The number of North Koreans defecting to South Korea dropped sharply last year apparently due to the North’s border closure to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus, government data showed. 　According to the data provided by the Unification Ministry, a total of 229 North Koreans settled down in South Korea last year. 　The number was far fewer than the 1,047 tallied a year earlier and 1,137 registered in 2018. 　During the first quarter, 135 North Koreans defected to the South. The

North Korea's official newspaper on Wednesday urged the people to keep their guard up against the coronavirus pandemic as the number of global COVID-19 cases has exceeded 100 million. "The cases of the new coronavirus have now exceeded 100 million with the death toll rising well over 2.14 million," said the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the North's ruling party. "We need to keep alert and ramp up emergency antivirus efforts more than ever." The paper called on the people to c

North Korea‘s state news agency on Tuesday strongly slammed Japan’s defense chief for his recent remarks over a military parade held in Pyongyang, saying Tokyo is just making a fuss and inciting hostility toward its country. 　 North Korea conducted a massive military parade in central Pyongyang in mid-January, showing off a new submarine-launched ballistic missile and other state-of-the-art weaponry. 　 Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said that Tokyo is working to collect and an

North Korea, which has often been criticized by the United Nations for recurring human rights abuses, condemned Australia at a UN meeting for committing human rights violations, UN Watch said Tuesday. The group is a Geneva-based organization that follows UN activities. “The deep-rooted racial discrimination and xenophobia rampant in the Australian public sector must come to an end,” North Korea’s UN ambassador said at a United Nations Human Rights Council session Jan. 20. He

North Korea's official newspaper called Tuesday for putting together thorough and workable plans to carry out a five-year economic development goal unveiled during a recent party meeting, urging its people to break away from the practice of setting far-fetched objectives. At the eighth congress of the ruling Workers' Party earlier this month, the North put forward the new economic development plan focusing on self-reliance in the face of the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and global sancti

US negotiators under the new Joe Biden administration could face a choice between the pursuit of an incremental dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program and a big deal calling for its complete denuclearization, a congressional report has said. The recently updated Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on diplomacy with Pyongyang comes as White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said Friday that the administration will adopt a "new strategy" in handling North Korean threats throu

North Korea’s former acting ambassador to Kuwait has been living with his family in South Korea for at least a year, a local newspaper reported Monday. The diplomat, Ryu Hyun-woo, was the North’s acting chief of mission in Kuwait in 2019, when he defected to the South with his family, who the source said had motivated him to defect in hopes of a “better future.” If true, it is the third time a ranking official from Pyongyang has defected to Seoul since 2012, when leade

Unification Minister Lee In-young on Monday stressed the need to find a flexible solution to the upcoming joint military exercise between Washington and Seoul, to prevent any further flare-up of cross-border tensions. 　 Lee underlined four areas that need to be taken into account when deciding whether to hold the combined military drills, which have long irked Pyongyang. These are COVID-19, the Tokyo Olympics, the lack of an established US policy on the Korean Peninsula, and Seoul’s envi

Unification Minister Lee In-young expressed hope Monday for a "wise" and "flexible" solution on whether to hold joint military drills with the United States so that the issue will not cause serious tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Lee made the remarks during a press conference for the new year in Seoul, weeks after North Korea demanded an end to joint military exercises between South Korea and the US as a major precondition for the improvement in inter-Korean relations. &q

A North Korean propaganda media outlet has mentioned Joe Biden's election as US president for the first time over the weekend, though official state media have stayed mum on his administration. DPRK Today, one of the North's propaganda websites, made the mention of Biden on Saturday, citing a report from Jaju Sibo, a pro-unification online media outlet in South Korea. "The US Congress failed to declare Biden as the president on this day and had to confirm Biden as the winner the following

A North Korean diplomat has defected to South Korea while serving as the acting chief of mission at the country's embassy in Kuwait, a source said Monday. Ryu Hyun-woo, who had served as the embassy's charge d'affaires since Ambassador So Chang-sik was expelled from Kuwait after a UN resolution was adopted in 2017, entered South Korea, along with his family, according to the source. Further details were not available, including the timing of the defection. But a media report earlier said that

Critics slam the ban as ill-conceived and unprecedented

Nearly five out of ten North Koreans were undernourished from 2017 to 2019, the highest in the Asia-Pacific region, the UN said in an inter-agency report. East Timor and Afghanistan followed. In the same period, seven out of ten North Korean children aged two or below did not have minimum acceptable diet. In the report released Wednesday by the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Program, World Health Organization and UNICEF, seven out of ten infants younger than six months old i

North Korean experts said Thursday it would be a mistake for US President Joe Biden to build on the 2018 Singapore agreement to address North Korea’s denuclearization. President Moon Jae-in has suggested Washington start re-engaging with Pyongyang based on the deal. “What the administration should strive for instead is a comprehensive, well-crafted agreement such as the arms control agreements we had with the Soviet Union,” Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northe

South Korea should refrain from "prioritizing" a summit between US President Joe Biden and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un when it starts working with the new administration on the stalled nuclear issue, a US expert said Friday. Michael Green, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made the remark during a virtual forum on the Korea-US alliance, stressing that Biden's team is less likely to respond to such a call, given that it is already l