North Korea

Sept. 25 (UPI) — The United States on Thursday sanctioned one person and five entities for their role in generating money for North Korea and its weapons programs.

“This action aims to disrupt illicit networks that facilitate these attacks and simultaneously cutting off funding for the DPRK unlawful weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs,” the State Department said in a statement.

DPRK are the initials of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The department accused those blacklisted Thursday of generating revenue for Pyongyang by conducting arms deals with Myanmar’s military regime, which has been fighting a brutal civil war — resulting in civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian infrastructure — since its coup of February 2021.

Myanmar-based Royal Shune Lei Co. Limited and key personnel, including Kyaw Thu Myo Myint and Tin Myo Aung, who assisted in arms deals for the Myanmar Air Force with Kim Jong Ju, a Beijing-based deputy representative of the Korean Mining Development Trading Co., were sanctioned Thursday.

“Also known as the 221 General Bureau, KOMID serves as the DPRK’s primary arms dealer and exporter of ballistic missile-related equipment,” the State Department said.

The designations also sanction Aung Ko Ko Oo, director of Royal Shune Lei. The State Department also named Nam Chol Ung, a North Korean national who laundered foreign earnings through a network of businesses in Southeast Asia. Nam is a representative of the Pyongyang’s Reconnaissance General Bureau.

“These actions underscore the United States’ commitment to disrupting the networks that support DPRK’s destabilizing activities and to promoting accountability for those who enable Burma’s military regime,” the State Department release said.

South Korea reports Pyongyang building up enriched uranium supplies, insists ‘stopping’ its nuclear development ‘urgent’.

North Korea is believed to have accumulated large quantities of weapons-grade uranium, according to South Korea.

Seoul’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young on Thursday cited an assessment that Pyongyang possesses 2,000kg (about 4,400 pounds) of highly enriched uranium “at a purity of 90 percent or higher”.

If confirmed, the amount would also signal a sharp increase in North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear material.

Intelligence provided by civilian experts reveals that North Korea is operating four enrichment plants, he added.

“Even at this very hour, North Korea’s uranium centrifuges are operating at four sites,” Chung told reporters, only mentioning the known site of Yongbyon, which Pyongyang purportedly decommissioned after talks but later reactivated in 2021.

Foreign experts believe North Korea has built additional uranium-enrichment sites as leader Kim Jong Un has been pushing hard to expand his nuclear arsenal.

The North has long been known to hold a “significant” amount of highly enriched uranium, the key material used to produce nuclear warheads, according to South Korea’s defence ministry.

Enrichment must be pushed to more than 90 percent, the concentration termed weapons-grade, to ensure that the critical mass sets off the chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 42kg (92.6 pounds) of highly enriched uranium is needed for one nuclear weapon; 2,000kg would be enough for roughly 47 nuclear bombs.

Chung said “stopping North Korea’s nuclear development is an urgent matter”, but argued that sanctions will not be effective and that the only solution lies in a summit between Pyongyang and Washington.

International diplomacy on ending North Korea’s nuclear programme has stalled since 2019, when high-stakes summitry between Kim and United States President Donald Trump fell apart without any agreement.

Kim said recently that he was open to talks with the US as long as the demand that the North surrender its nuclear arms remains a condition.

North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and is under a raft of United Nations sanctions for its banned weapons programmes, has never publicly disclosed details of its uranium enrichment facilities.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June, has promised a more dovish approach towards Pyongyang compared with his hawkish predecessor, Yoon Suk-yeol, saying he will not seek regime change.

Chung said, by designating Pyongyang as the “main enemy” and insisting on denuclearisation first, the previous administration had effectively allowed North Korea’s nuclear capabilities “to expand without limit”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has suggested that he is open to talks with the US if Washington stops insisting that his country give up its nuclear weapons.

“If the United States drops the absurd obsession with denuclearising us and accepts reality, and wants genuine peaceful coexistence, there is no reason for us not to sit down with the United States,” Kim said in a speech at the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on Sunday, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The North Korean leader also commented on US President Donald Trump, whom he met three times during Trump’s first presidency, saying: “Personally, I still have fond memories of US President Trump.”

Kim’s comments come after both Trump and South Korean leader Lee Jae-myung expressed their willingness to meet with their North Korean counterpart at a meeting at the White House last month.

“Someday, I’ll see him. I look forward to seeing him. He was very good with me,” Trump said at the time, adding that he knew Kim, whose family has ruled North Korea for three generations, “better than anybody, almost, other than his sister”.

Lee, who has been vocally supportive of thawing relations with his country’s northern neighbour since taking office in June, said at the same meeting that he hoped the US president would “build a Trump Tower” in North Korea “so that I can play golf there”.

Despite overtures from Lee and Trump, North Korea has been critical of joint military drills between the US and South Korea, with Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, describing them as a “reckless” invasion rehearsal.

