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(2nd LD) N. Korea threatens to reduce S. Korean targets to ashes in minutes SEOUL, April 23 (Yonhap) -- North Korea threatened Monday to launch special military actions to destroy key South Korean targets, further escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula following the North's botched rocket launch. "The special actions of our revolutionary armed forces will start soon to meet the reckless challenge of the group of traitors," the North's military supreme command said in an English-language notice carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency. "Once the above-said special actions kick off, they will reduce all the rat-like...

April 20, 2012 Panetta: China Assisted North Korea Missile Program Shannon Van Sant | Beijing A Chinese border policeman displays confiscated vanadium bound for North Korea at a checkpoint in Dandong, Liaoning province. Chinese border police have seized 70 kg (154 lb) of the strategic metal vanadium bound for North Korea, foiling an attempt to smuggle a material used to make missile parts, FILE July 24, 2009. China has recently joined with other countries in condemning North Korea for a failed missile launch earlier this month. It was a rare public rebuke of its internationally isolated ally, leading many to...

Pyongyang must remember to heed China's advice Global Times | April 17, 2012 01:18 By Global Times Pyongyang must remember to heed China's advice The UN Security Council issued a statement Monday strongly condemning North Korea for trying to launch a satellite last week. China voted for the decision. The statement calls for stricter sanctions on North Korea. It also says that if North Korea continues satellite launches or nuclear tests, the Security Council will take further action. China has taken a clear attitude in condemning Pyongyang. Some analysts take it as a result of North Korea neglecting China's discouragement...

18:30 19 April OPINION: North Korean Nuclear Test Could Trigger Conflict In Middle East By Leonard Spector WASHINGTON, April 19, Kyodo Although the April 13 talks in Istanbul on curtailing Iran's nuclear program made little progress, they set the stage for serious negotiations to begin in May. Developments in North Korea, however, could cut the process short, if a North Korean nuclear test exacerbates fears that Pyongyang and Tehran are collaborating on the design of a nuclear weapon. Such collaboration would be the natural evolution of past collaboration on intermediate-range missiles. During the 1990s, Pyongyang sold Iran the No-Dong system,...

2nd rocket still at N. Korea's launch site after failed launch SEOUL (Kyodo) -- Another rocket is still at the North Korean launch site from where the North attempted to launch a rocket carrying what it said was a satellite last Friday, raising speculation the North may attempt yet another launch, a South Korean government source told Kyodo News on Friday. North Korea moved two rockets to the launch site in Tongchang-ri near the northern border with China on March 23 from a factory in Pyongyang and the second, believed to be of the same type of the one blasted...

2012/04/19 04:41 KST U.S. gov't urged to act on rumors of NK-China missile ties By Lee Chi-dong WASHINGTON, April 18 (Yonhap) -- A U.S. lawmaker has formally requested the Obama administration examine reports of possible missile cooperation between North Korea and China, a congressional source said Wednesday. In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said the U.S. should do something if the allegations are found true, added the source. He cited some experts' analysis of a transporter-erector-launcher that carried what is believed to be the North's new...

2012/04/19 10:52 KST N. Korea threatens to blow up Seoul over defamation of its leader SEOUL, April 19 (Yonhap) -- North Korea urged South Korea Thursday to offer an apology over the alleged defamation of Pyongyang's milestone festival, a day after its military threatened to blow up Seoul. The latest harsh rhetoric comes amid tensions following the North's failed rocket launch last week. The U.N. Security Council has condemned the launch and called on member states to find ways to tighten sanctions on the communist country. The North Korean government accused South Korea of insulting the North's dignity over the...

Experts Ponder Cause of N.Korean Rocket Failure North Korea's rocket exploded two minutes and 15 seconds after launch, disintegrated into some 20 fragments and fell into the West Sea. The North unusually admitted the failure. Rocket experts attribute it to a problem with the first-stage booster, failed separation of boosters or a rushed launch schedule. â—† Booster Problems The first-stage booster exploded into about 20 fragments scattered over waters west of Taean far away from the point west of the Byeonsan Peninsula where the regime had predicted they would land. About 56 percent of launch failures are caused by a...

Multi-nation search for debris begins for failed North Korean rocket 4:33 AM, Apr 13, 2012 (CBS/AP) PYONGYANG, North Korea - North Korea's much-anticipated rocket launch ended quickly in an embarrassing failure early Friday, splintering into pieces over the Yellow Sea soon after takeoff and setting off an international search effort for the debris to gain insight into what went wrong and what rocket technology the country has. Within minutes of the early morning launch, the U.S. and South Korea declared it a failure. North Korea acknowledged that hours later in an announcement broadcast on state TV, saying the satellite had...

