pyongyang

SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Yonhap) — North Korea on Thursday denounced the latest U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang as a demonstration of Washington’s hostile policy, vowing to take proper measures to counter it with patience.

The North’s reaction came as the U.S. announced Tuesday that it had imposed sanctions on eight North Korean individuals and two entities for their involvement in laundering money stolen through illicit cyber activities.

The sanctions came even as U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed his wish to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to resume stalled diplomacy with Pyongyang.

Kim Un-chol, North Korea’s vice foreign minister in charge of U.S. affairs, said in a statement that by imposing fresh sanctions, the U.S. has showed its “invariable hostile” intents toward North Korea in an “accustomed and traditional way,” according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“Now that the present U.S. administration has clarified its stand to be hostile towards the DPRK to the last, we will also take proper measures to counter it with patience for any length of time,” the statement showed.

Denouncing the U.S. for revealing its “wicked nature,” the North’s official warned Washington should not expect its tactics of pressure, appeasement, threat and blackmail against North Korea will work.

“The U.S. sanctions will have no effect on the DPRK’s thinking and viewpoint on it in the future, too, as in the past,” Kim said, using the acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In regard to North Korea’s statement, South Korea’s unification ministry assessed the North appears to have responded to the imposition of U.S. sanctions in a “restrained” manner.

The U.S. move came as North Korea has not responded to Trump’s proposal to meet with the North’s leader during his latest trip to South Korea on the occasion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathering.

Earlier this week the U.S. State Department also raised the need to seek U.N. sanctions on seven ships accused of illegally exporting North Korean coal and iron ore to China in violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions over the North’s nuclear and missile programs.

South Korea’s spy agency said this week there were signs that North Korea had been preparing for a possible meeting with the U.S. in time for last week’s APEC gathering.

The National Intelligence Service said there is a high possibility that the North and the U.S. would hold a summit some time after an annual joint military exercise between South Korea and the U.S. in March next year.

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After the U.S.–Russia summit between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest this October, diplomatic attention swiftly shifted eastward to a region where Trump once scripted some of his most dramatic foreign policy moments. In Washington, Seoul, and even Pyongyang, speculation is mounting about the possible revival of a U.S.–North Korea summit.

According to Reuters, some American officials have begun preliminary discussions on the feasibility of such a meeting, while South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young noted that “there is no reason to rule out that possibility.” Though no official confirmation has been made, the very reemergence of this idea signals a subtle but notable shift in Trump’s diplomatic playbook.

Although there has been no official confirmation, the idea of ​​a US-North Korea summit being brought back to the table reflects a notable shift in the diplomatic direction of the Trump 2.0 administration. After making initial strides in Gaza and Ukraine, Washington appears to be shifting its pivot to Northeast Asia, a region that was a symbol of Trump’s diplomatic breakthrough in his first term in 2018.

Trump’s diplomatic instinct

Diplomacy under Trump has always been intensely personal. His style relies less on institutions or multilateral mechanisms and more on leader-to-leader engagement, what some in Washington describe as “summit diplomacy.”

For Trump, a renewed meeting with Kim Jong Un could serve two political purposes. First, it would remind the world that it is Trump, not Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, who remains at the center of managing the world’s flashpoints. Second, it would demonstrate his unique ability to “talk to the untouchables,” those seen as beyond the reach of traditional diplomacy.

Trump doesn’t necessarily need an agreement to declare victory. What he needs is a story, one that projects confidence, leadership, and America’s capacity to command global attention. The Korean Peninsula remains the perfect stage for that story to unfold.

America’s strategic calculus

Beyond the spectacle, Washington’s calculus is deeply strategic. Trump’s contemplation of reopening dialogue with Kim is less about denuclearization per se and more about repositioning U.S. influence within two intersecting triangles of power: U.S.–China–Russia and U.S.–Japan–South Korea.

By reaching out directly to Kim, Trump could dilute the dual leverage that Moscow and Beijing currently exert over Pyongyang. Both powers have increasingly treated North Korea as a tactical card in their broader geopolitical standoff with the United States. A Trump–Kim channel could, at least temporarily, limit that dependency, allowing Washington to reassert itself as an independent broker on the Peninsula.

At the same time, reviving engagement with Pyongyang could help reboot the stalled trilateral coordination between Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. For the U.S., this is not only about deterring the North but also about reaffirming its leadership at a time when East Asia’s security architecture is under strain from renewed great-power rivalry.