A more realistic goal

In recent interviews with the BBC and the Reuters news agency, Lee has also expressed an openness to negotiating his country’s stance on North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Lee said he would be open to a more “realistic” goal of North Korea agreeing to stop acquiring more nuclear weapons, rather than continuing with “fruitless attempts” at making it give up its existing arsenal.

“So long as we do not give up on the long-term goal of denuclearisation, I believe there are clear benefits to having North Korea stop its nuclear and missile development,” Lee said.

In an interview with Reuters, also published on Sunday, Lee acknowledged that sanctions had ultimately failed to deter Pyongyang, which today is adding an estimated 15 to 20 nuclear weapons to its arsenal every year.

“The reality is that the previous approach of sanctions and pressure has not solved the problem; it has worsened it,” Lee said.

Addressing the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on Sunday, Kim also said that sanctions had only made his country stronger and more resilient, despite reports that the nation of some 26 million people has long suffered from a food crisis.

“There will never be, and will never ever be for eternity, any negotiations with enemies of exchanging some things out of some obsession with lifting sanctions,” Kim said.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on North Korea for pursuing its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes close to 20 years ago.

But Kim Jong Un last year promised to “exponentially” boost his nation’s nuclear arsenal to defend itself against “hostile” forces.

The push comes as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) Yearbook warned in its latest annual report that the world is at risk of a new arms race among the nine nuclear-armed states: China, France, Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US.

Meanwhile, Kim’s signalling of an openness to meeting with Washington comes after he met with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, in Beijing earlier this month for a military parade marking 80 years since the end of World War II.

In comments apparently addressed to Xi regarding the Beijing celebrations, Trump said on his Truth Social platform: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America.”

North Korea ‘is in its strongest strategic position in decades’, US military intelligence said in May.

North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has said the use of artificial intelligence is a “top priority” in modernising his country’s increasingly sophisticated weapons technology and building up drone capabilities, state media reports.

During a visit to the Unmanned Aeronautical Technology Complex in the capital Pyongyang on Thursday, Kim presided over performance tests of multipurpose drones and unmanned surveillance vehicles, North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Friday.

According to KCNA, the North Korean leader emphasised “rapidly developing the newly-introduced artificial intelligence technology” as a “top priority” in order to increase his military’s unmanned weapons systems.

Kim also called for “expanding and strengthening the serial production capacity of drones”.

The visit to the aeronautical complex comes just a week after Kim oversaw another test of a new solid-fuel rocket engine designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles, which he hailed as a “significant” expansion of Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities.

North Korea’s military power includes nuclear-armed ballistic and cruise missiles, an increasing stockpile of nuclear weapons and a nascent spy satellite programme, according to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

North Korean active duty personnel now number an estimated one million troops, and are supplemented by more than seven million reservists – out of a population of roughly 25.6 million.

The country’s level of AI development is less certain, however.

One report from independent analysis group 38 North found North Korea has engaged in cross-border collaborative AI research with academics in the US, China and South Korea despite sanctions, suggesting it has undertaken “substantial efforts” to catch up in the AI race.

Those efforts have largely relied on China, one of the world’s most dominant AI players, the 38 North report added.

While Pyongyang has long depended on China politically and economically, under Kim, it has steadily sought to strengthen its relationship with Russia.

Last year, Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defence treaty that raised eyebrows in the West.

Pyongyang may not have benefitted as handsomely as Moscow from the deal.

A German think tank recently reported that while North Korea has provided nearly $10bn in weapons to Moscow, along with tens of thousands of soldiers to help Russian forces battle Ukraine, it has only received some $457m to $1.19bn in return.

Moscow’s aid has consisted mainly of food, fuel, air defence systems and possibly some fighter aircraft for North Korea.

Earlier this month, Kim appeared in Beijing with both his Chinese and Russian counterparts – President Xi Jinping and President Putin – in what analysts viewed as a stark display of North Korea’s desire to take up the world stage.

In May, the DIA reported that North Korea “is in its strongest strategic position in decades, possessing the military means to hold at risk US forces and US allies in Northeast Asia, while continuing to improve its capability to threaten the US”.

For his part, Kim has panned joint US-South Korea drills as “a rehearsal of a war of aggression” against his country.

Stephen Low, 48, was celebrating the end of his first year teaching English in South Korea when he decided to go on a hike near the North-South border – but he got more than he bargained for

A British man found himself at the business end of a South Korean guard’s gun during an innocent hike.

Stephen Low had just finished his first year teaching English at a school near the infamous DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) between North and South Korea. He had no idea then that his language teaching abilities were ultimately what would rescue him when facing the barrel of a gun.

The now 48-year-old decided to walk down a well-known trail near the North-South border. There, sniper posts and echoes of conflict provided a spine-chilling reminder of the hostilities across the divide.

Stephen knew the area was no place to mess around. In fact, one of his friends found themselves in hot water after they hopped on a military bus by mistake and “ended up in the military side of the DMZ.”

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“I just went hiking up to a hiking trail,” Stephen said.

