Free Republic

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un still has faith in U.S. President Donald Trump’s commitment to ending their nations’ hostile relations, but he’s frustrated by questions about his willingness to denuclearize and wants his “goodwill measures” to be met in kind, South Korean officials said Thursday. The trove of comments from Kim, including his commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and to the suspension of all future long-range missile tests, were relayed by top South Korean security officials returning from meeting him in Pyongyang as well as by the North’s propaganda specialists. Even in their indirect form, each statement will...

• Can Trump go from “fire and fury” to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize? • The President is currently among the favorites to receive the award, behind only Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-In • Is there value in picking Trump or the Korean leaders? Donald Trump was met with chants of “Nobel! Nobel! Nobel!” at one of his Michigan rallies back in April, and back then it seemed ridiculous that a man who once threatened to nuke North Korea could be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet here we are. Donald Trump is now one of the...

Days after cancelling a planned visit to North Korea by his top diplomat citing insufficient progress in denuclearisation talks, US President Donald Trump hailed his personal relationship North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday and said there was no reason to resume war games with South Korea. Trump's statement came a day after his defence secretary hinted that the drills, which North Korea denounces as rehearsals for invasion, could resume. Trump tweeted a White House statement in which he once again questioned China's role in helping to resolve the crisis over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons that threaten...

US president Donald Trump said on Friday he had cancelled secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s planned trip to North Korea because “we are not making sufficient progress” toward the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula. Mr Trump said in a message on Twitter that Mr Pompeo’s visit, which was set for next week, now would likely not take place until after Washington has resolved its trade dispute with China. Mr Trump said China was no longer helping on the North Korea issue. It was a dramatic shift of tone for Mr Trump, who had previously hailed his June summit with...

VIENNA: The UN's nuclear watchdog said it had not seen any indication that nuclear activities in North Korea have stopped despite its pledges to denuclearise. "The continuation and further development of the DPRK's nuclear programme and related statements by the DPRK are a cause for grave concern," said a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), referring to North Korea's official name. The report, published late Monday (Aug 20), by the director general of Yukiya Amano is to be submitted to an IAEA board meeting in September. In 2009 Pyongyang expelled IAEA inspectors from its Yongbyon nuclear site and...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take a "bold step" in their upcoming summit to formally ending the six-decade old war that split the two sides. President Moon made the declaration Wednesday during a ceremony in Seoul marking the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of the Korean peninsula from Japanese colonial rule. The two Koreas announced earlier this week that Moon and Kim will meet in Pyongyang sometime next month. The two leaders have already met twice this year, both times in Panmunjom, the truce village in the border zone that...

US talks with North Korea on denuclearisation are making progress "in the right direction," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Tuesday (Aug 14). Nauert said behind-the-scenes discussions with Pyongyang have normalised in the wake of President Donald Trump's June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and subsequent meetings between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top Pyongyang officials. "We consider meetings, negotiations, conversations as we move forward behind the scenes with those negotiations to be moving in the right direction," Nauert said in a press briefing. "Conversations with the government of North Korea are becoming...

While Pyongyang is cut off from the international financial system, it is able to make up to $2.3 billion in hard currency a year by sending some 100,000 or more workers abroad, according to estimates. Up to 80 per cent of them go to China and Russia, where they are employed in what the UN has called “slave-like conditions” and give up to 90 per cent of their wages to Kim Jong-un's regime. Contractors have said North Koreans helped build the World Cup stadium in St Petersburg, where at least one died on site. Previously many of them worked in...

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Un wants to turn the art of kimchi-making into a science. And the North Korean leader is putting his money where his mouth is. On the outskirts of Pyongyang, surrounded by snow-covered farms and greenhouses, stands one of Kim’s latest pet projects, the Ryugyong Kimchi Factory, which produces 4,200 tons of the iconic Korean pickled vegetable dish a year. The shiny new facility replaces an older factory and opened in June last year after getting Kim’s final seal of approval, according to manager Paek Mi Hye. The factory is intended to showcase Kim’s...

The Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party has decreed that North Korea will not relinquish its nuclear arsenal, which it termed a “precious legacy” of the country’s late leaders, according to local sources, despite an earlier pledge by party chairman Kim Jong Un to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.Kim held historic talks with South Korea’s Moon Jae-in in April, as well as an unprecedented summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in June, and agreed—in principle—to abandoning the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for promises of regime security and economic prosperity.But a lack of any concrete agreement on steps to...

