Seoul | Nov 4

AFP - The United States and North Korea have agreed to hold two rounds of bilateral meetings before the North returns to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks, a US news report said.

The agreement was reached at last month's meetings in New York and San Diego between officials from the two sides, Foreign Policy magazine said on its website, in a report seen Wednesday.

The communist state, putting further pressure on the United States to start direct talks, announced Tuesday it has completed reprocessing spent fuel rods to produce more plutonium for its atomic weapons programme.

The US State Department responded that the plutonium production "runs counter" to the North's disarmament commitments and violates UN Security Council resolutions.

It said it has not decided when and where to hold bilateral talks involving the US special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth.

Seoul | Oct 27

DPA - In a rare incident, a man from South Korea has defected to the communist North, traversing the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ), it was reported Tuesday.

North Korea's official news agency KCNA identified the man as Kang Dong Lim, 30, who defected on Monday and 'is now under the warm care' of the relevant North Korean authorities.

'He is pleased with the accomplishment of his desire for defection,' the KCNA report said.

KCNA said that Kang, during his military duty for South Korea, had already attempted on a few occasions to defect. It said that he last had worked in the semi-conductor division of the Samsung company.

Park Si-soo | Oct 26

Korea Times - Disgraced stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk was convicted Monday of embezzling state and private funds and illegally buying human eggs for his research, but was cleared of fraud charges.

The Seoul Central District Court gave the 56-year-old scientist a two-year prison sentence suspended for three years, ending a three-year, four-month saga that dates back to his indictment in 2006.

His lawyer said Hwang was unlikely to lodge an appeal. But the prosecutors are said to be planning to file an appeal, which means that a legal battle over Hwang's case will likely drag out.

Hwang reported false breakthroughs in human stem cell research and had them published in the journal Science and other global research magazines in 2004 and 2005.

However, when it was revealed by a Korean research team that he had fabricated the experimental results, Korea's reputation as a leading scientific country in stem cell research was literally "devastated."

The journal, Science, retracted his papers following the finding and still remains cautious of publishing papers by Korean scientists.

Prosecutors didn't try to penalize Hwang for his test fabrications, leaving that to the discretion of the science community.

The prosecution sought a four-year jail term, but Presiding Judge Bae Ki-ryul reduced it, citing Hwang's dedication to the development of Korea's biotechnology, his lack of a criminal record and deep remorse.

Oct 15

Raw`Story/AFP - Japan has told the United States it will end a naval refuelling mission backing its war in Afghanistan, a month before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo, a top defence official said Thursday.

The formal confirmation to the White House and Pentagon, days before Defense Secretary Robert Gates visits Japan, is part of efforts by the new centre-left government in Tokyo to recalibrate its security ties with Washington.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office last month, has said he wants "more equal" relations with the United States and that he opposes plans for a new US military air base to be built on southern Okinawa island.

Hatoyama, whose party in opposition spoke out against Japan abetting "American wars," has for months said it would not renew a naval refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean that was first launched in 2001.

Oct 15

Asia Times -

ADRIFT ON A RUSSIAN ISLAND, Part 1
Koreans left high and dry

When Sakhalin Island, off Russia's east coast, became a Japanese colony in 1905, thousands of Koreans were brought in to work in the fishery and timber industries. When the Soviet Union regained the island 45 years later, the Koreans became virtual prisoners, and a stormy coexistence began that lasts to this day.

This is the first article in a two-part report.

Quite the history lesson~ tina

Tokyo | Oct 9

AFP - China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said Friday.

The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military.

Sarin gas, which was developed in Germany before World War I, was used in the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by a doomsday cult.

The Chinese special operations forces found 0.015-0.03 microgrammes of the gas per cubic metre when they were conducting regular surveys while there were winds from the direction of North Korea, the report said.

China suspects that there were some experiments or accidents in its neighbouring country, it said.

Jonathan Thatcher | Seoul | Oct 6

Reuters - North Korea on Tuesday signalled it could return to nuclear disarmament talks it had declared dead six months ago, but a report it was near restoring its atomic plant underlined the secretive state would keep the stakes high.

Leader Kim Jong-il told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on a rare visit to Pyongyang that he first wanted talks with the United States. The North sees such talks as key to ending its status as a global pariah that it argues gives it no choice but to have a nuclear arsenal.