As he approached the peak, the temperature dropped dramatically, and so Stephen sought refuge in one of the shelters scattered around the mountainside. He warmed himself by igniting a small fire, using a copy of the vampire fantasy novel Twilight as tinder.

Unfortunately, much like the romance in the Stephenie Meyer book, the fire burned too hot.

“As the fire burned, lots of thick smoke began wafting out from the hut. Suddenly, I heard shouting and as I emerged coughing and spluttering from the smoke-filled sniper hole, a ton of soldiers came down the mountain; they must have thought they were under attack,” Stephen continued.

Happily the teacher managed to slip away from the fire and the approaching soldiers, only to come face-to-face with a beekeeper, surrounded by bees.

“The bees swarmed me and got inside my clothing. I basically tore everything off to avoid being stung and ended up in just my boots, beanie, and boxers, which just so happened to be Union Jack boxers. That beekeeper must have thought I looked crazy…patriotic, but crazy,” he continued.

The misadventure wasn’t to end there however. Stephen rushed back towards the town where he was staying, only to stumble into a soldier. Despite Stephen’s best efforts to explain in Korean that he was simply lost, the guard remained deeply suspicious.

And as he stared at the guard’s M16 machine gun with its grenade launcher attachment, Stephen realized he needed to be far more persuasive. In a desperate bid to prove his innocence, Stephen called a former Korean student of his, who was now serving as the personal doctor to the South Korean president.

Handing the phone to the guard, Stephen pleaded, “Hangook chingu, Hangook chingu!”, translating to “Korean friend, Korean friend!”.

Despite initial fears that the guard was trigger-happy, he took the call instead. The ex-student managed to convince the soldier to escort Stephen safely through the base.

Stephen recounted, “It was hard to believe the guard actually thought I was a spy. But it’s exactly what my friend later told me the guard was accusing me of being. Back then, South Koreans were very wary of North Korean espionage; you even had options on your mobile emergency list for reporting spies!”.

“The guard was prepared for a North Korean around the corner, not a semi-naked hiker from the UK. South Korean guards have emergency numbers on speed dial that let them report a spy.”

While having a gun waved in your face is an experience best avoided if possible, the whole escapade has taught Stephen a valuable lesson.

“The lesson learnt is don’t set fire to things in public places,” he concluded.

SEOUL, Sept. 15 (UPI) — North Korea said Monday that its status as a nuclear weapons state is “permanently specified” by law and “irreversible” in a statement condemning the United States’ latest call for denuclearization.

The statement came in response to remarks by interim Charge d’Affaires Howard Solomon of the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna at a meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency last week.

On Tuesday, Solomon expressed concern over the North’s “destabilizing weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.”

“We remain committed to the complete denuclearization of North Korea,” Solomon said.

The North’s permanent mission to the U.N. office in Vienna called the remarks a “grave provocation.”

“We strongly denounce and reject the U.S. provocative act of revealing once again its invariable hostile intention against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea … and express serious concern over the negative consequences to be entailed by it,” the mission said in a statement carried by state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

“The position of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a nuclear weapons state which has been permanently specified in the supreme and basic law of the state has become irreversible,” the mission said.

The mission also claimed that the IAEA has “no legal right and moral justification” to interfere in the North’s internal affairs, pointing out that Pyongyang has not had official relations with the nuclear watchdog for over 30 years.

North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994 after a standoff with the United States and the agency over nuclear inspections.

The North passed a law declaring itself a nuclear-armed state in 2022 and later amended its constitution to enshrine the permanent growth of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.

In recent years, the country has repeatedly dismissed the notion of restarting dialogue or denuclearization talks with the United States and South Korea.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test of a new solid-fuel engine for intercontinental ballistic missiles and said it “heralds a significant change in expanding and strengthening the nuclear strategic forces of the DPRK.”

Kim Jo Yong says the upcoming drills ‘will undoubtedly bring about negative consequences’ for Seoul and its allies.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister has condemned upcoming joint military exercises between the United States, Japan and South Korea, calling them “dangerous” and a “reckless show of strength”.

The comments by Kim Yo Jong, published by state media on Sunday, come a day before Seoul and its allies begin drills combining naval, air and missile defence exercises off South Korea’s Jeju Island.

The drills, called the “Freedom Edge”, will last through Friday.

Kim Yo Jong, who is vice department director of the North Korean governing party’s central committee, slammed the drills as a “dangerous idea”.

“This reminds us that the reckless display of power displayed by the US, Japan, and South Korea in the wrong places, namely around the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, will undoubtedly bring about negative consequences for themselves,” Kim Yo Jong said, using the official name for North Korea.

The statement follows a visit by her brother to weapons research facilities this week, where he said Pyongyang “would put forward the policy of simultaneously pushing forward the building of nuclear forces and conventional armed forces”.

North Korea perceives the trilateral drills as “scenarios for limited or full-scale nuclear strikes and attempts to neutralise its launch platforms”, Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told the AFP news agency.