Pyongyang’s position: bargaining from strength

From Pyongyang’s perspective, the motivation to reopen a “high-level dialogue” is equally clear. Negotiating with Washington offers a path, however narrow, toward easing economic isolation or securing limited political concessions.

A statement from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry in October 2025 captured this tone of calibrated openness. “There is no reason to avoid dialogue with the United States, as long as it proceeds with mutual respect.” Behind this carefully crafted language lies a familiar tactic: engage only when leverage is high.

Unlike in 2019, Pyongyang is no longer fully isolated. Its deepening military cooperation with Russia, particularly since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, has yielded tangible benefits, from battlefield experience to access to advanced military technology. Meanwhile, China continues to view North Korea as an indispensable strategic buffer in its rivalry with the United States.

Most importantly, North Korea’s nuclear deterrence capability has grown substantially. The October 11 military parade unveiled the new Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile, symbolizing both technological progress and political confidence. The reactivation of the Yongbyon nuclear complex further signals that Pyongyang now approaches negotiations not from weakness, but from perceived strength.

As Pyongyang frames these moves as “necessary deterrence measures,” they also function as a form of crisis manufacturing, a deliberate escalation designed to increase bargaining value. For Trump, whose instincts favor transactional, hard-nosed diplomacy, this is a game he believes he can play and win.

Yet, the road to a new U.S.–North Korea summit remains fraught with risks. Washington harbors no illusion about the prospects of full denuclearization, while Pyongyang remains unwilling to trade its strategic assets for what it sees as reversible or symbolic commitments.

The question for Trump 2.0 is no longer whether to meet or not to meet Kim Jong Un, but rather, why meet, and what follows afterward?

If Trump manages to sustain dialogue with both Putin and Kim, he could reposition the United States as a balancer in an international order increasingly defined by overlapping rivalries rather than clear blocs. But if his efforts falter, Washington risks ceding ground to Moscow and Beijing, both of which are expanding their influence through direct engagement with Pyongyang.

A new kind of summit

If another Trump–Kim summit materializes in the coming months, it will not be a replay of Singapore 2018 or Hanoi 2019. This time, the performance will likely be more pragmatic, less idealistic, and perhaps even more calculated. Both leaders now understand the limits of what diplomacy can achieve and also the power of what a meeting alone can symbolize.

In a region where every gesture carries strategic weight, even the act of “showing up” becomes a message in itself. For Trump, that message would be simple but powerful: that the U.S. still holds the initiative, not through coercion, but through presence.

And for Kim Jong Un, it would reaffirm that Pyongyang, once again, cannot be ignored.

Whether or not the summit happens, Trump’s renewed focus on the Korean Peninsula reveals something deeper about his worldview. In an era where global power is contested on multiple fronts, symbolic diplomacy—the art of turning visibility into leverage—has become a strategic tool in its own right.

The question is not whether Trump and Kim can achieve a breakthrough. It is whether both can once again use each other to tell the stories they need: one of restored American dominance and one of North Korean resilience.

Either way, the stage is set. The spotlight, once more, is on the Peninsula.

North Korea has unveiled what it says is a new hypersonic missile dubbed Hwasong-11Ma, designed to be fired from a 10-wheeled transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) that can carry two of the weapons at once. Derived from the earlier Hwasong-11 series of short-range ballistic missiles, the Ma variation has an unpowered boost-glide vehicle on top instead of a traditional warhead and, as a result, is designed to function in a completely different manner.

The Hwasong-11Ma, or a mockup thereof, was among the weapon systems showcased at what has become an annual exhibition of the North Korean military’s latest capabilities this past weekend. Another hypersonic missile design, the Hwasong-8, was a prominent feature at the first of these events in 2021.

The original Hwasong-11, also known as the KN-23 in the West, is a traditional short-range ballistic missile that can reach out to 430 miles (690 kilometers) and has a 1,000-pound (500-kilogram) class unitary high-explosive warhead. First shown publicly back in 2018, it is now a combat-proven weapon, as well. Russia has been employing them against targets in Ukraine since December 2023. Several other Hwasong-11 variations have already emerged in recent years.