"The hostile relations between the DPRK (North Korea) and the United States should be converted into peaceful ties through the bilateral talks without fail," the North's KCNA news agency quoted Kim as saying.

"We expressed our readiness to hold multilateral talks, depending on the outcome of the DPRK-U.S. talks. The six-party talks are also included in the multilateral talks."

Seoul | Oct 5

AFP - China and North Korea vowed Monday to strengthen a friendship which they said preserved regional peace, as Premier Wen Jiabao pressed on with a mission to bring Pyongyang back to nuclear disarmament talks.

"History has proven that developing China-North Korea relations is in line with the fundamental interests and common aspirations of the two peoples and conducive to safeguarding regional peace and stability," said a Chinese foreign ministry statement quoting its President Hu Jintao and Wen.

"We are willing to work together with North Korea to... constantly push forward friendly and cooperative relations."

The statement, issued to mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations, came on the second day of Wen's high-profile visit to Pyongyang. It made no mention of the North's nuclear programmes.

In the same statement, the North's leader Kim Jong-Il was quoted as calling the bilateral relationship "a common treasure".

Takehiko Kambayashi | Sept 29

CSM - The new government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to boost financial support for parents in an effort to increase its birthrate, one of the lowest in the world.

After Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's debut on the international stage last week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the premier is back home to tackle daunting tasks. One of the most intractable problems his country is facing is its falling birthrate.

Japan's population could shrink by 25 percent by 2050 if the birthrate does not increase, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

Prime Minister Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan won an overwhelming election victory last month, breaking more than 50 years of almost uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. In an attempt to bring the birthrate back to a sustainable level, the new government has promised to ease the expense of raising children in this island nation.

According to government minister Mizuho Fukushima, previous administrations "have been weak on providing financial support even though they have taken steps to tackle the daycare shortage problems." Now, Japan "is going to provide childcare support as much as it can to create a society where Japanese people can have a dream of raising children," Bloomberg quoted him as saying.

Washington | Sept 20

AFP - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is "pretty healthy and in control," US President Barack Obama said on Sunday, citing an assessment by former president Bill Clinton after his trip to Pyongyang.

Clinton paid a rare visit to North Korea in August and met twice with Kim to win the release of two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been convicted of illegally entering the communist state.

Obama told CNN he had been interested by Clinton's assessment of Kim that "he's pretty healthy and in control. And that's important to know, because we don't have a lot of interaction with the North Koreans."

"Clinton had a chance to see him close up and have conversations with him," Obama added.

"I won't go into anymore details than that, but there's no doubt that this is somebody who I think for a while people thought was slipping away. He's reasserted himself."

Sept 16

The Guardian - The Japanese parliament today elected Yukio Hatoyama as the country's prime minister.

Hatoyama, who had been a long-serving opposition leader, came to power promising to reinvigorate the Japanese economy and shake up the government with his left of centre party after more than 50 years of almost unbroken conservative rule.

Japan is facing its worst economic slowdown since the second world war, with unemployment at record levels and wages falling.

Hatoyama has vowed to cut government waste, rein in bureaucracy and restart the economy by putting a freeze on planned tax hikes and focusing policies on consumers rather than big business.

He has also pledged to improve Tokyo's often bumpy relations with its Asian neighbours and forge a foreign policy more independent from Washington.

Choe Sang-Hun | Seoul | Sept 9

NYT - Unsatisfied with North Korea’s explanation for its release of dam water, which created a flash flood in the South that killed at least five people, South Korea on Tuesday demanded a formal apology from the North.

“We demand that the responsible authorities in the North offer a full explanation and an apology for causing our civilians’ deaths,” Chun Hae-sung, spokesman of the Unification Ministry in Seoul, said in a statement.

On Sunday morning, without warning, North Korea unleashed columns of water from its Hwanggang Dam, 26 miles north of the border with the South. The resulting flood swept away six South Koreans who were camping or fishing farther downstream. Three bodies were found Monday, and the police said two more bodies were found Wednesday, including that of an 8-year-old boy.

