Free Republic

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was shown riding a white horse in the snow on a sacred mountain, in several photographs released by state media Wednesday that experts said could presage a major announcement. “His horseback march in Mount Paektu is a great event of weighty importance in the history of the Korean revolution,” the Korean Central News Agency reported. “All the officials who accompanied him to the top of the mountain felt overflowing emotion and joy and [were] convinced that there will be a great operation to strike the world with wonder again and advance the Korean revolution...

In the past there were excuses for those inclined to ignore or deny the horrors the Democratic People's Republic of Korea routinely visits upon its subjects. Defectors have an ax to grind, we were told. American intelligence is making up stories, and Pyongyang's foreign enemies stand to profit from these tales. There is nowhere for North Korea's apologists to hide now. The 200,000-word, nearly 400-page report released Monday by the "commission of inquiry" for the United Nations Human Rights Council, led by the Australian jurist Michael Kirby, in effect presents the world with the black book on North Korean communism....

This month’s rocket launch by reclusive North Korea shows it has likely developed the technology, long suspected in the West, to fire a warhead more than 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), South Korean officials said on Sunday, putting the U.S. West Coast in range. North Korea said the December 12 launch put a weather satellite in orbit, but critics say it was aimed at nurturing the kind of technology needed to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile. North Korea is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests,...