Details about the Hwasong-11Ma, also referred to as the Hwasong-11E, are still limited. From the size and shape of the main body, the new missile looks to be based more directly on the previous Hwasong-11Da/Hwasong-11C version. This would make sense as the Da/C, another traditional short-range ballistic missile, is already an enlarged derivative designed to carry larger warheads than the original Hwasong-11. North Korea has previously said it has tested subvariants of the Da/C type with 2.5-ton and 4.5-ton conventional high-explosive warheads, and that it can also be fitted with a nuclear warhead.

In line with its apparent size, Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11E looks to use a similar, if not identical, 10-wheeled TEL as the Hwasong-11Da/Hwasong-11C. The original Hwasong-11 is fired from an eight-wheeled TEL.

The Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11E’s boost-glide vehicle is similar, in broad strokes, to other wedge-shaped types that North Korea has shown in the past as payloads for much larger missiles. However, the previously seen designs have distinctly different tail fin configurations from the one on the newly unveiled missile, which also has two long strakes extending on either side from the nose.

In general, hypersonic boost-glide vehicles are unpowered and use ballistic missile-like rocket boosters to get them first to an optimal altitude and speed. They then detach from the booster and follow a relatively shallow, atmospheric flight path at hypersonic speeds, defined as anything above Mach 5, to their targets. Boost-glide vehicles are also designed to be able to maneuver erratically along the way. All of this creates significant challenges for defending forces to detect and track the incoming threat, let alone attempt any kind of intercept.

How close the Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11E might be to becoming an operational capability is unknown. North Korea claims to have flight-tested multiple hypersonic boost-glide vehicle designs since at least 2021, but there continue to be questions about what degree of actual capability the country has achieved in this regard. Viable wedge-shaped boost-glide vehicles have historically been extremely difficult to design and then bring to an operational state. It is possible, if not very plausible, that North Korea has and continues to receive assistance in the development of hypersonic weapons from Russia and/or China. The Russian and Chinese armed forces have both fielded hypersonic boost-glide weapons with wedge-shaped vehicles. Russia has used military and other technology transfers of various kinds as part of its ‘payments’ to North Korea in exchange for the latter’s now direct involvement in the war in Ukraine.

The North Korean regime’s pursuit of hypersonic capabilities is certainly real and is a clear response to efforts by the South Koreans and their U.S. allies to expand air and missile defenses. The original Hwasong-11, which is very similar in form and function to the Russian Iskander-M and the South Korean Hyunmoo-2 series, itself is reportedly capable of performing a “pull-up” maneuver in its terminal phase of flight to complicate attempts to intercept it.

In principle, Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11Es could offer North Korea a useful additional layer of hypersonic strike capability for use against better-protected targets inside South Korea. Road-mobile TELs would offer additional flexibility, even if the missiles are relatively short-ranged, as well as a way to create complications for opponents trying to find and fix their locations.

“As the U.S. military buildup in the South Korean region intensifies, our strategic interest in the area has also increased. Therefore, we have allocated our special assets to key targets of interest accordingly,” Kim Jong Un said, speaking generally, during remarks at the opening of the weapons exhibition in Pyongyang, according to state media. “Can the South Korean territory ever be considered a safe place? That is for them to judge.”

The Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11E’s development may also reflect lessons learned from Russia’s use of Hwasong-11s in Ukraine. The missile’s initial performance in the war was dismal, but Ukrainian officials have made clear that the Russians and North Koreans subsequently took corrective actions and that it is now a very threatening weapon. Earlier this year, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat also mentioned both the Iskander-M and the KN-23 while openly discussing how the Russians had made further improvements to their ballistic missile capabilities that have put serious pressure on the country’s air defenses.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), via an unclassified Special Inspector General report published in August, confirmed “the UAF [Ukrainian Air Force] struggled to consistently use Patriot air defense systems to protect against Russian ballistic missiles due to recent Russian tactical improvements, including enhancements that enable their missiles to change trajectory and perform maneuvers rather than flying in a traditional ballistic trajectory,” something that TWZ was first to report. The Special Inspector General’s report does not name the ballistic missiles that have proven challenging, but the Iskander-M and the KN-23 are understood to be, by far, the types Russia most commonly employs in strikes on Ukraine.

Last week, the Financial Times newspaper in the United Kingdom reported that Russia’s improvements to its ballistic missile capabilities may have notably helped them evade Ukrainian defenses in attacks on at least four drone production facilities this past summer, citing unnamed U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

As it stands now, U.S.-made Patriots are the only air defense systems in Ukraine’s inventory that offer real anti-ballistic missile capability, and then only in the terminal phase. Ukraine’s Patriots are in high demand, in general.

The Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11E also simply underscores the still-growing scale and scope of North Korea’s missile arsenal, overall, when it comes to ballistic and cruise, as well as hypersonic types. As already noted, the Hwasong-11 series has already become particularly prolific, with rail, silo, and submarine-launched variants and derivatives having been demonstrated, in addition to ones fired from wheeled TELs.

It is often the case that North Korea follows up the public debut of new missiles with equally public tests, and more details about at least the Hwasong-11Ma/Hwasong-11E’s claimed capabilities may now begin to emerge.

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Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska.

Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the “bravery” and “heroism” of North Korean soldiers in retaking Russia’s Kursk region from Ukrainian forces during a call with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korean state media has reported.

Putin told Kim that he “highly appreciated” North Korea’s support and the “self-sacrificing spirit” displayed by its troops during the liberation of the western region, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.

Kim expressed his “heartfelt thanks” to Putin and said Pyongyang would “always remain faithful” to the spirit of the mutual defence treaty signed by the sides last year, as well as “fully support all measures to be taken by the Russian leadership in the future”, the KCNA said.

“The heads of states of the two countries exchanged views on the issues of mutual concern,” the KCNA said.

“Kim Jong Un and Putin agreed to make closer contact in the future.”

The call, days before Putin is set to meet United States President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine, is the latest sign of strengthening ties between North Korea and Russia amid Moscow’s ostracisation on the world stage.

“There are a lot of ifs still in the air, but the call suggests there’s a role for Russia, similar to the role South Korea played in 2018, in helping create an opening for US-DPRK relations,” Jenny Town, the director of the Korea programme at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It might not be a focal point of the upcoming meeting, but it is likely to be part of the conversation.”

Last month, Kim told Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that Pyongyang would “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine, according to North Korean state media reports.

North Korea has deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s war and has drawn up plans to dispatch thousands more, according to assessments by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

In April, Putin announced that Moscow had fully recaptured Kursk, though Ukrainian officials disputed his claim that the entire region had been brought under Russian control.

At his scheduled summit with Putin on Friday, Trump is expected to press the Russian leader to agree to a peace deal.

On Monday, he told reporters that he will probably know within the “first two minutes” of meeting Putin whether they can reach a deal and that any agreement would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Moscow and Kyiv.

SEOUL — South Korea has begun dismantling loudspeakers that blare anti-North Korean propaganda across the border, as President Lee Jae Myung’s liberal administration seeks to mend fractured relations with Pyongyang.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the defense ministry said the removal was “a practical measure to ease inter-Korean tensions without impacting the military’s readiness posture.”

The move follows the suspension of propaganda broadcasts in June on orders from Lee, an advocate of reconciliation who has framed warmer relations with North Korea as a matter of economic benefit — a way to minimize a geopolitical liability long blamed for South Korea’s stock market being undervalued.

“Strengthening peace in the border regions will help ease tensions across all of South Korea, and increasing dialogue and exchange will improve the economic situation,” Lee said at a news conference last month.

Elementary school students watch the North Korean side from the Unification Observation Post in Paju, South Korea.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

First used by North Korea in 1962, with South Korea following suit a year later, propaganda loudspeakers have long been a defining feature of the hot-and-cold relationship between Seoul and Pyongyang, switched on and off with the waxing and waning of goodwill.

The last major stoppage was during a period of detente in 2004 and lasted until 2015, when two South Korean soldiers stationed by the border were maimed by landmines that military officials said had been covertly installed by North Korean soldiers weeks earlier.

Played by loudspeakers set up in the DMZ, or demilitarized zone, a 2.5 mile-wide stretch of land between the two countries, South Korea’s broadcasts once featured live singing and propagandizing by soldiers stationed along the border. In recent years, however, the speakers have played pre-planned programming that ranges from outright opprobrium to more subtle messaging intended to imbue listeners with pro-South Korea sympathies.

The programming has included K-pop songs with lyrics that double as invitations to defect to South Korea, such as one 2010 love song that goes: “come on, come on, don’t turn me down and come on and approach me,” or weather reports whose power lies in their accuracy — and have occasionally been accompanied by messages like “it’s going to rain this afternoon so make sure you take your laundry in.”