A N. Korean official at a media center of a hotel in Pyongyang on Apr. 13 (probably after launch failure)

How failed North Korea rocket could lead to a fresh nuclear test The UN Security Council is likely to rap North Korea for its rocket launch, and a defiant North Korea could respond with a nuclear test – following By Don Kirk, Correspondent / April 12, 2012 North Korea’s vaunted long-range Unha 3 rocket roared off its launch pad early Friday, broke into several pieces and plunged into the Yellow Sea between South Korea and China slightly more than one minute later, South Korean defense officials said. /snip North Korea is also expected to remain defiant while the United Nations...

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North Korea said Wednesday that the fuelling of a long-range rocket is under way, ahead of the launch scheduled for later this week despite international protests. "We are injecting fuel as we speak. It has started," Paek Chang-Ho, director of the satellite control centre on the outskirts of the capital Pyongyang, told visiting foreign journalists.

North Korea says fuel being injected into rocket (Reuters) - Isolated North Korea said on Wednesday it was injecting fuel into a long-range rocket "as we speak" ahead of a launch condemned by its neighbors and the West as a disguised long-range ballistic missile test. The launch, set to take place between Thursday and next Monday, has prompted neighbors such as the Philippines to re-route their air traffic just in case. Regional powers also worry it could be the prelude to another nuclear test, a pattern the hermit state set in 2009. Japan said it would shoot down the rocket...

N. Korea prepping for nuclear test: intelligence official SEOUL, April 8 (Yonhap) -- North Korea is believed to be gearing up for a nuclear test, an intelligence official said Sunday, a move certain to fuel the already high tensions over its planned long-range rocket launch. Satellite images show the communist nation digging a new tunnel underground in the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the country's northeast, where it conducted two previous nuclear tests, first in 2006 and then in 2009. The construction is believed to be in its final stage, the official said. "North Korea is making clandestine preparations for...

Japan completed on Thursday the deployment of its ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptors in Okinawa Prefecture to prepare for North Korea's planned rocket launch sometime next week. With the arrival of the Maritime Self-Defense Force transport ship Kunisaki carrying the PAC-3 at Ishigaki Island, the interceptors are now deployed to four locations in Okinawa that also includes its capital Naha, Miyako and Nanjo. Japan is bracing itself for the rocket launch after North Korea announced last month that it will launch an ''earth observation satellite'' to mark the centennial of its state founder Kim Il Sung's birthday on April 15....

China has allowed five North Korean defectors to leave for South Korea after they spent months or years holed up in Seoul's Beijing embassy to avoid arrest, media reports said Wednesday. Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing a Seoul diplomatic source, said they arrived in the South Sunday after China changed its policy of refusing to let them depart. Yonhap news agency and other media carried similar reports, and said China was also considering allowing the departure of seven others trapped for at least two years in South Korea's consulates in Shenyang and Shanghai.

North Korea is building a missile that is even bigger than the long-range missile it is preparing to launch this month, sources claimed Monday. South Korean and U.S. officials believe the North will unveil the missile at a military parade on April 15, nation founder Kim Il-sung's centenary, or on April 25, which marks the founding day of the North's Army. A government source here said U.S. reconnaissance satellites recently spotted a 40-m missile at a research and development facility in Pyongyang that is larger than the existing Taepodong-2 missile. "It remains uncertain whether this missile is functional or is...

China Nervous About U.S.-Led Missile Defense System China is growing nervous after U.S. calls for an Asia-wide missile-defense system against the threat of North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles. In a lengthy article on Thursday, the official Global Times said, "North Korea and Iran are named by Washington as the targets of the missile defense system, though it is clear the real targets are China and Russia." It added China "should firmly oppose it." The paper also said China should learn from what Russia has done to oppose the deployment of a U.S.-led missile defense shield in Europe. In a separate...

Insight: Obama's North Korean leap of faith turns to ashes 2:39am EDT By Andrew Quinn WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When U.S. diplomats filed into North Korea's grim embassy in Beijing last month they found an unlikely surprise: Starbucks. Their hosts, led by North Korean's chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan, had ordered U.S.-style coffee for talks both sides hoped would lead to new negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear program and to resumed U.S. food shipments to one of the most feared and secretive countries in the world. There were more surprises to come. Five days later, the United States and North Korea simultaneously...