SEOUL, June 12 (AJP) - U.S. President Donald Trump "remains receptive" to engaging in talks with North Korea, the White House said Wednesday. When asked to clarify whether North Korean diplomats had refused to accept a letter Trump sent to Kim, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing, "The president remains receptive to correspondence with Kim Jong-un, and he'd like to see the progress that was made at that summit in Singapore, wh

SEOUL, June 12 (AJP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a congratulatory message to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Moscow marked "Russia Day," state media reported on Thursday. The Russian national holiday, which celebrates the 1990 declaration of the country's sovereignty during the Soviet era, is observed annually on June 12. In the message reportedly delivered the previous day by North Korean Ambassador to Russia Sin Hong-chol, Kim called Putin his &

SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - South Korea suspended its loudspeaker broadcasts along the heavily armed border with North Korea on Wednesday. The halt came about a year after the South Korean military resumed propaganda broadcasts in June last year, in response to a series of North Korean provocations including its bizarre campaign of sending trash-filled balloons toward the South. The latest move also came shortly after the Unification Ministry earlier this week urged North Korean defec

SEOUL, June 7 (AJP) - North Korea experienced a nationwide internet outage on Friday, affecting all routes of online access into the country, according to a British researcher cited by Reuters. Junade Ali, a UK-based analyst monitoring North Korea’s online activities, told Reuters the disruption likely resulted from internal technical issues rather than a cyberattack. Ali said the outage appeared similar to a network overload, suggesting internal problems such as power

SEOUL, June 5 (AJP) - North Korea's state media on Thursday reported the result of this year's South Korean presidential election, which took place here earlier this week. The state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper devoted just two sentences to it, saying that Lee Jae-myung was elected as the next president in the South's June 3 election, "just two months after [former President Yoon Suk Yeol' was impeached" over his botched Dec. 3 declaration of martial law las

SEOUL, May 30 (AJP) - North Korea has supplied Russia with large quantities of munitions and missile-related equipment, according to a report released Thursday by a multinational team that monitors UN Security Council sanctions on the renegade country. In its inaugural report, the Multinational Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) said, "Since began supplying Russia with ammunition in early September 2023, it has transferred over 20,000 containers of munitions and rel

SEOUL, May 26 (AJP) - North Korea has begun restoring a newly developed warship that was severely damaged during its launch ceremony last week, according to a report by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday. The 5,000-ton-class destroyer sustained major damage on May 21 at the northeastern port of Chongjin. During the launch event, attended by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the warship’s stern reportedly detached from its transport cradle and tipped to

SEOUL, May 25 (AJP) - North Korea has arrested a slew of officials and shipyard workers responsible for the failed launch of its naval destroyer earlier this week and taken steps to investigate them. The country's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Sunday that the investigation into the incident is "being intensified." The development came just a few days after leader Kim Jong-un's fury over the incident, which he blamed on "criminal negligence

SEOUL, May 23 (AJP) -North Korea admitted that its newly developed warship was accidentally damaged during a launch ceremony earlier this week. According to the official state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the accident occurred Wednesday when a 5,000-ton destroyer was being launched at a shipyard in Chongjin, a key industrial city in the northeast. The vessel tilted and eventually overturned after a support mechanism at the stern prematurely released as it entered the water