Free Republic

North Korea’s economy contracted at the sharpest rate in two decades in 2017, South Korea’s central bank estimated Friday. Gross domestic product (GDP) in North Korea last year shrank 3.5 percent from the previous year, marking the biggest decline since a 6.5 percent drop in 1997 when the isolated nation was hit by a devastating famine. North Korea does not publish economic data, and comprehensive public figures on social conditions are nonexistent. However, analysts believe wider sanctions last year are likely to make the economic deterioration in 2018 worse than 2017, which could add to humanitarian need in the politically...

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un launched -- not a missile -- but an unusual public attack on his own officials during inspections of several ongoing projects in the Hermit Kingdom, visits he said that left him “appalled” and “speechless” due to a lack of progress and attention to detail. Kim’s statements, released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday, were made during his “field guidance” visits at construction sites in the country. The despot’s disappointment was reportedly visible during a visit to the Orangchon Power Station construction site in the northeast. After officials briefed him about the...

President Donald Trump released a letter he recently received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and praised the "great progress" being made in talks with Pyongyang. The letter is dated July 6, and was given to Secretary of State Pompeo delegation to deliver to Trump while the group was in Pyongyang last week to continue talks on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, senior administration officials tell CNN. "A very nice note from Chairman Kim of North Korea. Great progress being made," Trump said in a tweet that also included a copy of the correspondence from Kim....

Kim Jong Un put potatoes ahead of Mike Pompeo during a US visit to agree denuclearisation details, state media has suggested. The US secretary of state visited Pyongyang on Friday and Saturday in an attempt to agree details of a deal made during June's historic summit between Donald Trump and the North Korean dictator. However Mr Kim has not been seen in public for seven days, with every official move usually documented by news agency KCNA. During Mr Pompeo's trip relations between the US and North Korea appeared to take a dive as Pyongyang accused the US of a "gangster-like...

Mike Pompeo’s visit wasn’t it. But the visit hinted at what it might look like. One eight-word assumption underlies American and South Korean negotiations with Kim Jong Un: “North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons.” That’s what the analyst Cheon Seong Whun told me ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang this past weekend. For his part, Cheon, a security adviser in the conservative administration of former South Korean President Park Geun Hye, sees not a “scintilla of hint” that the North Korean leader is prepared to do so, despite Kim’s vague promise to Donald Trump...

President Trump suggested Monday that China could be "exerting negative pressure" on North Korea to stray from the denuclearization "deal" signed last month, amid trade tensions between the U.S. and Beijing. The president expressed confidence that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will "honor" the informal deal, despite tense talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the weekend. "I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea," Trump tweeted. "China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a...

Evidence gathered by South Korea’s military suggests Pyongyang is working on the submarine on its east coast, said Kim Hack-yong, who chaired the legislature’s defense committee until his term ended a few weeks ago. Satellite imagery reviewed by South Korean intelligence officials showed the movement of laborers and materials at the port of Sinpo, where the submarine appears to be under construction at an indoor facility, an aide to Mr. Kim said. U.S. officials consider the program a threat because such missiles are harder to identify and destroy before launch, potentially giving North Korea a greater element of surprise in...

North Korea on Saturday accused the U.S. of undermining the spirit of last month’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un after what it says were “regrettable” talks with a delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, accusing the U.S. of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nuclear weapons, came shortly after Pompeo’s delegation left the country. "We had expected that the U.S. side would offer constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders' summit ... we were also thinking about...

Looks like the two sides of the North Korean nuclear crisis have their wires crossed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led two days of talks with the Kim regime and offered a positive take on progress as he left Pyongyang. The North Koreans disagreed: BREAKING: North Korea Foreign Ministry says talks with Pompeo 'regrettable,' accuses US of unilateral demands for denuclearization.— The Associated Press (@AP) July 7, 2018 North Korea says high-level talks with a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were “regrettable” and has accused Washington of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning...

