North Korea will ban the use of foreign currency from New Year's Day in another move to reassert the communist regime's control over the economy, South Korean officials and analysts said Thursday. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a report of the ban carried by China's Xinhua news agency earlier this week. Xinhua, reporting from Pyongyang, quoted a decree by the North's Ministry of People's Security which prohibits all units and individuals from using... Read Full Story
North Korea said Friday it had agreed with the United States to cooperate on resolving a nuclear impasse, raising hopes for progress after ice-breaking meetings in Pyongyang this week. "Both sides agreed to continue to cooperate with each other in the future to narrow down the remaining differences," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement published by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. The statement came as US envoy Stephen Bosworth left Seoul after a three-day visit... Read Full Story
A senior US envoy told Japan on Saturday that North Korea showed a "forward-looking" stance to resuming dialogue with Tokyo, when he held ice-breaking meetings in Pyongyang. Stephen Bosworth held talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada shortly after he arrived in Tokyo following his meetings with North Korean officials from December 8 to 10. Bosworth told Okada that during the meetings, he raised Tokyo's demand for the release of all Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean... Read Full Story
SEOUL (Reuters) - The first envoy sent by U.S. President Barack Obama to North Korea ended a three-day trip on Thursday aimed at bringing Pyongyang back to nuclear disarmament discussions, the North's official KCNA news agency said. Stephen Bosworth arrived in the North Korean capital on Tuesday for talks analysts said could lead to a pledge from Pyongyang to end its boycott of the nuclear discussions but he was not expected to offer new incentives to extract it. "It was a very useful... Read Full Story
North Korea is "open" to the idea of talks with Japan, but gave no indication of when it would re-join a six-nation forum aimed at scrapping its nuclear programme, a US envoy said Sunday. Stephen Bosworth said North Korea did not ask for preconditions to resume deadlocked talks with Japan, whose government has taken hardline stance against the isolationist nation that it accuses of abducting citizens during the Cold War. "We raised the subject of Japan and urged that North Korea engage with... Read Full Story
North Korea on Wednesday rejected calls by members of the UN Human Rights Council to grant access to a UN independent expert to assess the human rights situation in the country, a report said. Pyongyang also turned down recommendations for it to abolish the death penalty, end torture, and scrap military training for children, said the UN report summarising an examination of the human rights situation in North Korea. In total, 50 recommendations made by mostly western countries in the report... Read Full Story
South Korea is preparing to ship medical supplies worth more than 15 million dollars to help North Korea fight an outbreak of swine flu, officials said Monday. The unification ministry, which handles cross-border ties, said the shipment would include antiviral drugs for 500,000 patients -- Tamiflu for 400,000 and Relenza for 100,000 -- and sanitation supplies. The aid will cost an estimated 17.8 billion won (15.3 million dollars), which will be financed by a state fund for inter-Korean... Read Full Story
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak instructed his government Tuesday to provide swift medical help to North Korea following reports the impoverished communist country has been hit by swine flu. Pyongyang has not officially reported any cases. But Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group that has contacts in the North, reported Monday A(H1N1) flu has been spreading rapidly there. Lee told a cabinet meeting the government should help North Korea after confirming the report, the president's... Read Full Story
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea is expected to suffer a serious grain shortage this year, well short of what it needs, a U.N. official who recently returned from the impoverished state said on Wednesday. "We do estimate that the DPRK (North Korea) may have to import a bit over 1 million tonnes to cover the needs," said Daniele Donati, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation's emergency operations chief, who went there on an inspection tour state last week. The FAO estimates that destitute North... Read Full Story
Mobile phone subscriptions are spreading fast and due to reach 120,000 early next year in communist North Korea, where an Egyptian provider started a service a year ago, a press report said Tuesday. The joint venture with Egypt's Orascom, named Koryolink, has set up a third-generation mobile network, according to official North Korean media. "It is a bigger-than-expected success," the marketing manager of the telecom joint venture was quoted as telling a visiting Japanese researcher on East... Read Full Story