“The North is likely using the allied exercises as a pretext to push ahead with nuclear modernisation and conventional upgrades,” he added.

Aside from the trilateral exercises, the US and South Korea also plan to stage the “Iron Mace” tabletop exercises next week on integrating their conventional and nuclear capabilities against North Korea’s threats, South Korean local media reported.

South Korea hosts about 28,500 American soldiers in its territory.

“Iron Mace” will be the first such drills taking place under US President Donald Trump and newly elected South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who have expressed willingness to resume dialogue with North Korea.

If “hostile forces” continue to boast about their power through those joint drills, North Korea will take countermeasures “more clearly and strongly”, North Korea’s top party official Pak Jong Chon said in a separate dispatch via the state news agency KCNA.

Since a failed summit with the US in 2019 on denuclearisation, North Korea has repeatedly said it will never give up its nuclear weapons and declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state.

Kim Jong Un has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean troops to fight alongside Moscow.

Moscow and Pyongyang signed a mutual defence pact last year when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the reclusive state.

‘Mass surveillance’ tech has enabled world’s most restrictive state to exert ‘control in all parts of life’, UN Human Rights Office says.

North Korea has further tightened its grip on its population over the past decade, executing people for activities like sharing foreign TV dramas, according to a major United Nations report.

The UN Human Rights Office said on Friday that tech-enabled state repression under the Kim dynasty, which has governed with absolute power for seven decades, had grown over a decade of “suffering, repression, and increased fear”.

“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” concluded the agency’s report, which is based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had fled the country and reported the further erosion of freedoms.

“To block the people’s eyes and ears, they strengthened the crackdowns. It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint,” recounted one escapee, cited in the report.

James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office for North Korea, told a Geneva briefing that the number of executions for both normal and political crimes had increased since COVID-era restrictions.

An unspecified number of people had already been executed under new laws imposing the death penalty for distributing foreign TV series, including the popular K-Dramas from South Korea, he added.

The clampdown has been aided by the expansion of “mass surveillance” systems through technological advances, which have subjected citizens to “control in all parts of life” over the past 10 years, the report said.

Heenan also reported that children were being made to work in forced labour, including so-called “shock brigades” for tough sectors such as coal mining and construction.

“They’re often children from the lower level of society, because they’re the ones who can’t bribe their way out of it, and these shock brigades are engaged in often very hazardous and dangerous work,” he said.

Last year, the UN indicated that the forced labour could, in some cases, amount to slavery, making it a crime against humanity.

The sweeping review comes more than a decade after a landmark UN report documented executions, rapes, torture, deliberate starvation, and the detention of between 80,000 and 120,000 people in prison camps.

The new report covered developments since 2014, noting the government’s adoption of new laws, policies and procedures providing a legal framework for repression.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement: “If the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more suffering, brutal repression and fear.”

North Korea’s Geneva diplomatic mission and its London embassy have not yet commented on the report.

In latest development of his weapons arsenal, Kim supervised the test of a new solid-fuel rocket engine for North Korea’s ICBMs.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a test of a new rocket engine designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that he described as marking a “significant change in expanding and strengthening” the country’s strategic nuclear forces.

The country’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Tuesday that the successful test marked the ninth and final ground test of the solid-fuel rocket engine, built with carbon fibre and capable of producing 1,971 kilonewtons of thrust – a measure of propulsive force which is more powerful than earlier North Korean rocket engines.

The KCNA said that Kim expressed satisfaction after Monday’s test, calling the “eye-opening” development of the new rocket engine a “significant change” in North Korean nuclear capabilities.

The announcement that tests on the solid-fuel rocket are now complete comes a week after Kim visited the research institute that developed the engine, and where he unveiled that a next-generation Hwasong-20 ICBM is currently under development.

The development of North Korea’s ICBM arsenal adds to Pyongyang’s efforts in recent years to build weapons that pose as a viable threat to the continental United States, according to defence analysts.

Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions are seen as a means to bolster North Korea’s status as a nuclear power and give it leverage in negotiating economic and security concessions with the US and other world powers.

North Korea also marked the 77th anniversary of its founding on Tuesday, by the current leader’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

In a separate report, KCNA said that Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to Kim and called for strengthened “strategic communication” between Beijing and Pyongyang.

“The Chinese side is ready to join hands in promoting the China-DPRK friendship and the socialist cause of the two countries through the intensified strategic communication and brisk visits and close cooperation with the DPRK side,” Xi wrote, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Last week, Kim joined Russian President Vladimir Putin and Xi in Beijing for China’s Victory Day Parade commemorating the end of World War II.

Analysts have said that the rare trip to an international gathering of world leaders was a diplomatic win for Kim, who has fortified his alliance with Russia and China.

SEOUL, Sept. 8 (UPI) — The defense chiefs of South Korea and Japan met in Seoul on Monday to discuss cooperation across a range of issues, including North Korea‘s growing nuclear and missile threats.

