Minister Kim sees no major improvement in inter-Korean relationsDespite the recent gesture by North Korea to resume dialogue with regional powers, South Korea appears to be maintaining a cautious stance with its top diplomat saying he does not expect to see “drastic improvement” in relations with the unpredictable northern rival.Pyongyang’s First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan will travel to N

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- The United States has invited a top North Korean official to New York to talk about the next steps necessary to resume the long-stalled six-nation discussions aimed at ridding the North of its nuclear programs.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Sunday that North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan will meet this week with U.S. officials to explore his

A top North Korean diplomat handling nuclear negotiations with the outside world plans to make a rare trip to New York later this week for talks with U.S. officials, multiple diplomatic sources said Sunday.First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan is expected to visit New York around July 28 on a trip that includes a meeting with Stephen Bosworth, the top U.S. envoy on Korean Peninsula affairs, the

North Koreans voted in local elections Sunday as state media stepped up calls for loyalty to the ruling Workers’ Party and leader Kim Jong-il as the totalitarian leader has been trying to hand power over to his youngest son.Kim cast his ballot at a polling station in Pyongyang, along with his heir-apparent son Kim Jong-un and a senior party official, according to the official Korean Central News A

BALI, Indonesia, July 23 (Yonhap) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan held a brief meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Pak Ui-chun, on the sidelines of a key ASEAN forum here, an official said Saturday.The informal meeting between Kim and Pak came a day after the chief nuclear envoys from the two Koreas met for the first time since 2008 and agreed to make joint efforts to resume

The nominee to become the new U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Thursday the allies still have doubts over North Korea's seriousness about dialogue despite its recent peace gestures. "We are not convinced that they really are ready to return to serious diplomacy and negotiations. This is why, I think, Seoul and Washington have both been very cautious in just rushing back to the negotiating table

Recent heavy rains in North Korea have slightly injured 96 people and destroyed thousands of houses in a border city alone, an international relief agency said Thursday.   Among the injured people, 14 patients were moved to a nearby hospital in Kaesong, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a report, without elaborating on their conditions.   The relie

‘Chance of North’s News analysis communication with S. Korean media slim’North Korea’s recent gesture to open its doors wider to Western media indicates the reclusive state’s dilemma of wanting to escape international isolation while keeping its people marooned, analysts and officials here say. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency recently signed agreements with the New York-based Ass

North Korea is holding more than 138,000 people in its detention facilities across the country, a private organization on North Korean human rights said Wednesday.The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights said about 130,500 people are being detained in five harsh political prison camps while the others are languishing in at least 182 ordinary detention centers.It also reported serious viol

North Korea’s imports of luxury goods from China almost doubled in a year, a report from China showed Wednesday, indicating the ongoing shopping spree by the elite class of the reclusive regime even as its people are supposedly dying of hunger. According to Beijing customs, quoted by Seoul officials, the total volume of trade between Pyongyang and its last-remaining ally and economic benefactor su

North Korea has continued its shopping spree for Armani, Gucci and other luxury goods for its ruling elites, a South Korean official said Wednesday, the latest sign that international sanctions on the North have not been fully implemented.The U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 ban the communist country from trading in weapons of mass destruction, some conven

North Korea has been able to survive unaffected by Arab Spring-style political unrest due to its tolerance for "inconsistencies" like informal markets within a communist state, a top North Korean expert said Tuesday."What makes North Korea still viable and function? We can see all kinds of gaps in this system and one of them is informal markets," Stephen W. Linton, chairman of the Eugene Bell Foun