Asia, North Korea | featured news

The U.N. Security Council is united on North Korea's nuclear arms program and will undoubtedly approve tough measures against Pyongyang if it carries out a new atomic test as expected, South Korean U.N. Ambassador Kim Sook said on Monday.

North Korea's missile tests and menacing rhetoric have disappointed U.S. expectations that young leader Kim Jong-un would be different than his father but Washington still hopes to persuade Pyongyang to change course, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.

North Korea has confirmed its intention to carry out a third nuclear test, saying it is the “demand of the people.” It comes after the UN tightened sanctions against the regime, following its December long-range rocket launch. "The people's demand is that we must do something even greater than a nuclear test. The United Nations Security Council has left us with no other options. We have no other ways but to push forward to the final showdown," Rodong Sinmun, the official daily newspaper of the ruling communist party, wrote in a commentary on Saturday.

China's apparent decision not to block expanded United Nations sanctions against North Korea for its satellite-cum-missile launch last month is good, if mysterious, news. Good, because China has traditionally resisted punishing North Korea for its misdeeds, arguing that engagement is more likely to bring results. Mysterious, because its reasons for changing its mind could be manifold.

North Korea is warning that it will strengthen its military and nuclear defenses in reaction to what it calls U.S. hostility toward Pyongyang....

A recent report by Senate Republican staff members warns that China, because of its deepening economic ties with North Korea as well as its ancient claims on Korean land, could attempt to “manage, and conceivably block,” an eventual unification between the two Koreas, if ever the Kim family falls from power in Pyongyang.

The United States and China have struck a tentative deal on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution condemning North Korea for its December rocket launch, though Beijing has yet to give its final approval, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is urging North Korea to shed its self-imposed isolation and allow its citizens to use the Internet or risk being left behind economically....

Executive chairman Eric Schmidt is accompanying former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson on a "private humanitarian mission." The State Department wishes that they'd stayed home.

The US state department says a planned visit to North Korea by Google chairman Eric Schmidt is not "particularly helpful".