(Yonhap News) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has pressed for the quick resumption of long-stalled talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs without preconditions, Pyongyang's state media said Wednesday. Kim also repeated the North's longstanding stance that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is a dying wish of his late father, the country's founder Kim Il-sung. The Nort...

The six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs is the “golden key” to opening the door for regional powers to achieve peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia, former Chinese state councilor Tang Jiaxuan said Wednesday. The comments come amid a flurry of renewed diplomatic efforts on how to restart the six-party talks that stalled when North Korea quit the aid-for-disarmament negot...

Nine out of every 10 North Korean defectors regard their leader Kim Jong-il’s words as law, contrary to expectations of North Korean citizens’ weakening loyalty to the totalitarian regime, a survey showed Tuesday. About 90 percent of the defectors said the dictator’s instructions “were laws to keep while living in North Korea,” while 74 percent remembered being educated by the regime on how to b...

ATHENS (Yonhap News) ― A senior North Korean official, who is on a rare trip to the United States, said Monday the security condition on the Korean Peninsula is so unstable that a war may occur again anytime. Rhee Jong-hyuk, a ranking member of the all-powerful Workers’ Party of the communist nation, blamed the conservative government of South Korea, claiming Pyongyang remains committed to peace...

A North Korean defector who formerly served as a key member of Pyongyang’s youth organization was recently appointed a researcher of an organization affiliated with Seoul’s spy agency, a source said Tuesday. The defector, Sol Jong-sik, who had headed the Yanggang Province for the League of Kim Il-sung Socialist Working Youth before defecting to South Korea in 2009, is the highest-ranking North K...

ATHENS, Ga., Oct. 17 (Yonhap) -- A senior North Korean official, who is on a rare trip to the United States, said Monday the security condition on the Korean Peninsula is so unstable that a war may occur again anytime. Rhee Jong-hyuk, a ranking member of the all-powerful Workers' Party of the communist nation, blamed the conservative government of South Korea, claiming Pyongyang remains committe...

A North Korean artist formerly residing in Egypt has arrived in South Korea in a rare defection through the South Korean embassy in the Middle East country, a diplomatic source said Monday. The North Korean did not return to Pyongyang after his term in Egypt expired and sought refuge in the embassy about two months ago, the source said. The source did not give further details and asked not to b...

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- North Korea's state media have been paying close attention to the upcoming Seoul mayoral election for months, mainly attacking the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) and its candidate, an analysis by Yonhap News Agency showed Monday. The Oct. 26 by-election was made necessary in late August after former Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon stepped down after he failed to block an opposition-l...

MOSTAR, Bosnia (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's grandson is sharing a dormitory room with a Libyan student at an international school here, one of the school's students said Monday, an encounter that could give him a glimpse of pro-democracy movements spreading from the Middle East and northern Africa. Kim Han-sol, 16, began studying at the United World College's branch in the south...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Officials in Bosnia say North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grandson has arrived in the country to enroll at a private high school made up of international students. A border police spokeswoman said 16-year-old Kim Han Sol entered the country at Sarajevo airport Wednesday afternoon on a regular flight from Vienna. He will be the first student from North Korea t...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Officials in Bosnia say North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's grandson has arrived in the country to enroll at a private high school made up of international students. A border police spokeswoman said 16-year-old Kim Han-sol entered the country at Sarajevo airport Wednesday afternoon on a regular flight from Vienna. He will be the first student from North Korea ...