasion activities.

But a day later, President Donald Trump perplexed analysts by tweeting that he had ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to withdraw the “large scale Sanctions” that he said had been announced on March 22. No such sanctions had been announced that day; North Korea–watchers were left scratching their heads. Several news agencies ran stories suggesting that the president’s announcement pertained to the two Chinese entities that had been designated a day earlier, but that was hardly convincing as a “large scale” sanctions package.

The U.S. envoy for North Korea is visiting Beijing this week, a sign Washington seeks China’s help in reviving nuclear disarmament negotiations after the summit meeting in Vietnam between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un collapsed last month.

North Korean officials reversed course and returned to talks with the South at a joint liaison office near their border, a sign Pyongyang remains open to diplomacy with Seoul and Washington after their detente had shown signs of strain.

In a single tweet, President Donald Trump overturned his own “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea and publicly undermined his own national security team with a decision to yank back sanctions that his administration had announced only a day before.

The official explanation from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders — “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary” — raised more questions than it answered.

Is the pressure campaign over? Will more sanctions be eased? Why are they no longer necessary when no nuclear deal has been reached? And why were the sanctions announced with great fanfare in the first place if the president opposes them?

As it turned out, the sanctions Trump was referring to hadn’t been announced in the first place.

US President Donald Trump has ordered the withdrawal of the new round of North Korea-related sanctions that had been announced earlier by the US Treasury.

The move was announced by the US President through Twitter on Friday.

“It was announced today by the US Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!” Trump wrote, capitalizing the “Sanctions”.

North Korea is withdrawing from a joint liaison office near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with South Korea, a key symbol of the rapprochement and ongoing peace process between the two countries.

The move comes after the US slapped two Chinese firms with sanctions for doing business with Pyongyang, the first action taken by Washington against North Korea since the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi ended early with no agreement.
South Korea's Unification Ministry announced the move Friday, saying the decision had been taken by the North on "instructions from the superior authority."

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Lee Geum-Sum fled south with her young family.

On the way, she had to stop to feed her baby daughter and became separated from her husband and son. The conflict tore the family apart - they were divided by a border they were forbidden to cross.

For 68 years, Mrs Lee heard nothing from her husband and son. She built a new life with her daughter in South Korea's capital, Seoul, but never forgot the family she lost.

Then, at 91 years of age, Mrs Lee received a letter from the Red Cross, saying her son was still alive and in North Korea.

"That’s why I've lived so long! To see him!" Mrs Lee says.

Now, alongside dozens of other families, she has the chance to travel to North Korea and see the son she lost more than 60 years ago.

Of course it was just a coincidence that the first organized attack on a North Korean facility by internal rebels (supposedly) took place days before the scheduled North Korean-US summit in Hanoi. Ten masked men stole computers, interrogated North Korean officials, and drove off in a number of luxury cars. Credit was taken by a group that calls itself Chollima.

Despite constantly being told by the Western media that this is a totally unknown group, to anyone who knows the least bit about Korean history, this is laughable. In the mid-1950s, China’s “Great Leap Forward” was in progress, and Chollima was the Korean equivalent. It means “speed” of an unusual sort, and the symbolism was based on a mythological winged horse that could supposedly gallop at one thousand li (over a mile) a minute.

A new report by the prominent Japanese daily Asahi has revealed that a key reason talks with the US broke down last month in Hanoi was due to Kim Jong Un’s denial of the existence of “secret” nuclear facilities, resulting in disagreements that have reportedly left Kim disappointed and impatient, to the point that the north last week threatened to shut down talks altogether.

Citing the report, which relies on unnamed officials, Bloomberg notes, "The U.S. had requested specific names and locations of facilities to be shut down as part of the talks but North Korea said only that 'all' facilities be closed without giving details."

The Trump administration is privately discussing how to respond should North Korea decide to conduct a satellite launch as talks between Washington and Pyongyang appear to be at another impasse, CNN has learned.

Rhetoric between the two countries has become more heated and provocative in recent weeks following President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's no-deal summit in Hanoi but a North Korean satellite launch would pose a new, high-stakes dilemma for the administration.

Such a launch by the North Koreans would force Trump to make a touch choice: Take a hard line against Pyongyang knowing it could jeopardize already fragile negotiations or implement a more nuanced approach in hopes of preserving the possibility of a diplomatic resolution.

A senior U.S. arms control official said on Tuesday the only way for North Korea to achieve security and development is to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.

The Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un last month broke down over differences about U.S. demands for Pyongyang to denuclearize, as well as Pyongyang’s demand for major relief from international sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests, which it pursued for years in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“North Korea must understand that the only way to achieve the security and development that it seeks is to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction, all of its ballistic missile programs as numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions demand,” said Yleem Poblete, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.

On June 13, 2002, Shin Hyo-soon and Shim Mi-sun, both 14 years old, walked along the side of a road on their way to a birthday party, chattering and laughing, as children do. They never saw the mammoth U.S. military truck with two soldiers on board as it crushed them, grinding their bodies into the South Korean earth.

A "tragic accident" say U.S. diplomats and military officers; an example of the heedless arrogance of American troops who have long since worn out their welcome, say growing numbers of South Koreans. Under the terms of the agreement between South Korea and the U.S. – which mandates that American soldiers charged with crimes on Korean soil are subject to U.S. law – Sgt. Fernando Nino and Sgt. Mark Walker were tried in a military court and acquitted of negligent homicide charges. The process was widely resented, and the reaction of virtually all political parties in South Korea was to denounce the verdict as a sham.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

A statement issued by Seoul’s presidential Blue House on Monday said the time was now right for the two Koreas to hold further talks — building upon President Moon Jae-in’s policy of rapprochement which saw him meet Kim three times last year.

“We’re in a deep agony over how to take advantage of this baton that has been handed over to us,” said the statement, attributed to a high-ranking official.

“We agree with the view that no deal is better than a bad deal … However, in reality, it is difficult to achieve complete denuclearization at one stroke. I think we need to reconsider the so-called all or nothing strategy.”

It is premature to say whether recent activity at some of North Korea’s rocket facilities involved preparation for a missile launch, South Korea’s defence minister told a parliamentary hearing on Monday.

Perhaps we are pursuing the wrong objective. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program started in the 1950s. They will not abandon this capability. Continued pursuit of this impossible dream allows Kim to outplay us and imposes diplomatic, reputational and financial costs on America and our allies.

President Trump’s claims that reduced tensions with North Korea resulting from his personal diplomacy with Kim Jong Un demonstrated progress toward a nuclear deal were undercut Friday as Pyongyang lashed out at the administration’s “gangsterlike” tactics and blamed his top aides for the failed summit last month.

In the latest sign of mounting hostilities since disarmament talks collapsed in Hanoi, a top North Korean official also declared that leader Kim Jong Un is weighing cutting off bilateral dialogue with the United States. The threat came amid evidence that the regime had recently rebuilt a space rocket and missile launch site and raised doubts about the future of the negotiations.

The CIA is the main suspect in the military style raid on the North Korean embassy in Madrid. It now launched a somewhat hapless effort to deflect from it. The Spanish report in which Spanish government sources accuse the CIA said:

At least two of the 10 assailants who broke into the embassy and interrogated diplomatic staff have been identified and have connections to the US intelligence agency. The CIA has denied any involvement but government sources say their response was “unconvincing.”