South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un will meet at the Military Demarcation Line that divides the peninsula for their summit Friday, Seoul said, in an occasion laden with symbolism. Moon will greet his visitor at the concrete blocks that mark the border between the two Koreas in the Demilitarized […]
North Korea
North Korea criticises US ‘hypocrisy’ over human rights record
North Korea condemned US criticism of its human rights record as “ridiculous”, days before leader Kim Jong-Un’s summit with the South and ahead of a meeting with US President Donald Trump. The isolated North has been accused of a litany of state-sanctioned rights abuses including extrajudicial killing, torture, brutal crackdowns on dissent, and even kidnapping […]
G-7 leaders meet to deliberate over Russia, North Korea
TORONTO: The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations met in Toronto on Sunday seeking a common front against what they see as aggression from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The envoys were also keen to glean clues from their US colleague about whether President Donald Trump will tear up the Iran nuclear deal and […]
In another diplomatic breakthrough, hotline opens between Seoul and Pyongyang
SEOUL: The two Koreas opened a hotline between their leaders Friday, a week before a summit between North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in in the Demilitarized Zone. The line links the presidential Blue House in Seoul with the Pyongyang office of the nuclear armed North’s State Affairs Commission, which Kim chairs […]
Trump and Kim to hold historic meeting
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has agreed to a historic first meeting with Kim Jong Un in a stunning development in America’s high-stakes nuclear standoff with North Korea. Standing in front of the White House, South Korean National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong announced the first ever meeting between a US president and a North Korean leader, […]
S. Korea’s Moon to send special envoys to North
SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in will send a team of special envoys, including Seoul’s spy chief, to the North on Monday to push for talks between Washington and Pyongyang on nuclear weapons. The delegation, announced by Moon’s office on Sunday, is the latest chapter in a remarkable Olympics-driven detente between the two Koreas. An […]
Trump to hit North Korea with ‘largest-ever’ sanctions
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will on Friday announce sanctions against 56 North Korea-linked shipping and trade entities, hailing the “largest-ever” package of sanctions on the Pyongyang regime. Trump will use a speech to conservatives just outside Washington to step up his campaign of “maximum pressure,” according to excerpts. “Today I am announcing that we […]
North Korea slams US as ‘gross violator of human rights’
North Korea has denounced US President Donald Trump’s administration as a “gross violator of human rights”, its state media reported Wednesday. The official Korean Central News Agency released its English-language report on Pyongyang’s annual white paper on US human rights violations as Trump began his State of the Union speech, in which he condemned the […]
Mattis wants to keep pressure on N. Korea
The United States and South Korea are going to keep tightening the screws on Pyongyang so that the hermit state gives up its nuclear program, Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said Friday. “As two peace-loving nations, the Republic of Korea and America welcome the Olympic Games talks between the ROK and DPRK while at the same […]
Trump, Putin discuss North Korea over phone call
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump discussed the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program in a phone call Thursday, in which the US president took the unusual step of thanking his Russian counterpart for praising America’s economy. The two heads of state discussed “the situation in several crisis zones, with a focus on solving the nuclear […]