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SEOUL, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Chinese banks including a branch of China's biggest bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have frozen accounts belonging to North Koreans, a South Korean newspaper reported on Monday. Citing phone conversations with an unnamed employee of ICBC's office in the northeastern Chinese border city of Dandong, the Dong-A Ilbo reported that since late December it had suspended all deposits and transfers of foreign currencies in and out of accounts with North Korean names. "(The bank) had never told me why it was taking such measures, but it seems that they are related with...

Days before North Korea's latest nuclear-bomb test, the Obama administration secretly agreed to talks to try to formally end the Korean War, dropping a longstanding condition that Pyongyang first take steps to curtail its nuclear arsenal. Instead the U.S. called for North Korea's atomic-weapons program to be simply part of the talks. Pyongyang declined the counter-proposal, according to U.S. officials familiar with the events. Its nuclear test on Jan. 6 ended the diplomatic gambit.

Gwynne Dyer: Turks and Saudis know any Russia fight will be lonely one 9:32 AM Wednesday Feb 17, 2016 Between last Thursday and Monday, the Turkish government, in league with Saudi Arabia, made a tentative decision to enter the war on the ground in Syria - and then got cold feet about it. Or more likely, the Turkish army simply told the government that it would not invade Syria and risk the possibility of a shooting war with the Russians. The Turkish government bears a large share of the responsibility for the devastating Syrian civil war. From the start, Turkey's...

(LEAD) S. Korea braces for possible terror attacks from N. Korea: official 2016/02/19 11:59 (ATTN: UPDATES with comments by ruling party lawmaker) SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is bracing for any possible terror attacks from North Korea, an official said Friday. "The presidential office of national security is thoroughly in control of every situation related to terror," presidential spokesman Jeong Yeon-guk told reporters. Still, he declined to comment on whether National Security Adviser Kim Kwan-jin or other South Korean officials are included on North Korea's alleged hit list. South Korea believes that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has...

Experts say one of Mount Paekdu's previous eruptions was 'one of the largest explosive events in human history' Seismologists have warned that North Korea's repeated nuclear tests could cause its highest mountain Mount Paekdu to erupt - and they add that one of the volcano's previous eruptions was "one of the largest explosive events in human history". More than 9,000 feet high, the volcano straddles the border between North Korea and China and last erupted in 1903. Experts have warned of increasing seismic activity beneath the peak in recent years, however, including seismic uplift and rising levels of sulphur dioxide,...

A veteran Heritage Foundation (HF) researcher who has studied data from North Korea has very serious news for all Americans: The North Koreans now have the capability to hit any place in the United States with a nuclear loaded warhead. Thanks to the silly, bowing, scraping and time wasting charade the very phony John Kerry has carried out over his pointless tenure as Barack Obama’s Sectary of State, every single person in America is now in genuine danger. The (HF) researcher concluded that since North Korea has successfully put another satellite into orbit she has the technological ability to launch...

Exclusive: President Obama, who once called the idea of “moderate” Syrian rebels a “fantasy,” has maintained the fiction to conceal the fact that many “moderates” are fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s jihadists, an inconvenient truth that is complicating an end to Syria’s civil war, explains Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter Secretary of State John Kerry insisted at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the agreement with Russia on a temporary halt in the war in Syria can only be carried out if Russia stops its airstrikes against what Kerry is now calling “legitimate opposition groups.” But what Kerry did not...

RAF Typhoon jets scrambled to intercept Russian bombers By WMNDavidWells | Posted: February 17, 2016 Read more: http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/RAF-Typhoon-jets-scrambled-intercept-Russian/story-28754813-detail

The latest closure of the jointly-administered South Korea-North Korea Kaesong Industrial Region illustrates the limitations of over-reliance on "soft power" -- in this case, Seoul's well-intentioned economic and diplomatic power-- when confronting a vicious dictatorship that relies on "hard power" military might and terror for survival and prestige.That describes the North Korean regime in a nutshell, so to speak. To retain power, dictator Kim Jong Un's pathological regime violently subjugates North Korea's wretched populace. His regime glorifies its quest for nuclear weapons, and on a daily basis threatens South Korea, Japan and the U.S. with nuclear immolation. Kim's ballistic missile...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) directed President Obama to "stop protecting China" in order to more effectively respond to hostile actions from North Korea. Cruz, a presidential candidate, penned the letter to Obama Wednesday to express concern with his policy of "strategic patience" toward North Korea. Earlier, the Texas senator announced that he would vote in favor of legislation that would impose nuclear weapons-related sanctions in North Korea, which is expected to gain passage in the Senate. Cruz outlined several means of more effectively responding to aggressive actions from North Korea, which over the weekend launched a long-range rocket and...