The meeting between South Korea’s Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back and his counterpart, Gen Nakatani, marked the first visit by a Japanese defense minister to Seoul since 2015. Nakatani is in town to attend the Seoul Defense Dialogue, an annual security forum that runs from Monday to Wednesday.

The ministers “reaffirmed their firm commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and agreed to continue South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,” they announced in a joint statement.

“They also emphasized the need to jointly address the deepening of military cooperation between North Korea and Russia,” the statement added.

North Korea has deployed troops, artillery and missiles to Russia to aid in Moscow’s war against Ukraine, and is believed to be receiving financial support and advanced military technology for its own weapons programs in return.

The meeting comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Beijing last week to attend a military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Kim stood alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the display of military might in Tiananmen Square, the first time the three leaders have been seen together publicly.

The appearance was viewed by many analysts as a major diplomatic win for Kim in his efforts to further cement North Korea’s status as a de facto nuclear state.

Ahn and Nakatani stressed the importance of promoting bilateral security ties and three-way cooperation with the United States amid a “rapidly changing security environment,” their joint statement said.

The defense chiefs agreed to boost mutual visits and personnel exchanges while seeking opportunities for high-tech defense cooperation.

“In particular, they agreed to explore future-oriented and mutually beneficial cooperation opportunities in cutting-edge science and technology fields such as AI, unmanned systems and space,” the statement said.

Seoul and Tokyo have seen their historically frosty relations thaw in recent years. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met last month and called for closer cooperation on trade and security issues.

Ishiba, however, announced his resignation on Sunday, raising questions about the future of Tokyo’s diplomatic relationship with Seoul.

South Korea’s presidential office said Monday that it planned to “continue positive relations going forward” with Japan, news agency Yonhap reported.

Sept. 5 (UPI) — The United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea came together in Seoul this week, then in Tokyo Friday, for two Trilateral Quantum Cooperation meetings, the State Department said.

The meetings were to recognize the value of trilateral cooperation to strengthen and secure emerging technologies, a press release said. Experts from government and industry met to share best practices and discuss how to protect quantum ecosystems from physical, cyber, and intellectual property threats.

“Our trilateral partnership helps ensure Americans can benefit from the breakthroughs in quantum computing that have the potential to reshape the global balance of power, spark entirely new industries, and revolutionize the way we live and work. These workshops highlighted the growing importance of trilateral cooperation in safeguarding innovation and strengthening the quantum ecosystem, which has the promise of increasing human flourishing and the economic prosperity of Americans and our partners,” said a press release from the State Department’s spokesperson.

In August, South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung reflected on the partnership after having met President Donald Trump.

“The golden era is yet to come, not because we lack something, but [because] possibilities are endless,” Lee said, describing future cooperation.

He said Japan can’t be left out of this equation, as trilateral cooperation among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo will be essential to address North Korea and drive technological innovation.

Likely to help in quantum computing is new deputy secretary of the Department of Commerce Paul Dabbar. He was the president and CEO of Bohr Quantum Technology before his Senate confirmation. He led the development and deployment of emerging quantum network technologies while at Bohr.

North Korea announced in 2019 that it intends to adopt quantum computing for economic development. NK Economy reported quantum computers are being highlighted in the Korean Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

Quantum computing and its lower toll on the power grid — relative to supercomputers — could hold appeal for North Korea.

Rolling blackouts and power outages are common in the country, according to defectors and former residents of the country.

Goodwill messages continued this week’s unprecedented public display of diplomatic unity between Beijing, Pyongyang and Moscow.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told Chinese President Xi Jinping that North Korea will support China in protecting its sovereignty, territory and development interests, as the pair met just a day after an unprecedented show of unity with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing.

The bilateral meeting between Xi and Kim on Thursday came as Russia also hailed North Korea’s role supporting its war in Ukraine, continuing the public display of close relations between Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow after their meeting at Wednesday’s huge military parade in China’s capital to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.

In an article published on Friday by North Korea’s state-run outlet, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim was quoted as saying, “No matter how the international situation changes, the feeling of friendship cannot change” between Pyongyang and Beijing.

“The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will as ever invariably support and encourage the stand and efforts of the Communist Party of China and the government of the People’s Republic of China to defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests of the state,” Kim said after meeting with Xi, according to KCNA.

Xi also reportedly told Kim that China and North Korea are “good neighbours, good friends and good comrades” that share one destiny, and he was willing to “defend, consolidate and develop” the countries’ relations, KCNA said.

KCNA also confirmed that Kim departed Beijing on Thursday, concluding his first trip outside of North Korea since meeting with Putin in Russia in 2023.

Top-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials – including Cai Qi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi – attended a send-off ceremony for Kim, according to KCNA.

During Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing – in which the People’s Liberation Army displayed its latest generation of stealth fighters, tanks and ballistic missiles amid a highly choreographed cast of thousands – Xi hailed China’s victory 80 years ago over “Japanese aggression” in the “world anti-fascist war”.