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believes that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sees a different future for his country, as America’s top diplomat heads to Pyongyang for talks on denuclearization. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to Montana, Trump said: “I really believe that he sees a different future for the North Koreans. I hope that’s true.”(continued)

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly brought a CD with the Elton John song “Rocket Man” to give as a gift to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his visit to the country. Pompeo arrived in North Korea on Friday amid talks between the two countries over denuclearizing North Korea. Pompeo brought two gifts for Kim, including a letter from President Trump and the CD, according to The Chosun Ilbo, a top newspaper in South Korea. Last year, amid escalating rhetoric between the two countries, Trump repeatedly referred to Kim as “Rocket Man” and “Little Rocket Man.” A diplomatic...

The US government sent a letter to North Korea from “President of the United States Donald Trump” via Panmunjeom on July 1 ahead of a scheduled third visit to the North by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on July 6, sources reported. A foreign affairs source informed on developments in the Korean Peninsula political situation said on July 2 that the US had apparently sent Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim and CIA Korea Mission Center Chief Andrew Kim to Panmunjeom to deliver an “important letter” to Workers’ Party of Korea vice chairman and United Front Department director Kim Yong-chol....

Former President Jimmy Carter believes that President Donald Trump has a legitimate case to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize if he brokers a denuclearization deal with North Korea. Carter won the award in 2002. “If President Trump is successful in getting a peace treaty that’s acceptable to both sides with North Korea, I think he certainly ought to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Carter to Politico Magazine’s “Off Message” Podcast. “I think it would be a worthy and a momentous accomplishment that no previous president has been able to realize.” Trump is set to meet with...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered a high ranking army officer to be executed after he was accused of giving extra food and fuel rations to troops and their families. Daily NK reported that Hyon Ju Song, the lieutenant general of the Korean People’s Army in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, was executed by a firing squad for “charges of abusing authority and engaging in anti-Party acts.” Hyon was reportedly a rising star in the army before his death. He served as a member of the Workers' Party of Korea's Central Committee and battalion commander under the Supreme Guard...

North Korea has apparently chosen not to host its annual mass rally marking the end of a formative conflict with South Korea and its top partner the U.S., as President Donald Trump and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un pursue unprecedented diplomatic ties between their nations. Every June 25, North Korea remembers the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, known as the Day of Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism. The event sets off a month of patriotic displays that conclude with the Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War, a holiday commemorating the signing of an armistice...

Nix the nuclear warheads, cue the doves. The North Korean government is erasing much of its anti-U.S. propaganda following dictator Kim Jong-un’s forays onto the world stage. Gone are the posters depicting the U.S. as a “rotten, diseased, pirate nation” and promising “merciless revenge” on American forces for an imagined attack on the totalitarian country. In their place are cheery messages touting praising the prospects for Korean reunification and the declaration Kim signed in April with South Korean President Moon Jae-in promising “lasting peace,” according to reports.

A majority of Americans now approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. relations with North Korea, a change that comes after his historic summit with that country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. But most don’t believe Kim is serious about addressing the international concerns about his country’s nuclear weapons program. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Thursday finds that 55 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea, up from 42 percent in March and 34 percent last October. It’s the highest rating for the Republican president on any individual issue on...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev agreed today to work with North Korea in a “three-way cooperation” - pointedly leaving out the US. Mr Moon said: “When a peace regime is established on the Korean Peninsula, economic cooperation between the South and North Korea will take off and will be expanded to three-way cooperation with Russia.” His office did release a statement which paid the briefest of lip service to the US. It said: “President Moon and Prime Minister Medvedev agreed to strengthen the strategic communication between the two countries to assist complete denuclearisation of...

The regime’s actions over decades show that conquering South Korea has been its No. 1 goal. Let’s hope that has changed. President Trump should be given credit for his ambitious goal for North Korea, whether or not the goal is achieved. Sadly, I expect the administration to fall short of the finish line. Conventional wisdom has it that Kim Jong-un’s objective is the survival of his regime. That’s not so. Since the post–World War II creation of the Democratic Republic of Korea, the Kim family regime has sought one objective: conquest of South Korea by any means to unify the...

The four-minute movie trailer was created to show Chairman Kim the power and glory that could be his if he lays down his nukes. President Trump pitched paradise to Kim Jong Un in a four-minute movie trailer made especially for the summit in Singapore last week, complete with cautionary tale, dramatic musical score and a lot left for the imagination. It features the two men and images of glory and strength: the perfect tease for the chubby millennial ruling North Korea known for killing off family members and playing video games. Kim is like Trump. They love screens and they...