** 'N.K. water discharge intentional'
** Was N.Korea's Dam Release a Shot Across the Bow?

Donald Kirk | New York | September 5

Asia Times - Suddenly, North Korea's peace offensive has exploded in a mushroom cloud with word from Pyongyang that the North's nuclear wizards are about to enter "the completion stage" of their program to develop nuclear warheads with highly enriched uranium.

Pyongyang said on Friday it was in the final stage of enriching uranium, a process that would give it a path to making nuclear weapons other than plutonium-based devices.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee | Sept 1

CSM - Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists released last month after being imprisoned in North Korea, tell their story -- and remind people of the story they wanted to cover.

We arrived at the frozen river separating China and North Korea at 5 o'clock on the morning of March 17. The air was crisp and still, and there was no one else in sight. As the sun appeared over the horizon, our guide stepped onto the ice. We followed him.

We had traveled to the area to document a grim story of human trafficking for Current TV. During the previous week, we had met and interviewed several North Korean defectors -- women who had fled poverty and repression in their homeland, only to find themselves living in a bleak limbo in China. Some had, out of desperation, found work in the online sex industry; others had been forced into arranged marriages.

Now our guide, a Korean Chinese man who often worked for foreign journalists, had brought us to the Tumen River to document a well-used trafficking route and chronicle how the smuggling operations worked.

There were no signs marking the international border, no fences, no barbed wire. But we knew our guide was taking us closer to the North Korean side of the river. As he walked, he began making deep, low hooting sounds, which we assumed was his way of making contact with North Korean border guards he knew. The previous night, he had called his associates in North Korea on a black cellphone he kept for that purpose, trying to arrange an interview for us. He was unsuccessful, but he could, he assured us, show us the no-man's land along the river, where smugglers pay off guards to move human traffic from one country to another.

When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

Sept 1

BBC - North and South Korea have restored regular access across their heavily fortified border, for traffic going to and from a jointly-run industrial park.

The North had severely limited access across the border since December 2008.

The border will be opened 23 times a day to traffic, up from the previous six times a day.

The reopening is the latest sign that North Korea has softened its stance against the South since its nuclear and missile tests in May.

Seoul's Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo told reporters that the number of people and vehicles allowed to cross the border at one time would also no longer be restricted.

By Blaine Harden | TOKYO | August 30

Washington Post Foreign Servic - Breaking a half-century hammerlock of one-party rule in Japan, the opposition Democratic Party won a crushing election victory on Sunday with pledges to revive the country's stalled economy and steer a foreign-policy course less dependent on the United States.

But it was pent-up voter anger, not campaign promises, that halted 54 years of near-continuous dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The party had become a profoundly unpopular, but deeply entrenched governing force which so feared that it would be swept from power that it had put off a national election for nearly three years.

Tokyo | Aug 30

AFP - Japan's opposition Democratic Party won general elections on Sunday in a landslide, ousting the long-ruling conservative party, according to media exit polls just after voting ended.

An exit poll by TV Asahi predicted the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) would take 315 seats in the 480-seat lower house, while Tokyo Broadcasting System forecast the centre-left opposition party would win 321 seats.

Public broadcaster NHK predicted the DPJ would win between 298 and 329 seats, against a range of just 84 to 131 seats for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Prime Minister Taro Aso.

Nippon Television predicted a DPJ total of 324 seats against the LDP's 96.

"It's a landslide win. It's a dramatic election," Hiroshi Hoshi, a veteran journalist with the Asahi Shimbun daily, told TV Asahi.

The LDP – which has ruled Japan with only one 10-month break since 1955 – had 303 seats in the outgoing parliament to the DPJ's 112.

United Nations | Aug 29

AFP - The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean weapons bound for Iran in violation of UN sanctions, a diplomatic source said Friday.

The diplomat, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said UAE government officials had informed the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, which is responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang.

"It is an issue that is being processed by the committee," said the source, who declined further comment on details on the weapons.

The UAE mission to the United Nations also declined comment on the case.

The Financial Times reported earlier Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago," and identified some of the armaments as basic weaponry, including rocket-propelled grenades.

The arms had been falsely labeled as "machine parts," the Times reported.

Mark Austin | Tokyo | Aug 29

The Independent - Ruling party set to lose 50-year grip on power as rise in unemployment expected to dominate election

Japan is bracing itself for the most dramatic shift in its political scene of the post-war era when voters go to the polls tomorrow.

