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North Koreans who defected but once lived near a nuclear testing site in the rogue nation now believe they are experiencing the dangerous effects of exposure to harmful radiation — and it's triggered severe health problems, according to a report published Sunday. "So many people died we began calling it 'ghost disease,'" Lee Jeong Hwa, who in 2010 escaped her home in Kilju County where the nuclear testing site Punggye-ri is located, told NBC News. "We thought we were dying because we were poor and we ate badly. Now we know it was the radiation." Lee isn’t the only defector...

Today as tensions between North Korea and the U.S. reach heights not seen since the 1950s, it is easy to forget that northern Korea used to be one of the Asian strongholds of Protestant Christianity. As Atlas Obscura recently explained, the city of Pyongyang became known to missionaries as the “Jerusalem of the East.” The city had great institutional strength for Protestantism, including Union Christian Hospital, Union Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Union Christian College, the first four-year college anywhere in Korea. One hundred ten years ago, Pyongyang saw the outbreak of a massive revival, the high point of the season...

Kim Jong Un visits factory that produced tyres for missile truck North Korea's leader had tasked the factory to make the tyres for the "great event in November", says the country's state media. Kim Jong Un inspects the tyres at the factory Kim Jong Un has thanked workers at a factory that built the tyres for a huge vehicle used to transport North Korea's new intercontinental ballistic missile which was tested this week. The visit came after a public rally and fireworks in Pyongyang to celebrate the launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM, in violation of international sanctions. At the Amnokgang...

Kim Jong-Un fired off another rocket last night. It got close to Japan, supposedly. Friends, neighbors, and even political rivals have called me, terrified about where this military build-up is headed. Trump has mobilized a greater show of force in the Pacific rim. Hawaii is under red alert, prepared for a nuclear attack at any moment. But as for me, guess what? I don’t care. I may live on the Western rim, but I have survived along the San Andreas Fault all my life, and despite earthquakes, terrors, wars, rumors of wars (and even the LA riots), I am not...

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea said on Wednesday it had successfully tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach all of the U.S. mainland. .....

North Korea stepped up its repression of its own citizens by banning drinking and singing,the Yonhap news agency reported Monday. According to the report, North Korean citizens are banned from attending “any gatherings related to drinking, singing and other entertainment." The move may be part of an effort to stifle “a possible negative impact” of sanctions against the rogue regime for its recent nuclear weapons tests. ....

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un keeps his citizens on a tight leash, according to defectors, but the leader has now constricted his control even further by banning North Koreans from drinking and singing, according to a new report. Citizens have been banned from participating in “any gatherings related to drinking, singing and other entertainment,” Yonhap News Agency reported Monday. The North Korean regime is also “strengthening control of outside information.”

Like many of her fellow citizens, the leader of South Korea’s ruling party was unhappy with President Trump’s threats to destroy nuclear-armed North Korea. But she now says Mr. Trump’s visit this month appears to have made him appreciate more fully the need to peacefully resolve the crisis. In an interview, the leader, Choo Mi-ae, the chairwoman of the liberal Democratic Party of South Korea and the most prominent woman in the National Assembly, said Mr. Trump’s visit had “actually led to an improvement in our bilateral relations.” Mr. Trump, she said, had now seen for himself that 25 million...

KIM JONG UN MAY HAVE CAUSED A PARASITIC WORM EPIDEMIC IN NORTH KOREA BY MAKING FARMERS SPREAD HUMAN FAECES ON THEIR CROPS The prevalence of parasitic worms causing health problems in North Korea may be the result of a personal intervention by Kim Jong Un, who urged farmers to spread human excrement on their fields to fertilize crops. The hermit nation’s leader issued an instruction to farmers in 2014 telling them to use human faeces with animal waste and organic compost on their fields. With a lack of livestock to provide animal fertilizer, agriculturists poured the human excrement, also known...

An experienced South Korean surgeon operating on a defector from North Korea has described his shock upon finding dozens of unusual parasites inside the man’s stomach, suggesting widespread health issues among the population of the secretive state.... ..."I have been doing surgery for more than 20 years, but I have not seen such parasites. I will not be able to find them in [South] Korea," said Lee, who is a respected trauma specialist in the country.

