Free Republic

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher urged students not to go to elite colleges because doing so “just makes you stupid” and that these elite schools are “a North Korean re-education camp” that are racist towards Asian applicants that don’t teach history and “if ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market.”

An American citizen has been detained in North Korea after straying across the border into the communist country without permission during a tour, the United Nations Command said Tuesday. The detainee has not been identified, but South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper, citing South Korea’s army, reported that the person was a US army soldier. The person was taking part in a visit to the Joint Security Area – the border village in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas that is guarded by soldiers from both sides. “A US National on a JSA orientation tour crossed, without authorization, the Military...

Leftist students at Syracuse University recently voiced opposition to an event featuring Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector. Ahead of the event hosted by the Syracuse College Republicans in partnership with Young America’s Foundation, students destroyed fliers and posted messages critical of Park and the College Republicans in an online forum. Park, who delivered her speech on Apr. 5, “has criticized concepts like political correctness, trigger warnings and ‘woke culture’ in her career,” according to the student newspaper, The Daily Orange.

North Korean state media reported on Friday that dictator Kim Jong-un signed a law making the Communist tyranny’s march to nuclear weapons “irreversible,” banning all further denuclearization talks with the outside world, and mandating an immediate nuclear attack if Kim or other top officials is harmed by foreign powers. The new legislation, passed by the rubber-stamp “Supreme People’s Assembly” on Thursday, supersedes a 2013 law that laid out North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in less belligerent terms. Among other differences, the 2013 law did not specify conditions under which North Korea would initiate a nuclear war without hesitation.

During an attack on the defense industry, the North Korea-linked threat group known as Lazarus was able to exfiltrate data from a restricted network segment by taking control of a router and setting it up as a proxy server. For initial access, the group used phishing emails featuring COVID-19 themes and containing publicly available personal information of the intended victims. Next, they focused on credential harvesting and lateral movement, including gaining access to and exfiltrating data from restricted network segments. Active since at least 2009, Lazarus has orchestrated multiple high-profile attacks. In 2019, they focused on crypto-currency exchanges, but switched...

President Donald Trump met Kim Jong-un at the summit in Singapore on Tuesday. The two leaders met and shook hands at the island resort Capella Singapore and exchanged a few words with their interpreters before entering the hotel for their one-on-one conversation. “I feel really great,” Trump said, adding that he had “no doubt” that the two leaders would have a “great relationship.”

Trump: North Korean delegates are coming to Washington to deliver a letter from Kim Jong Un President Donald Trump said Thursday that North Korean delegates want to deliver to him a letter from Kim Jong Un, the latest sign that a summit between the two leaders may indeed happen after all. The president, speaking to reporters, said he believes the delegates will be coming to Washington on Friday. "We'll see what happens," he said Mike Calia | @Michael_Calia President Donald Trump said Thursday that North Korean delegates want to deliver to him a letter from Kim Jong Un, the latest...

President Donald Trump has canceled his historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un next month. The meeting, which would have marked the first face-to-face encounter between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, was set for June 12 in the southeastern Asian island city state. "Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting," Trump wrote in a letter to Kim, which was released Thursday morning.

Top generals have been insisting for years that if North Korea launched a missile at the United States, the U.S military would be able to shoot it down. But that is a highly questionable assertion, according to independent scientists and government investigators. In making it, the generals fail to acknowledge huge questions about the effectiveness of the $40 billion missile defense system they rely on to stop a potential nuclear-armed ballistic missile fired by North Korean or Iran, according to a series of outside reviews. "They are leading political leaders to believe that they have a military capability that they...

Erratic escalation? Kim Jong-Un is often said to be a sadistic monster, and his propensity for creative, painful, and brutal executions In an attack that sounds like something out of a Bond movie, the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has been assassinated in Malaysia. The method? Two female killers carrying either poison needles or a mysterious spray aerosol.