Putin and Kim were among some 26 mostly non-Western world leaders in attendance, with the pair meeting with Xi for two and a half hours on the event’s sidelines in an unprecedented display of unity. The trio discussed “long-term” cooperation plans, according to KCNA.

Putin and Kim also met prior to the parade, with both leaders praising the deepening military partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Seemingly rattled by the meeting, United States President Donald Trump addressed Xi in a post on his Truth Social platform, saying: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”

A Kremlin aide dismissed Trump’s remarks, saying “no one even had this in their thoughts”.

Following the meeting, Putin also sent Kim a congratulatory message for North Korea’s foundation day, in which he hailed Pyongyang’s support for Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.

“Your combat force’s heroic involvement in liberating the Kursk territories from the invaders is a distinct symbol of friendship and mutual aid between Russia and North Korea,” Putin’s message read, according to KCNA.

“I am confident that we will continue to work together to consolidate the comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries,” Putin added.

North Korea has controversially sent thousands of soldiers to fight in Kursk – a Russian region briefly occupied by Ukraine – and also provided artillery ammunition and missiles to support Moscow in its war against Kyiv.

During their meeting in Beijing, Kim also reportedly told Putin his country would “fully support” Russia’s army as a “fraternal duty”, KCNA previously reported.

TOKYO — The leaders of China, North Korea and Russia stood shoulder to shoulder Wednesday as high-tech military hardware and thousands of marching soldiers filled the streets of Beijing.

Two days earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping huddled together, smiling broadly and clasping hands at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The gatherings in China this week could be read as a striking, maybe even defiant, message to the United States and its allies. At the very least, they offered yet more evidence of a burgeoning shift away from a U.S.-dominated, Western-led world order, as President Trump withdraws America from many of its historic roles and roils economic relationships with tariffs.

Trump himself indicated he was the leaders’ target in a message on social media to Xi: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”

But China’s military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the earlier economic gathering, is also simply more of the self-interested, diplomatic jockeying that has marked regional power politics for decades.

Each of these leaders, in other words, is out for himself.

Xi needs cheap Russian energy and a stable border with North Korea, his nuclear-armed wildcard neighbor. Putin is hoping to escape Western sanctions and isolation over his war in Ukraine. Kim wants money, legitimacy and to one-up archrival South Korea. Modi is trying to manage his relationship with regional heavyweights Putin and Xi, at a moment when ties with Washington are troubled.

The events highlight China’s regional aspirations

China is beset with serious domestic problems — stark economic and gender inequalities, to name two — and a tense standoff with Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own. But Xi has tried to position China as a leader of countries that feel disadvantaged by the post-World War II order.

“This parade showcases the ascendancy of China propelled by Trump’s inept diplomacy and President Xi’s astute statecraft,” said Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. “The Washington consensus has unraveled, and Xi is rallying support for an alternative.”

Some analysts caution against reading too much into Russia-China-North Korea ties. China remains deeply wary of growing North Korean nuclear power, and has long sought to temper its support — even agreeing at times to international sanctions — to try to influence Pyongyang’s pursuit of weapons.

“Though the Russia-North Korea tie has resumed to a military alliance, China refuses to return to the year of 1950,” when Beijing sent soldiers to support North Korea’s invasion of the South and the USSR provided crucial military aid, said Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Relations of Nanjing University. “It is wrong to believe that China, Russia and North Korea are reinforcing bloc-building.”

Russia looks to China to help ease its isolation

For the Kremlin, Putin’s appearance in Beijing alongside major world leaders is another way to shrug off the isolation imposed by the West on Russia in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It has allowed Putin to take to the world stage as a statesman, meeting a host of world leaders, including Modi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. And Putin’s reception by Xi is a reminder that Russia still has major trading partners, despite Western sanctions that have cut off access to many markets.

At the same time, Russia does not want to anger Trump, who has been more receptive than his predecessor, particularly in hearing out Moscow’s terms for ending its war with Ukraine.

“I want to say that no one has been plotting anything; no one was weaving any conspiracies,” Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said about Trump’s social media message. “None of the three leaders had even thought about such a thing.”

Kim Jong Un walks a diplomatic tightrope in Beijing

The North Korean leader’s trip to Beijing will deepen new ties with Russia while also focusing on the shaky relationship with his nation’s most crucial ally, and main economic lifeline, China.

Kim has sent thousands of troops and huge supplies of military equipment to help Russian forces to repel a Ukrainian incursion on their territory.

Without specifically mentioning the Ukraine war, Kim told Putin on Wednesday that “if there’s anything I can do for you and the people of Russia, if there is more that needs to be done, I will consider it as a brotherly obligation, an obligation that we surely need to bear.”

The Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank affiliated with South Korea’s spy agency, said in a report this week that Kim’s trip, his first appearance at a multilateral diplomatic event since taking power in 2011, is meant to strengthen ties with friendly countries ahead of any potential resumption of talks about its nuclear program with Trump. The two leaders’ nuclear diplomacy collapsed in 2019.

