North Korean soldiers were spotted dismantling propaganda loudspeakers on Wednesday, a day after the country’s leader Kim Jong-un put on hold military actions against South Korea. According to the North’s state media Korean Central News Agency, Kim on Tuesday presided over a preparatory Central Military Commission meeting and put on hold plans proposed by the General Staff Department of the Korean People’s Army. On June 14, the North had announced plans to increase military

North Korea's propaganda outlets have withdrawn articles critical of South Korea en masse after state media reported on leader Kim Jong-un's decision to suspend "military action plans" against the South. Kim made the decision to hold off on military plans against the South during a preliminary meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party on Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said, without providing reasons. The move came as a surprise

WASHINGTON -- The United States and South Korea remain ready to engage North Korea even as tensions have escalated over its threats against the South, a US official said Tuesday. Marc Knapper, deputy assistant secretary of state for Korea and Japan, said the allies want to see a return to the spirit of the June 2018 Singapore summit where US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to work toward complete denuclearization and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. &

WASHINGTON -- The United States is constantly looking at options to address North Korea's military threats, a top US Air Force general said Tuesday in response to calls to deploy strategic assets and resume full-scale exercises with South Korea. Gen. Charles Brown, commander of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), made the remark during a teleconference with reporters as tensions have escalated over North Korea's threats to send troops to border areas and scrap a military tension-reducing agreement wit

North Korea’s literary news outlet praised J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, the best selling book series in history, for the pioneering spirit that it models for children. In a review dated June 20, Literature Newspaper, a mouthpiece of the Joseon Writers’ Alliance, the Central Committee of North Korea’s official literary organization, belatedly introduced the British writer’s work. The first book in the seven-book series was published in 1997,

Amid renewed border tensions and growing fatigue over deadlocked reconciliation efforts, more S. Koreans prefer separation

North Korea was seen removing multiple propaganda loudspeakers reinstalled recently along the border with South Korea, officials said Wednesday, after leader Kim Jong-un ordered the suspension of military action plans against the South. The North recently set up around 20 to 30 loudspeakers in border areas after threatening to take military action against what it called "the enemy" in anger over Seoul's failure to stop defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across

North Korea suspended "military action plans" against South Korea, removed propaganda loudspeakers reinstalled along the border just three days earlier and deleted anti-Seoul articles en masse from media outlets, a surprise about-face after weeks of harsh rhetoric and threats. It was unclear what all these moves mean, including whether it means Pyongyang has decided to put its anger behind it, and if so, why it decided to do so after weeks of bellicose threats and rhetoric, including

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has unveiled dozens of long-kept photos of the Korean War, providing a rare glimpse into devastation, plight and even the resilience people demonstrated with seemingly little hope on the horizon. Yonhap News Agency obtained the 70 black-and-white still images taken by the ICRC and published them on Wednesday in time for the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1950-53 conflict. This is the first time that the Geneva-based organization has

A group of North Korean defectors claimed Tuesday it had sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, continuing an activity that has enraged the North regime, which cited it as the reason it wrecked a liaison office with the South last week. 　 The launch was also in defiance of a ban by South Korean authorities on the cross-border propaganda campaign. 　 “The six members of Fighters for a Free North Korea sent anti-North Korea leaflets between 11 p.m. and midnight on Monday in Paju,

Inter-Korean relations under the Moon Jae-in administration were never going to work, as they were built on a misguided belief, as worded by Moon in 2018, that North Korea would dismantle its nuclear arsenal for peace, said Cho Tae-yong, a former South Korean nuclear envoy and deputy national security adviser. “The nuclear talks were headed to a failure from the inception,” Cho said, citing former US national security adviser John Bolton, who in his forthcoming memoir described the

South Korea on Tuesday released new documents on the 1950-53 Korean War seized from the North Korean military during the conflict, including evidence proving that the then Soviet Union wiretapped the South's military, the defense ministry said. The materials secured by the US military's Allied in Translator and Interpreter Section include documents on the North's preparations to invade the South, its exercise plans, as well as service members' journals and guidelines on how to handle prisoner

A group of North Korean defectors in the South claimed Tuesday it sent anti-North Korea leaflets across the border overnight from the western border city of Paju. Police said one of the balloons used for sending the leaflets was found in a town in the mountainous eastern province of Gangwon. "(We) sent anti-North Korea leaflets over (to the North) between 11 p.m. and midnight on Monday (from a town) in Paju," Park Sang-hak, chief of Fighters for a Free North Korea, said. The group p

A North Korean propaganda outlet claimed Tuesday that the remains of a legendary Korean independence fighter, which South Korea has been seeking to bring to Seoul from Kazakhstan, should be brought to his hometown of Pyongyang. Hong Beom-do was a general commander of the Korean independence army during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule who claimed victories in battles against Japanese forces in Manchuria, including the Battle of Fengwudong in 1920. He died in Kazakhstan in 1943 and is still b

North Korea has completed setting up around 20 propaganda loudspeakers in regions along the inter-Korean border, about half of which had been removed under a 2018 summit agreement with South Korea, a military source said Tuesday. The North was first seen reinstalling the loudspeakers inside the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas on Sunday in the latest in a series of actions ramping up tensions on the Korean Peninsula in anger over anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent across the border by de