Figures released yesterday show unemployment hitting 5.7 per cent in July, the highest since records began, and, with a new deflationary spiral threatening severe damage to living standards, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has dominated Japanese politics since 1955, is expected to be swept from power by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

Opinion polls predict that the centre-left DPJ is expected to win as many as 320 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives, the more powerful of the two chambers in the parliament. Japan may no longer be in recession technically but it has suffered two decades of anaemic growth and a ballooning fiscal deficit, with public debt set to hit a staggering 190 per cent of gross domestic product this year, according to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.

Carolynne Wheeler | Nara, Japan | August 27

The Globe and Mail - When a 33-year-old upstart backed by Japan's leading opposition party won a municipal election in the city of Nara last month, no one was more surprised than the candidate himself.

“I thought I had a chance, but I was pleasantly surprised to win,” Gen Nakagawa says modestly, now the country's second-youngest mayor thanks in part to campaign support from the Democratic Party of Japan.

Jon Herskovitz | Aug 16

Reuters - North Korea denounced upcoming joint South Korean and U.S. military drills and said it would "wipe out" the countries with nuclear weapons if they threatened the communist state, its KCNA news agency said on Sunday.

South Korean and U.S. forces on Monday start joint computer simulation and communication drills that come in the wake of rare conciliatory moves by Pyongyang, which this month released two U.S. journalists and a South Korean worker it had held captive.

North Korea regularly denounces joint drills as a preparation for invasion and nuclear war.

"Should the U.S. imperialists and the Lee Myung-bak group threaten the DPRK (North Korea) with nukes, it will retaliate against them with nukes," KCNA quoted a military official as saying. Lee Myung-bak is South Korea's president.

"The U.S. imperialists and the Lee Myung-bak group should clearly understand that it is the iron will and resolute stand of the Korean People's Army to go into action anytime to mercilessly wipe out the aggressors," the official said.

Paul Richter | Washington | Aug 9

LA Times - There was no sign of serious health problems during the dictator's recent meeting with former President Clinton. Kim's health was at the root of a reported power struggle in North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appeared to be "in full control of his government" when an American mission met with him last week to free two imprisoned American journalists, White House National Security Advisor James L. Jones said today.

Jones, appearing on Sunday news programs, said that despite months of credible reports that Kim struggled with grave health problems, "he seemed in control of his faculties" and "sounded very reasoned" in wide-ranging discussions with former President Bill Clinton.

Kim's health and control over his government have been key issues in the region for months amid reports from intelligence agencies that the leader's health setbacks have set off a struggle for power in the impoverished Stalinist state.

The White House has so far released little information on the 3 1/2 hours of conversation between Clinton and the secretive dictator. Jones provided few additional details, saying the debriefing of mission members was not yet complete.

Tania Branigan | Beijing | Aug 4

The story behind Clinton's trip to North Korea/CNN

Pyongyang's official news agency said the former US president arrived in the capital this morning. South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that he would try to negotiate for the freedom of Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The journalists were arrested in March while on a reporting trip for California-based Current TV – co-founded by Al Gore, Clinton's former vice-president. They were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labour for entering the country illegally and engaging in "hostile acts."

North Korea and the US do not have diplomatic relations, but Washington is believed to working behind the scenes to negotiate their release. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said "everyone is very sorry" about the incident and urged Pyongyang to grant them amnesty.

Tokyo | July 30

AFP - The party widely tipped to take power in Japan soon has been struggling to define its foreign policy, torn between its pacifist roots and the real-world challenges of government.

For years in opposition, the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has opposed Japan's gradually expanding role in "American wars," including rear-guard missions in support of US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In recent months, however, as the DPJ has taken a strong lead over Prime Minister Taro Aso's conservative government ahead of August 30 elections, the party has been moderating its foreign policy and security policies.

Steve Chao | Seoul | July 24

Al Jazeera - When Im Chun-yong made his daring escape from North Korea, with a handful of his special forces men, there were many reasons why the North Korean government was intent on stopping them.

They were, after all, part of Kim Jong-il's elite commandos - privy to a wealth of military secrets and insights into the workings of the reclusive regime.