“Kim can also claim a diplomatic victory as North Korea has gone from unanimously sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council for its illegal nuclear and missile programs to being embraced by UNSC permanent members Russia and China,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

India’s Modi is playing a nuanced game

Modi is on his first visit to China since relations between the two countries deteriorated after Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in deadly border clashes in 2020.

But the tentative rapprochement has its limits. Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the Indian leader did not participate in Beijing’s military parade because the “distrust with China still exists.”

“India is carefully walking this tightrope between the West and the rest, especially when it comes to the U.S., Russia and China,” he said. “Because India does not believe in formal alliances, its approach has been to strengthen its relationship with the U.S., maintain it with Russia, and manage it with China.”

Even as he takes some steps toward China, the United States is also on Modi’s mind.

India and Washington were negotiating a free trade agreement when the Trump administration imposed 25% tariffs for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, bringing the combined tariffs to 50%.

Trade talks have since stalled and relations have significantly declined. Modi’s administration has vowed to not to yield to U.S. pressure and signaled it is willing to move closer to China and Russia.

But Donthi said India would still like to keep a window open for Washington.

“If Modi can shake hands with Xi five years after the India-China border clash, it could be far easier for him to shake hands with Trump and get back to strengthening ties, because they are natural allies,” he said.

Klug writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Kim Tong-hyung and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

Baltic and Nordic leaders in Denmark’s Copenhagen are meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is on a diplomatic drive trying to cement security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“The heads of state and government will discuss how the Nordic-Baltic countries can ensure further support for Ukraine on the frontline and in the negotiating room,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The gathering brings together the leaders of the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden – with Zelenskyy to discuss Ukraine’s future.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday that progress was being made on security guarantees for Ukraine, but he stressed that such measures would only be implemented after a peace agreement is reached.

“We need to coordinate the security arrangements with the United States, which essentially will provide the backstop for this … We’re focusing on these issues with our chiefs of defence, which are drawing the concrete plans of what this type of operation might look like,” Stubb told reporters.

“We’re making progress on this and hopefully we’ll get a solution soon,” he said, while cautioning that he was not optimistic about a ceasefire or peace agreement with Russia in the near term.

The ‘coalition of the willing’

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he expected clarity at a summit of Ukraine’s allies on Thursday “or soon after” on what security guarantees Europe can offer Kyiv once the war halts.

“I expect tomorrow, or soon after tomorrow, to have clarity on what collectively we can deliver,” Rutte said at a news conference with Estonian President Alar Karis in Brussels. “That means that we can engage even more intensely, also with the American side, to see what they want to deliver in terms of their participation in security guarantees.”

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron will co-host Thursday’s mostly virtual meeting of leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing” – a collection of Western states working on long-term guarantees for Ukraine, and NATO. Zelenskyy moves on to meet Macron tonight in Paris ahead of that summit.

Western officials have said such guarantees are aimed at deterring Russia from launching another war after hostilities end, whether through a ceasefire or a permanent peace deal.

They are expected to centre on continued military support for Kyiv, along with an international force to reassure Ukraine. However, European leaders have made clear that such a force would only be feasible with US participation.

United States President Donald Trump last month promised American involvement, but Washington has yet to spell out what it would contribute. Rutte sought to reassure eastern NATO members that resources for Ukraine’s security guarantees would not come at the expense of the alliance’s own defences.

“We have to prevent spreading our resources too thinly, and this means that we always have to look at what the impact will be on the NATO plans,” he said.

Moscow, meanwhile, rejects the idea of European peacekeeping troops on the ground in Ukraine, and insists that any future settlement must reflect what it calls “new territorial realities”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Indonesia’s Kompas newspaper that regions annexed by Russia – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – must be “recognized and formalized in an international legal manner” for peace to last.

Trump has suggested any eventual deal would involve Ukraine ceding some territory, but many analysts believe one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s core demands will be Ukrainian recognition of Moscow’s control over the parts of Donbas still under Kyiv’s authority.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected such concessions, warning that losing any territory would embolden Russia to launch new attacks in the future. The Ukrainian constitution also forbids it.

Russia takes more territory in Kherson

As diplomacy continues behind the scenes, Russia’s assault continues to intensify across eastern Ukraine. Its forces claim to have encircled and now captured “about half” of Kupiansk, a strategic city in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Moscow’s Ministry of Defence also claimed its forces had seized the settlement of Fedorivka in Donetsk.

In the skies, Russia launched a sweeping overnight air campaign, striking targets across nine regions. Ukrainian officials said at least four railway workers were injured, while Poland scrambled defence aircraft as explosions echoed near its border.

Ukraine’s emergency services reported that five people were injured and 28 homes damaged in an attack on the Znamianka community in the Kirovohrad region. In Khmelnytskyi, transport services faced “significant schedule disruptions” after strikes damaged residential buildings and triggered fires.