With a maximum range of around 19 miles that makes them unlikely to reach major population centers in North Korea, the effectiveness of such broadcasts has come under question by some experts.

Still, several North Korean defectors have cited the broadcasts as part of the reason they decided to flee to South Korea. One former artillery officer who defected in 2013 recalled being won over, in part, by the weather reports.

“Whenever the South Korean broadcast said it would rain from this time to that time, it would always actually rain,” he told South Korean media last year.

South Korean army K-9 self-propelled howitzers take positions in Paju, near the border with North Korea.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

North Korea, however, sees the broadcasts as a provocation and has frequently threatened to retaliate with military action. In 2015, Pyongyang made good on this threat by firing a rocket at a South Korean loudspeaker, leading to an exchange of artillery fire between the two militaries.

Such sensitivities have made the loudspeakers controversial in South Korea, too, with residents of the border villages complaining about the noise, as well as the dangers of military skirmishes breaking out near their homes.

“At night, [North Korea] plays frightening noises like the sound of animals, babies or women crying,” one such resident told President Lee when he visited her village in June, shortly after both sides halted the broadcasts. “It made me ill. Even sleeping pills didn’t work.”

But it is doubtful that the dismantling alone will be enough for a diplomatic breakthrough.

Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have been in a deep chill following the failure of the denuclearization summits between Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018, as well as a separate dialogue between Kim and then-South Korean president Moon Jae-in.

Tensions rose further during the subsequent conservative administration of Yoon Suk Yeol, who was president of South Korea from 2022 until his removal from office earlier this year. Yoon is currently being investigated by a special counsel on allegations that he ordered South Korean military drones to fly over Pyongyang last October.

Ruling party lawmakers have alleged that the move was intended to provoke a war with North Korea, and in doing so, secure the legal justification for Yoon’s declaration of martial law in December.

During Yoon’s term, Kim Jong Un formally foreswore any reconciliation with Seoul while expanding his nuclear weapons program.

That stance remains unchanged even under the more pro-reconciliation Lee, according to a statement by Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s younger sister, published by state news agency KCNA last month.

“No matter how desperately the Lee Jae Myung government may try to imitate the fellow countrymen and pretend they do all sorts of righteous things to attract our attention, they can not turn back the hands of the clock of the history which has radically changed the character of the DPRK-ROK relations,” she said.

SEOUL, July 15 (UPI) — North Korea and Russia will begin operating direct flight service linking their capital cities of Pyongyang and Moscow later this month, Russia’s Transport Ministry announced.

Nordwind Airlines, a Russian budget carrier, will begin direct flights between the two cities on July 27, the ministry said Monday night on its Telegram channel. Travel time will be about eight hours.

“For the first time, the capitals of Russia and the DPRK will be connected by direct flights,” the ministry said, using the official acronym for North Korea.

“Further flights will be operated once a month — to create sustainable demand and load flights,” the ministry added.

Currently, the only direct flights between the two countries are operated by North Korea’s Air Koryo, connecting Pyongyang with Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East.

The announcement comes amid growing military and economic ties between Russia and North Korea, highlighted by Pyongyang supplying troops and weapons to Moscow for its war against Ukraine.

North Korea has gradually begun opening up to international tourism after sealing its borders at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020. So far, foreign visitors have come almost exclusively from Russia.

Russian travelers were the first to return to North Korea post-COVID on the Pyongyang-Vladivostok Air Koryo route early last year. Direct rail service between Pyongyang and Moscow also resumed in June after a five-year suspension.

Last week, the North welcomed around 10 Russian guests — including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — to its sprawling new beach resort on the east coast, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday.

The Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area runs along 2.5 miles of beachfront and has a capacity for up to 20,000 guests. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the completion of the resort one of the country’s “greatest successes this year” and said it would “play a leading role in establishing the tourist culture of the DPRK.”

Launched in 2014, the Wonsan project was initially slated to open in April 2019 but faced numerous setbacks, including international sanctions on materials and COVID-19 pandemic closures.

During his visit to Wonsan last week, Lavrov said that Russia also plans to restore maritime passenger routes between the two countries.

“Our Korean friends have expressed interest in having more Russians at the wonderful resort of Wonsan and other resorts in the DPRK,” Lavrov said at a press conference. “I have no doubt that this will happen.”