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WASHINGTON: Ousted National Security Advisor John Bolton said Kim Jong Un “will never give up” nuclear weapons voluntarily — an implicit warning to his former boss. Bolton was restating a consensus view of the Intelligence Community, one that runs counter to President Trump’s faith that the North Korean dynast can be wheedled and cajoled. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies today, Bolton attracted a forest of TV cameras hoping for some fireworks. They probably thought they were getting something hot when Bolton made his comment about North Korea but, as Breaking D readers know, the Intelligence Community’s...

U.S. military officials were left in the lurch last Thursday when North Korean representatives simply failed to show up for a meeting on recovering and repatriating the remains of the U.S. troops killed during the Korean War, the Washington Post reports. According to the Post, officials from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and representatives from United Nations Command were left waiting in the Joint Security Area of the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarized zone on July 12, although it is unclear why the North Korean counterparts failed to attend. “We were ready,” according to one anonymous official who spoke to the Post....

Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un hold surprise second summit: Blue House Leaders met at Panmunjom for the second time, Seoul says, with results to be announced tomorrow South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a surprise meeting at Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border on Saturday, according to a statement issued by the Blue House. The meeting is the second between the two leaders, with the first having taken place at the same location and resulting in the signing of the Panmunjom Declaration. “President Moon Jae-in held a second summit meeting with Kim Jong...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has arrived in the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone for his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be accompanied by his sister and confidante, Kim Yo-jong, and the 90-year-old nominal head of the North Korean state, Kim Yong-nam, as well as foreign and defense ministers in the historic inter-Korean summit at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone on Friday.Panmunjom, the world's last Cold War frontier, was designated as the venue of meeting for officials from the North and South after the...

A North Korean military statement Friday warned U.S. soldiers to stop what it called "hooliganism" at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom or they'll meet a "dog's death any time and any place." It said U.S. troops pointed their fingers at North Korean soldiers and made strange noises and unspecified "disgusting" facial expressions. It also said that American troops encouraged South Korean soldiers to aim their guns at the North. A statement from Christopher Bush, a spokesman for the U.N. command, said they looked into the allegations and determined they were unsubstantiated. North Korea occasionally accuses South Korean and U.S....

James D. Thurman, the new Commander of USFK, tours Panmunjom on Jul. 15

Australian PM Gets Up Close to N.Korea Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her partner Tim Mathieson visit a building in the truce village of Panmunjom on Sunday as a North Korean soldier looks on. Gillard is visiting South Korea from April 23-25 to mark the 60th anniversary of Australia's troop dispatch to the Korean War and the 50th anniversary of the start of Korea's diplomatic relations with Australia. /Newsis

Military officers from the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korea ended a rare meeting Thursday, officials said, the first such meeting since the March sinking of a warship blamed on the communist country. "The meeting ended at around 11:30 a.m.," said an official at the UNC. The official said he had no information on the results of the meeting that lasted about one and a half hours, adding they will be announced later in the day. The colonel-level meeting was aimed at arranging talks of general-grade officers between the two sides for discussions on the sinking, which a...

The American-led United Nations Command (UNC) said military talks with North Korea to discuss the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North have been rescheduled for Thursday. The colonel-level talks were initially scheduled for Tuesday, but North Korea abruptly asked for a delay just hours before the talks were set to begin, citing "administrative reasons." Later that day, the North's military proposed the new date to the Military Armistice Commission of the UNC, and the command accepted, a UNC statement said Wednesday. The meeting "will now take place at 10:00 a.m. on July 15, according to the...

North Korea's military abruptly canceled a rare meeting Tuesday with the American-led U.N. Command that had been arranged to discuss the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on Pyongyang. Military officers from North Korea and the U.N. Command were to meet at the Korean border village of Panmunjom on Tuesday morning to discuss sinking that killed 46 South Korean sailors. It would have been the first such meeting since the sinking, which sharply raised tension on the divided Korean peninsula. The North, however, requested a delay in the talks for "administrative reasons," the U.N. Command said in a...

North Korea's military delayed a rare meeting set for Tuesday with military officers from the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) to discuss the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the communist country, officials said. The two sides were scheduled to meet at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Tuesday morning, but the North's military requested a delay about two hours before the meeting's scheduled start, citing "administrative reasons," said an official at the UNC. A new date for the colonel-level meeting, which would be the first such meeting since the March sinking that dramatically raised tensions on...

North Korea has deployed about 50,000 commandos along the inter-Korean border in an apparent show of force with the threat of rapid infiltration "suicide missions" against South Korea, a military source in Seoul said. The North "has completed the frontline deployment of seven light infantry divisions over the past two or three years," the source said, citing a joint study by South Korean and U.S. militaries. Each division consists of about 7,000 troops. A South Korean soldier keeps watch northwards on the south side of the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, north of...

US already moving on pullout of DMZ as larger troop cuts loom in South Korea By Associated Press Wednesday, June 9, 2004 PANMUNJOM, Korea (AP) — The U.S. military is on track to pull almost all of its troops from their last outpost on the tense border with North Korea by October, a U.S. Army officer said Wednesday, amid discord over relocation plans. The two allies were also eyeing more negotiations over a separate U.S. proposal to remove a third of the 37,000 American troops in South Korea by the end of next year. The issues signal a new test...

[Report by Freeper "AmericanInTokyo" from the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), 31 May 2003.]This is a quick, frontline report for the readers of Free Republic, provided by "AmericanInTokyo". An investigative visit was conducted Saturday (yesterday) by myself and about 25 others to the sensitive/tense Joint Security Area (JSA) just north of Seoul, Korea, which is maintained jointly by the North Koreans and the US/ROK military at the village of Panmunjom on the Korean DMZ at the 38th Parallel.The trip was significant in view of recent escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States (and South Korea) in terms of North...

<p>PANMUNJOM, Korea - If diplomacy fails, this is where another Korean war would begin.</p> <p>Stretched across the waist of the Korean Peninsula, the demilitarized zone is a 151-mile-long belt bristling with barbed wire, mine fields, tank barriers and artillery bunkers that has divided North from South since the 1950-53 Korean War. It is one of the most fortified frontiers on earth.</p>

AmericanInTokyo here with a quick heads up.I am currently in the Republic of South Korea. Tomorrow (and having done this a number of times, but not for the last few years) I will 'technically enter' the so-called "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" very briefly at the Joint Security Area of the Demilitarized Zone between South and communist North Korea.I am sure a number of Freepers have also done this while in the ROK. Part of the briefing by the US military to our group will include a short visit to the military demarcation conference room. No doubt the stern,...