SEOUL -- North Korea has executed its army chief of staff, Ri Yong Gil, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, which, if true, would be the latest in a series of executions, purges, and disappearances under the country's young leader. The news comes amid heightened tension surrounding the isolated North Korea after its Sunday launch of a long-range rocket, about a month after it drew international condemnation for conducting its fourth nuclear test. A source familiar with North Korean affairs also told Reuters that Ri had been executed. The source declined to be identified, given the sensitivity of...

North Korea has executed its army chief of staff, Ri Yong Gil, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, which, if true, would be the latest in a series of executions, purges and disappearances under its young leader. The news comes amid heightened tension surrounding isolated North Korea after its Sunday launch of a long-range rocket, which came about a month after it drew international condemnation for conducting its fourth nuclear test. A source familiar with North Korean affairs also told Reuters that Ri had been executed. The source declined to be identified, given the sensitivity of the matter.

Tokyo has ordered ballistic missile defense units in the Sea of Japan and onshore to shoot down any North Korean missile that would threaten its territory. Japan's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that it would destroy any North Korean missile if it threatened to fall on its territory, after Pyongyang announced it planned to launch a space rocket this month. "Today the defense minister issued an order" to destroy such a missile if it "is confirmed that it will fall on Japanese territory," the Japanese ministry said in a statement. Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, who issued the order, cited the...

After delaying nearly two years, the Pentagon on Monday announced plans to deploy advanced missile defenses in South Korea as soon as possible. In early 2014 the U.S. military commander in South Korea, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, asked the Pentagon for ground-based Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (or THAAD) units to counter growing threats posed by North Korean nuclear arms and missiles. China's government, however, pressured the South Korean government of Park Geun Hye into blocking the deployment. In the interim, the Obama administration did not press Seoul to allow interceptor batteries to be fielded, according to U.S. officials. Scaparrotti repeated the...

North Korea, which in recent weeks has conducted a nuclear test and fired a long-range rocket in defiance of United Nations sanctions, has also resumed its efforts to produce weapons-grade nuclear material, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told Congress Tuesday. A North Korean uranium enrichment facility has been expanded, and a plutonium reactor, closed in 2007, is back up and running, Clapper testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The reactor could begin to recover plutonium "within a matter of weeks to months," he said. The dictatorship's growing menace also includes a growth in the "size and sophistication of its...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: North Korean adventurism only adds to Israel's proliferation concerns. North Korea's fourth nuclear test, the P5+1 agreement to lift Iranian sanctions, and the billions of dollars worth in deals between Tehran and Asian and European companies, together constitute a significant challenge. In addition, Jerusalem faces a difficult task of being the watchdog that monitors Iran's adherence to the nuclear deal. One of the biggest concerns is that Iran will not openly breach the P5+1 agreement, but rather cooperate with North Korea on a "Back Door" plan towards the bomb, with North Korea surreptitiously doing the dirty work...

This story actually broke just as we were warming up for the debate last night and our readers were discussing it in comments while most of the political sphere was focused on New Hampshire. Ahead of their original schedule, Kim Jong-un launched a missile into orbit allegedly carrying an “Earth observing satellite” over the objections of pretty much everyone else on the planet. Like we needed this on top of everything else that’s going on.(WaPo) North Korea on Sunday declared that it had successfully put an "earth observation satellite" into orbit under the direct orders of leader Kim Jong Un,...

The Japanese government says North Korea launched what's widely believed to be a long-range ballistic missile on Sunday. The government said the missile was launched at 9:31 AM Japan time from the western coast of North Korea toward the direction of Okinawa Prefecture.

Last night a Bernie Sanders declared North Korea our biggest foreign threat. "Clearly North Korea is a very strange situation because it is such an isolated country run by a handful of dictators, or maybe just one, who seems to be somewhat paranoid. And, who had nuclear weapons." Not that you've read much about this in the mainstream media, but just last week North Korea (7 thousand miles away) signed a "Trade Agreement" with Castro's Cuba (90 miles away.) Not that you've read much about this in the mainstream media, but much of the "trade" between Stalinist Cuba and Stalinist...

As of this writing, North Korea intends to launch another Unha-3 rocket, or a larger and more efficient version in a launch window falling between 8 – 25 February. This launch follows on the heels of a nuclear test conducted by North Korea on January 6, 2016, and the claim by Kim Jung-Un that the bomb was a hydrogen bomb. The MSM pundits and their positivist quacking "experts" all state the bomb was not a hydrogen bomb; however, experts such as Peter V. Pry disagree. What was discussed by Dr. Pry was the intentionally low-yield weapon test that would...