North Korea was to convene its rubber-stamp parliament Thursday amid keen interest on whether its ailing leader, Kim Jong-il, would promote his heir-apparent son to another top post. The session comes amid lingering tensions on the Korean Peninsula over Pyongyang's two deadly attacks on the South last year, which killed a total of 50 South Koreans, mostly soldiers. It also comes as former U.S. ...

North Korea remains adamant that it will never apologize for the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship last year, according to an academic who visited the communist nation this month. South Korea says the North must admit it torpedoed the Cheonan with the loss of 46 lives before dialogue can resume to ease months of tensions. “North Korea says it cannot apologize for what it has not done and...

South Korean police said Wednesday that North Korea was behind the massive cyber attacks that severely slowed and disrupted dozens of South Korean government and business websites last month. The sites of about 30 key South Korean government agencies, including the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, and financial institutions came under a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack on March 4...

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― The Obama administration said Tuesday it has not yet found enough evidence to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. “There’s a very specific procedure, though, to designating someone as a state sponsor of terror, with specific criteria that need to be met,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “There’s a legal process to doing that. And I’m not aw...

North Korea has strengthened the intensity of its naval drills this year by deploying a new submarine, prompting South Korea’s military to raise its level of vigilance, a government source here said Wednesday. “North Korea is on naval maneuvers near its bases off the East Sea and Yellow Sea by mobilizing five to six submarines, including a new Sango class submarine,” the source said on the condi...

Four-month program to train 1,000 young people from N. Korea South Korea will open a program aimed at training young North Korean defectors to be resourceful workers after the reunification of the two Koreas, a civic group here said Tuesday. The four-month program, funded by the government, will train 1,000 young North Koreans, who are either college seniors or graduates, on topics such as soci...

Seoul, Washington reluctant to resume full-scale assistance Facing ongoing international isolation and experiencing a wobbly power transfer from its ailing leader to his young son, North Korea is escalating efforts to secure food assistance for its starving people, philanthropic groups in and out of the country said Sunday. The communist North, which relies mostly on outside aid to feed its imp...

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― A bipartisan group of congressmen will soon submit legislation to redesignate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism for its torpedoing of a South Korean warship and shelling of a South Korean border island that killed 50 people last year, sources said Friday. “I understand Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has almost completed drafting the legislation, and she is likely t...

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― The U.S. has the capability to intercept ballistic missiles from North Korea, a senior U.S. official has said. Patrick O’Reilly, director of the Missile Defense Agency, made the remarks at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday in response to a lawmaker who expressed “concerns about the ground-based midcourse defense system in Alaska and California,” citing ...

North Korea's parliamentary speaker asked Britain to send food aid to his country in the midst of a deepening food shortage, saying the upcoming two months would be the most difficult, a report said Saturday. Choe Tae-bok, chairman of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, visited Britain between March 28 and 31 on an invitation from the British-North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group. Davi...

South Korea said Thursday it has allowed civilian groups to resume humanitarian aid to North Korea for the first time since last November when the North bombarded a South Korean island. The Unification Ministry approved requests by three relief groups to send aid to the North, an official here told reporters amid reports of dire food shortages in the communist country. 민간단체 北취약계층 지원재개 허용 연평도포격...

North Korea on Wednesday proposed holding inter-Korean Red Cross talks to discuss the repatriation of four North Korean defectors, officials said. The four were among 31 North Koreans who strayed across the inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea on a wooden boat last month. The remaining 27 were repatriated to the North by sea earlier this week, in accordance with their wishes. North Korea agre...