Local authorities said two people were killed in Russian shelling of Polohivskyi district in Zaporizhia, while separate attacks caused deaths in Kherson, Kyiv region and Donetsk. The independent news outlet Kyiv Independent reported at least five civilians killed across the country in the latest wave of strikes.

Russia said it had shot down 158 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours, while claiming that Ukrainian attacks across its border killed 12 people and wounded nearly 100 in the past week. In the Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone strike injured three people in the village of Proletarsky.

The diplomatic manoeuvring comes as Putin seeks to deepen ties with North Korea and China. His meeting on Wednesday with Kim Jong Un in Beijing, alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping at a grand military parade, underscored the growing partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Trump responded by accusing the three leaders of conspiring against the United States – a claim dismissed by the Kremlin.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, have arrived by train in Beijing to attend China’s largest-ever military parade marking Japan’s surrender in World War II. It will be Kim’s first major multilateral event during his 14-year rule.

The North Korean leader is set to attend a military parade alongside Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s train has crossed the border into China ahead of his planned attendance at a military parade marking Japan’s surrender in World War II, state media have reported.

Kim is among 26 world leaders scheduled to attend Wednesday’s parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

The event in Beijing is set to be the first time that Kim, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have gathered at the same venue.

Kim’s train crossed the North Korea-China border in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the state-controlled Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported.

“Key senior officials from the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are accompanying Comrade Kim Jong Un on his visit to the People’s Republic of China,” the Rodong Sinmun said, using North Korea’s official name.

Kim’s visit to China comes on the heels of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in China’s Tianjin, at which Xi and Putin took turns criticising Western dominance of the international order.

One of the world’s most isolated states, North Korea has long relied on China and Russia for economic and diplomatic support.

Pyongyang has grown especially close with Moscow in recent years, sending thousands of troops to support Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Kim, who rarely travels abroad, has met Xi five times since coming to power in 2011, most recently in 2019, when the North Korean leader attended an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of China-North Korea relations.

Kim has met Putin three times, most recently in June 2024, when the two leaders signed a mutual defence treaty in Pyongyang.

Kim Jong Un’s visit comes ahead of planned trip to China to attend military parade with Xi Jinping.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a new missile production line and missile-manufacturing automation process, according to state media.

His visit on Sunday to the missile production line came ahead of a planned trip to Beijing to attend a military parade along with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

North Korea is under heavy international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, which were developed in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Experts and international officials say the sanctions have lost much of their bite amid growing economic, military and political support from Russia and China.

Kim said that the modernised production process would help increase major missile units’ combat readiness, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Monday.

North Korea has sent soldiers, artillery ammunition and missiles to Russia to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine.

North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also criticised US cooperation with Japan and South Korea, singling out a recent trilateral joint statement that warned of cybersecurity threats from Pyongyang.

The ministry “strongly denounces and rejects” the United States, Japan and South Korea for using cyberspace as a “theatre of geopolitical confrontation and hostile propaganda”, a spokesperson said in a statement carried by KCNA.

“The more the US persists in its anachronistic and malicious hostile acts against the DPRK through the intensified collaboration with its satellite countries, the more distrust and hostility will be piled up between the DPRK and the US,” the spokesperson added, using the initials of North Korea’s official name.

Kim Jong Un expresses ‘grief’ for failing to save ‘the precious lives’ of his troops killed fighting against Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has met again with the families of his soldiers killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine, offering condolences for their “unbearable pain” and promising the bereaved “a beautiful life”, state media reports.

KCNA state news agency reported on Saturday that Kim hosted the families of slain soldiers, and expressed “grief at having failed to save the precious lives” of those who sacrificed their lives to defend the country’s honour.

The meeting was the second reported occasion that Kim met with families of fallen soldiers this month. Pyongyang has not confirmed the number of troops that were killed fighting for Russia, though Seoul estimates about 600, with thousands more wounded.

“I had this meeting arranged as I wanted to meet and console the bereaved families of all the heroes and relieve them of their sorrow and anguish even a little,” Kim said in his speech, according to KCNA.

Kim also pledged to build a monument in the capital, Pyongyang, as well as name a new street for the bereaved families, and the state will give full support to the children of deceased soldiers.

The North Korean leader said his “heart breaks and aches” for the children who lost fathers.

“I, our state and our army will take full responsibility for them and train them admirably as staunch and courageous fighters like their fathers,” he added.

South Korean and Western intelligence agencies have said that Kim sent more than 10,000 soldiers to Russia in 2024 – primarily to the Kursk region – along with North Korean-produced artillery shells, missiles and long-range rocket systems.

At a ceremony with mourning family members and Ukraine war veterans last week, images released by KCNA showed an emotional Kim embracing a returned soldier who appeared overwhelmed, burying his face in the leader’s chest.

The leader was also seen kneeling before a portrait of a fallen soldier to pay his respects and placing medals and flowers beside images of dead troops.

Kim is due to stand alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a military parade in Beijing next week, marking the surrender of Japan in World War II.

Relations between Kim and Putin have surged significantly since they signed a military alliance in 2024.