North Korea | featured news

Russia and China urged North Korea on Monday not to go ahead with a plan for its second rocket launch of 2012, with Moscow saying any such move would violate restrictions imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

North Korea announced Saturday that it will send a long-range rocket into space this month, trying to make up for a public relations disaster in April when a much-hyped launch failed.

Whether North Korea's new leader will follow the dangerous path of his father is unclear, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, despite worrying behavior by the reclusive state during Kim Jong Un's first year in power.

South Korean police on Monday tried for hours to block a civic group from sending pro-democracy leaflets across the border by balloon after North Korea threatened the activists with a “merciless military strike,” but the South’s efforts ultimately failed.

The 17-year-old grandson of late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il granted a TV interview providing a rare look at a member of the secretive ruling dynasty. "I've always dreamed that one day I would go back and make things better and make it easier for the people there," Kim Han Sol said in the interview posted on YouTube.

Impoverished North Korea threatened on Friday to open fire on South Korea if it allows activists to go ahead with plans to drop anti-North leaflets on its territory, its most strident warning against its long-time foe in months.

South Korea has reached a landmark agreement with the United States to extend the range of Seoul's ballistic missiles by more than twice the current limit to counter the threat from North Korea, the government said on Sunday.

A North Korean soldier killed two of his officers Saturday and defected to South Korea across the countries' heavily armed border in a rare crossing that prompted South Korean troops to immediately beef up their border patrol, officials said....

Russia and North Korea have signed a deal to write off nearly all of the isolated Asian country's $11 billion Soviet-era debt.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that U.S. and Japanese officials have agreed to put a second missile defense system in Japan... While officials insisted the radar system would not be aimed at China, the decision was sure to raise the ire of Beijing.