Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Wednesday that North Korea's missile launches this month were a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, adding to the confusion over the US views.North Korea launched short-range missiles on May 9 in apparent protest over stalled negotiations with the US While US National Security Adviser John Bolton condemned them as a breach of UNSC resolutions, which ban the North's use of ballistic missile technology, President Donald Trump said he view

South Korea is currently making preparations against the possible spread of African swine fever from North Korea, a unification ministry official said Wednesday, amid concerns that the disease may have broken out there. "North Korea has not made an official statement on an outbreak of African swine fever, and international organizations have also not confirmed a possible outbreak," an official from the Ministry of Unification said. The unification ministry, meanwhile, is working closel

South Korea said Tuesday that the body of water between the Korean peninsula and Japan should be referred to as both the East Sea and Sea of Japan, after US President Donald Trump used only the Japanese name.During a meeting with US troops in Japan, Trump mentioned the Sea of Japan as an area of their patrol responsibilities."Regarding the naming of the East Sea, our consistent position is clear," Kim In-chul, spokesman of Seoul's foreign ministry, told a regular press briefing. "

US President Donald Trump appears to be taking a different tack on North Korea from his advisers and also from Japan, sending mixed signals about US-North Korea relations and dialogue prospects. Speaking before and after his summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Monday, Trump reiterated his views on North Korea’s recent provocations and on its leader, Kim Jong-un. “I think he’s very much -- I talk to him a lot about it, and he’s very much into th

North Korea sharply criticized US National Security Advisor John Bolton on Monday, calling him "a security-destroying adviser," a "structurally defective guy" and a "human defect" that "deserves an earlier vanishing."A spokesperson for the North's foreign ministry unleashed the vituperation, bristling at Bolton's denunciation of the communist nation's recent missile launches as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions."As for the UNSC 'resolutio

US President Donald Trump on Monday reiterated his view that progress had been made with North Korea, saying the US and the North had built mutual respect. Speaking ahead of his summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, Trump predicted “good things” for North Korean issues.  “We’ve come a long way, there’s been no rocket testing, there’s been no nuclear testing, there’s been very little activity from that standpoint, we’ve come

US President Donald Trump on Sunday downplayed the potential danger of North Korea’s missile launches in early May, just a day after national security adviser John Bolton called the tests a clear breach of UN resolutions. “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me,” Trump tweeted during a four-day state visit to Japan that started Saturday. On May 9, North Korea tested two short-range missiles, which fell into the East S

US national security adviser John Bolton on Saturday called a series of short-range missile tests by North Korea earlier this month a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and said sanctions must be kept in place. The US, however, is willing to resume talks with North Korea at any time, Bolton said. Washington's position on the North's denuclearization is consistent and a repeated pattern of failures to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons should be stopped, he said.Bolton was speaking to r

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Friday that he will work hard to advance inter-Korean relations so as to resume the stalled denuclearization talks between the United States and North Korea."We will do our best to steadily improve inter-Korean relations in a way that will lead to the resumption of North Korea-US talks at an early date," Kim said at a forum in Seoul. "Despite the lull since the Hanoi summit, North Korea and the US still maintain the principle of resolving th

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said President Donald Trump has firm willingness to implement sanctions against North Korea, in another signal that the country will not pursue sanctions relief in order to resume nuclear talks. “The president is determined that we continue our efforts to enforce both the UN sanctions and the US sanctions against North Korea,” he said at the US House Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday. Mnuchin said sanctions are effective leverage to

Although the United States has played down recent launches of short-range missiles by North Korea, it will seek substantive action if the communist regime fires again.A Japanese news outlet reported late Tuesday that the US has warned that if North Korea launches a short-range ballistic missile again, it will demand further measures to be taken by the United Nations Security Council.According to Japan’s Kyodo News Agency, the US told Japan and permanent members of the UNSC that it will &ld

The US State Department on Wednesday reaffirmed that UN sanctions against North Korea will remain in place, after Pyongyang publicly criticized Washington’s “extreme hostile policy” regarding the seizure of its cargo ship, escalating tensions between the two countries amid stalled nuclear talks. In a rare press conference at the UN in New York on Tuesday, North Korea’s UN Ambassador Kim Song demanded immediate return of the country’s second-largest cargo ship, the W

North Korea's top envoy to the United Nations on Tuesday redoubled calls for the United States to quickly return a North Korean cargo ship seized on suspicion of violating international sanctions.Kim Song, the North's permanent representative at the UN, also said that Pyongyang will "sharply watch every move of the US" while stressing that the US should think about the consequences the seizure could have on future developments. On May 9, the US Justice Department said that it had seize

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Tuesday that the government’s plans to send food assistance to North Korea will adhere to humanitarian principles and pledged to separate the action from wider political goals. “Providing humanitarian aid is (a matter of) humanitarian principles, no more, no less. The international community’s universal consensus is that humanitarian aid should be separated from politics,” Kim told reporters in his first media briefing since he took office April 8. Unifica

The US should revise its strategy of pressuring North Korea to give up all its nuclear weapons before offering any sanctions relief, said a veteran diplomat, in order to avoid repeating diplomatic events that have ended in failure over the past two decades. “The US needs to take an incremental approach to resolve North Korea’s denuclearization issues. Demanding it to relinquish its entire nuclear arsenal first seems to be another repetition of the history of failure that begun (to be) attempted