Donald Trump 'sentenced to death' by North Korea for insulting Kim Jong Un The US President is called a "hideous criminal" and a "coward" for urging Asian nations to increase pressure on North Korea. By Alix Culbertson, News Reporter Donald Trump deserves the death penalty for insulting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the country's state media has said. An editorial in the ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, called the US President a "hideous criminal" for urging the five Asian countries he visited last week to maximise pressure on North Korea to halt its growing nuclear programme. The paper also...

Unknown to the general public and ignored by the academic and foreign affairs establishments, Americans once were leaders of religion, education, and intellectual life in Pyongyang, as missionaries who created the foremost Christian community in Northeast Asia. Before the Soviet Union installed an atheist Communist regime in Pyongyang headed by Kim Il Sung, the city was the center of the Presbyterian Church in Asia, and hundreds of thousands of Korean Christians lived there and elsewhere in what is now North Korea. It was a union of Koreans and Americans that set the course that made South Korea the majority Christian...

Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging...

The North Korean Cult Oct 9, 2017 IAN BURUMA It is possible that North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and perhaps even some subjects of his despotic rule, would rather be obliterated than give in. It would not be the first time that a quasi-religious movement turned suicidal. NEW YORK – The absurdity of the North Korean dictatorship is easy to caricature. Kim Jong-un, with his 1930s-style pudding-bowl haircut (cultivated, it is claimed, to make him resemble his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the regime’s founder), his antiquated Mao suit, and his short, plump body, is almost like a cartoon character himself. Officially...

No one really knows all that much about North Korea's nuclear or conventional military capability or its strategic agenda. Are its nuclear missiles reliably lethal, are they as long-ranged and accurate as hyped, and are they under secure command and control? Conventional wisdom states that Seoul would be destroyed in minutes by at least 10,000 North Korean artillery and rocket batteries that are now aimed from right across the Demilitarized Zone. Such guns are said to be capable of firing 500,000 rounds within a few minutes. As a result, South Korea and its allies are supposed to be veritable hostages,...

North Korean race-goers who once risked three years hard labor for gambling are now able to bet on local horse races, as the one-party state searches for new ways to generate hard currency in the wake of tough international sanctions. In recent weeks, North Korea's access to foreign money has been significantly limited by a flurry of international sanctions over Pyongyang's missile and nuclear weapons programs.

China has sent an unmistakable signal that Kim Jong-un had better not rely on the historic alliance between China and North Korea to resist President Trump's demands.  In fact, as he dallies with his troop of teen sex slaves, he had better keep in mind that Beijing is wondering what it might be like with the Kim dynasty out of the way. The Chinese way of delivering such a harsh message is to use a third party – preferably one without a policy role, but who clearly speaks for the ruling elite.  Someone, for instance, like the dean of international...

Military analysts say North Korea doesn't have either the capability or the intent to attack U.S. bombers and fighter jets, despite the country's top diplomat saying it has every right do so. They view the remark by North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and a recent propaganda video simulating such an attack as tit-for-tat responses to fiery rhetoric by U.S. President Donald Trump and his hardening stance against the North's nuclear weapons program. By highlighting the possibility of a potential military clash on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea may be trying to create a distraction as it works behind...

When President Trump gave a fiery campaign speech in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday evening, he drew a rapturous roar by ridiculing Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as “Little Rocket Man.” Among diplomats and national security specialists, the reaction was decidedly different. After Mr. Trump repeated his taunt in a tweet late Saturday and threatened that Mr. Kim and his foreign minister “won’t be around much longer” if they continue their invective against the United States, reactions ranged from nervous disbelief to sheer terror. Mr. Trump’s willingness to casually threaten to annihilate a nuclear-armed foe was yet another reminder of...

A former foreign policy adviser to President Obama is warning there could be trouble if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chides President Trump over the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. "God save us if Kim Jong Un makes a comment about Hillary's popular vote victory," Ben Rhodes wrote on Twitter Friday. Trump and North Korea's leader have been locked for months in a war of words and threats that has prompted concern among foreign leaders who fear Washington and Pyongyang may be hurtling toward a confrontation. Trump said last month...