The Philippines said on Saturday it had impounded a North Korean vessel in response to tough new United Nations sanctions introduced in response to Pyongyang's recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The 6,830-tonne cargo ship Jin Teng will not be allowed to leave Subic port, northeast of the capital Manila, where it had been docked for three days and its crew will be deported, presidential spokesman Manolo Quezon said on state-run radio station Radyo ng Bayan. It was the first reported case of the sanctions -- the toughest to date, which were adopted late Wednesday by the UN Security Council...

Chinese censors are scrubbing sites of mentions of North Korean girl band By Victoria Ho 19 minutes ago After the Moranbong Band's abrupt cancelation of their performances in Beijing over the weekend, it appears Chinese censors went to work deleting speculation and chatter about the North Korean girl band on mainland sites. The Moranbong Band, whose members were said to be handpicked by North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, were on a goodwill mission to Beijing and were set to perform three concerts starting Saturday night. But just hours before the first, they abruptly canceled the gig and headed home on...

LONDON, North Korean embassy officials visited a London hair salon after the business put up a poster with leader Kim Jong Un's face on it offering discount haircuts. The M&M Hair Academy posted Jong Un's picture accompanied by the phrase, "Bad Hair Day?" “We put up posters for an offer for men's hair cuts through the month of April. Obviously in the current news there has been this story that North Korean men are only allowed one haircut,” barber Karim Nabbach told the BBC. After embassy officials contacted the police, they paid a brief visit to the salon before being...

THE execution of Jang Song Thaek, the No. 2 man in North Korea, took Beijing by surprise and will adversely affect bilateral relations.Beijing's displeasure is expressed through the publication of a detailed account of Jang's brutal execution in Wen Wei Po, its official mouthpiece, in Hong Kong, on Dec 12.According to the report, unlike previous executions of political prisoners which were carried out by firing squads with machine guns, Jang was stripped naked and thrown into a cage, along with his five closest aides. Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were...

Brief excerpt; The paper said the general made clear at a speech given at a rally in Pyongyang that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other rockets capable of attacking pre-set targets have been armed with various types of atomic warheads.

North Korea could carry out an underground test of a nuclear weapon as early as Tuesday night as the North's reclusive leadership dramatically tries to up the stakes with the U.S. and the West, U.S. officials told NBC News. U.S. officials say North Korea may already have an arsenal between 12 and a "few dozen" far more advanced weapons, many more than generally believed.

Kim Jong-il is dead

The United States on Friday reported dire human rights abuses in North Korea, including infanticide, and said that border guards appeared to have shoot-to-kill orders against fleeing refugees. The State Department’s annual human rights survey pointed to problems across the board in the rigidly controlled communist state, although it acknowledged it was mostly relying on second-hand accounts due to a lack of US access. The report cited reports that North Korea had a policy of executing anyone who leaves the impoverished country -- generally, by sneaking into neighboring China -- but said it could not verify whether or how many...

Low-Key U.S. Reaction to Uranium Enrichment Revelations May Have Prompted North Korean Aggression, Analysts SayPondering possible reasons for North Korea’s deadly artillery attack on its southern neighbor, some Pyongyang-watchers in South Korea believe the regime is trying to prod the U.S. into talks after its most recent provocation – the unveiling of previously-undisclosed uranium enrichment facilities – failed to generate the desired response. Other proffered theories include a show of strength to quell any suggestion of internal instability surrounding North Korea’s succession process. Although North Korean forces have occasionally caused provocations near the land and maritime borders Tuesday’s attack on...

Russia says it tracked hijacked Arctic Sea all along, but questions grow over cargo Tony Halpin in Moscow Russia’s top general hinted today that the ship allegedly hijacked by pirates earlier this month may have been carrying a secret cargo, as it emerged that the country’s Navy tracked the vessel throughout its journey. President Medvedev sent the Russian Navy to find the Arctic Sea after it apparently disappeared while passing through the English Channel en route to Algeria from Finland. However, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow now says that Russian and international agencies had monitored the ship throughout its strange...