Free Republic

A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un's personal tutor. David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident. But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea's Abductees' Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.

South Korea's Unification Ministry says North Korea appears to have executed a vice premier. Ministry spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said on Wednesday that vice premier Kim Yong Jin, who was in charge of education, allegedly disobeyed the ruling Korean Workers' Party. Other South Korean officials said Kim was investigated for laziness during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly in June. They believe he was killed by firing squad in mid-July. The spokesperson also said another senior North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol, has been subjected to "re-education." He is the head of the party's United Front Department handling inter-Korean relations....

After what North Korea claimed was the successful test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday, Pyongyang is on track to develop the capability to strike targets in the region, including Japan, by 2020, given the speed of its development, according to a website run by a U.S. research institute. The report posted on the website 38 North was compiled by the U.S. Korea Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. North Korea’s official media reported Thursday that leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of the SLBM and declared it...

North Korea fires submarine-based ballistic missile, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version

North Korea warned Monday that it would launch a preemptive nuclear attack against the U.S. and South Korea if they showed the “slightest sign of aggression” toward Pyongyang while conducting their annual military drills. The North’s Foreign Ministry said its “first-strike” units are prepared to conduct retaliatory strikes on South Korean and U.S. forces, threatening to turn the two nations into “a heap of ashes.” The 12-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian command and control drills began Monday with 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers participating, according to both militaries. Washington and Seoul have insisted that the exercises are defensive...

Josh Thomas, an American amateur brewer who was based in Hong Kong for five years, has tried what he described as an “absolutely insane amount” of Asian beers. He said that Taedonggang is “significantly better” than any other mass-market beer on the continent, chiefly because the best-selling beers of North Korea’s neighbors — Cass and Hite in South Korea, Snow and Tsingtao in China, and Asahi Super Dry and Kirin in Japan — are rice-based, light, and somewhat watered down. But since rice is so scarce in North Korea, brewers there tend to rely more on barley, which makes beer...

Seoul (CNN)A senior North Korean diplomat, along with his wife and children, has defected and reached safety in South Korea, making it the highest-level diplomatic defection from the Pyongyang regime in history. Thae Yong Ho, the deputy ambassador of the North Korean embassy in the UK, is under government protection, Jeong Joo-hee, a spokesman for the South Korean Unification Ministry, told reporters Wednesday.

North Korea has its first gold medal of the Rio Olympics after Rim Jong Sim won the women's 75-kilogram weightlifting class. Rim was utterly dominant, lifting 117 kilograms in the snatch and 153 in the clean and jerk for a total of 274, way ahead of the 258 managed by Belarusian silver medalist Darya Naumava, or 257 for Spain's Lidia Valentin Perez.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea's top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington "crossed the red line" and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month. Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North's Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing. The United States and South...

A North Korean short wave radio station abruptly returned to the airwaves last Friday after a sixteen year absence. The mysterious broadcast has South Korean intelligence agents scrambling to figure out what its message means-and whom the message was intended for. The transmission, which began at approximately 12:45 on Friday, was made by an unnamed female announcer and began with, "From now on, I will give review work for the subject of mathematics under the curriculum of a remote education university for exploration agents of the 27th bureau." The announcer went on to say, "On page 459, question number 35,...

Pyongyang launched three missiles Tuesday morning in the latest in a set of controversial ballistic tests, according to South Korea’s military, which claimed the projectiles had a range of up to 600 kilometers (360 miles). The three missiles were launched from the North’s east coast into the sea at between 5:45am and 6:20am local time. The missiles, presumed to be Scud-types, have enough range to reach all of South Korea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, adding that South Korea's military is keeping a close eye on the developments. #BREAKING North Korea fires three ballistic missiles, says South...

On July 6, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and other senior North Korean individuals and organizations for human rights violations. This is the first time that the U.S. has designated North Korean entities for human rights abuses. The administration should be commended for finally acting upon the February 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report which concluded that North Korea’s human rights violations were so widespread and systemic as to constitute “crimes against humanity.” That said, the Obama administration’s action, like its designation last month of North Korea as a primary money-laundering concern, was likely...

North Korea has sent hundreds of workers to labor as “state-sponsored slaves” in member states as Pyongyang seeks to circumvent international sanctions aimed at starving it of money over its nuclear weapons program, rights campaigners said on Wednesday (5 July). North Korean laborers commonly work 10-12 hour shifts, six days a week, but up to 90% of their pay is sent back to the hermit state, according to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK). Most are working in Polish shipyards, construction sites and farms. North Koreans are also employed in leisure and clothing firms in Malta,...

Ambassadorships to major countries and trouble spots were typically given out to professional diplomats. You might send a donor with no diplomatic experience off to play ambassador to Gambia or Cyprus, but not to France or China. Obama changed that as he changed so many things, dispatching a ridiculously incompetent donor to serve as ambassador to the UK and after failing to make Caroline Kennedy the senator from New York (after some Schumer sabotage and a New Yorker backlash), Princess Caroline had to settle for being the US ambassador to Japan where she's hard at work demonstrating the diplomatic...

Facebook is like North Korea, says ex-Facebooker Technically Incorrect: In his new book, former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martinez says Facebook management got upset if women's skirts were too short. Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. Many younger types imagine Facebook as a nirvana where you skateboard down corridors, code all night long and wait for the money to start rolling in. Antonio García Martinez thinks it's a little more like North Korea. The former (and fired) Facebook product manager today released a book called "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and...

Mainstream media outlets in Great Britain and the US were running news Sunday of a stunning petition that shows 2 million people want a new Brexit vote. Over “two million” signed the referendum in less than 24 hours! The BBC, The Mirror, France 24, The Telegraph, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian… all reported on the bogus petition. But they got punked. The poll was manufactured by 4Chan and Anonymous hackers who loaded up the signatures with fake names from The Vatican, Ghana, North Korea and elsewhere.

USAF F-15C fires an AIM-7 Sparrow in 2005. (Wikipedia) A newfound data breach of 160 South Korean firms and government agencies has put unclassified U.S. fighter jet blueprints in the hands of North Korean hackers, government officials in Seoul announced Monday. The attackers — reportedly using an IP address tied to a computer located in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — targeted network management software, South Korean police said in a press briefing Monday. The police declined to name the hacked software product. The broader hack reportedly went on for about two years before South Korea discovered it in...

In an interview with the Quad City Times Clinton called Obama's answer to whether or not he would meet with leaders who oppose the United States "irreponsible" and naive."

The Democrats' acrimonious primary battle came back to haunt Hillary Clinton yesterday, a day before she sets off on her first solo campaign swing for Barack Obama, with John McCain using footage of her attacking the Democratic candidate in a new campaign ad. The ad, which was released on the internet, features a number of Democratic leaders - including Obama - offering praise for McCain. But only Clinton, who is the closing speaker, goes so far as to take a jab at Obama, in footage culled from one of her primary rallies. The ad surfaced a day before Clinton is...

Hillary Clinton called Barack Obama “irresponsible and frankly naïve,” Barack Obama fired back that electing Hillary Clinton could mean “continuing with Bush-Cheney policies,” and finally Hillary Clinton asked, “What’s ever happened to the politics of hope?” So went the first full-throttle front-runners’ spat in the Democratic race, and among the many consequences of the earlier-than-expected (and Hillary-instigated) sniping should be the muting of talk of a Clinton-Obama ticket. On paper, such a pairing would be the perfect recipe for a party hungry to win back the White House and too keep it for some time, with the youthful Mr. Obama...