The U.S. is calling out China and Russia for helping North Korea violate United Nations sanctions as the regime smuggles in more oil than is allowed. The illegal transfers are now disrupting the U.S. talks with North Korea and its push for the regime to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons program, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Pompeo traveled to New York Friday to join Haley for a meeting with the U.N. Security Council representatives, including Chinese and Russian representatives, for what Haley called "frank talk." "We put pressure today...

North Korea’s economy contracted at the sharpest rate in two decades in 2017, South Korea’s central bank estimated Friday. Gross domestic product (GDP) in North Korea last year shrank 3.5 percent from the previous year, marking the biggest decline since a 6.5 percent drop in 1997 when the isolated nation was hit by a devastating famine. North Korea does not publish economic data, and comprehensive public figures on social conditions are nonexistent. However, analysts believe wider sanctions last year are likely to make the economic deterioration in 2018 worse than 2017, which could add to humanitarian need in the politically...

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un launched -- not a missile -- but an unusual public attack on his own officials during inspections of several ongoing projects in the Hermit Kingdom, visits he said that left him “appalled” and “speechless” due to a lack of progress and attention to detail. Kim’s statements, released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday, were made during his “field guidance” visits at construction sites in the country. The despot’s disappointment was reportedly visible during a visit to the Orangchon Power Station construction site in the northeast. After officials briefed him about the...

President Donald Trump released a letter he recently received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and praised the "great progress" being made in talks with Pyongyang. The letter is dated July 6, and was given to Secretary of State Pompeo delegation to deliver to Trump while the group was in Pyongyang last week to continue talks on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, senior administration officials tell CNN. "A very nice note from Chairman Kim of North Korea. Great progress being made," Trump said in a tweet that also included a copy of the correspondence from Kim....

Kim Jong Un put potatoes ahead of Mike Pompeo during a US visit to agree denuclearisation details, state media has suggested. The US secretary of state visited Pyongyang on Friday and Saturday in an attempt to agree details of a deal made during June's historic summit between Donald Trump and the North Korean dictator. However Mr Kim has not been seen in public for seven days, with every official move usually documented by news agency KCNA. During Mr Pompeo's trip relations between the US and North Korea appeared to take a dive as Pyongyang accused the US of a "gangster-like...

Mike Pompeo’s visit wasn’t it. But the visit hinted at what it might look like. One eight-word assumption underlies American and South Korean negotiations with Kim Jong Un: “North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons.” That’s what the analyst Cheon Seong Whun told me ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang this past weekend. For his part, Cheon, a security adviser in the conservative administration of former South Korean President Park Geun Hye, sees not a “scintilla of hint” that the North Korean leader is prepared to do so, despite Kim’s vague promise to Donald Trump...

President Trump suggested Monday that China could be "exerting negative pressure" on North Korea to stray from the denuclearization "deal" signed last month, amid trade tensions between the U.S. and Beijing. The president expressed confidence that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will "honor" the informal deal, despite tense talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the weekend. "I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea," Trump tweeted. "China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a...

Evidence gathered by South Korea’s military suggests Pyongyang is working on the submarine on its east coast, said Kim Hack-yong, who chaired the legislature’s defense committee until his term ended a few weeks ago. Satellite imagery reviewed by South Korean intelligence officials showed the movement of laborers and materials at the port of Sinpo, where the submarine appears to be under construction at an indoor facility, an aide to Mr. Kim said. U.S. officials consider the program a threat because such missiles are harder to identify and destroy before launch, potentially giving North Korea a greater element of surprise in...

North Korea on Saturday accused the U.S. of undermining the spirit of last month’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un after what it says were “regrettable” talks with a delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, accusing the U.S. of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nuclear weapons, came shortly after Pompeo’s delegation left the country. "We had expected that the U.S. side would offer constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders' summit ... we were also thinking about...

Looks like the two sides of the North Korean nuclear crisis have their wires crossed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led two days of talks with the Kim regime and offered a positive take on progress as he left Pyongyang. The North Koreans disagreed: BREAKING: North Korea Foreign Ministry says talks with Pompeo 'regrettable,' accuses US of unilateral demands for denuclearization.— The Associated Press (@AP) July 7, 2018 North Korea says high-level talks with a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were “regrettable” and has accused Washington of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning...