Sorted by date Results 26 - 42 of 42
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Un will be in uncharted territory when the third-generation autocrat crosses over to the southern half of the Demilitarized Zone separating the rival Koreas on Friday, possibly on foot, and greets South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Cameras wielded by one of the most aggressive media contingents on the planet will fire live images of a man used to controlling every aspect of his public persona into the homes and onto the phones of millions of people around the world — though it's not yet clear if it will be se...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Thursday that his rival, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, isn't asking for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula as a precondition for abandoning his nuclear weapons. If true, this would seem to remove a major sticking point to a potential nuclear disarmament deal. North Korea, a small, authoritarian nation surrounded by bigger and richer neighbors, has always linked its pursuit of nuclear weapons to what it calls a "hostile" U.S. policy that is embodied by t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House tried to swat away criticism Friday that the U.S. is getting nothing in exchange for agreeing to a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said North Korea has made promises to denuclearize, stop its nuclear and missile testing and allow joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. "Let's not forget that the North Koreans did promise something," Sanders said, responding to a reporter's question about why Trump agreed to s...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un grins, just on the verge of a belly laugh, as he grasps the hand of a visiting South Korean official. He sits at a wide conference table and beams as the envoys look on deferentially. He smiles broadly again at dinner, his wife at his side, the South Koreans seeming to hang on his every word. Kim is used to being the center of gravity in a country that his family has ruled with unquestioned power since 1948, but the chance to play the senior statesman on the Korean Peninsula with a roomf...
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (AP) — A rare invitation to Pyongyang for South Korea's president marked Day Two of the North Korean Kim dynasty's southern road tour Saturday, part of an accelerating diplomatic thaw that included some Korean liquor over lunch and the shared joy of watching a "unified" Korea team play hockey at the Olympics. Nothing has been settled on any trip north by South Korean President Moon Jae-in. But the verbal message to come at a "convenient time" from dictator Kim Jong Un, delivered by his visiting younger sister, Kim Yo J...
NAYAPARA REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh (AP) — Abdul Goni says the Myanmar government was starving his family one stage at a time. First, soldiers stopped the Rohingya Muslim from walking three hours to the forest for the firewood he sold to feed his family. Then Buddhist neighbors and seven soldiers took his only cow, which he rented out to fertilize rice fields. Next, he says, they killed his uncle and strung him up on a wire for trying to stop the theft of his buffalos. By the time Goni saw bodies floating down the local river, of fellow R...
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar says it's ready for a gradual repatriation of Muslim Rohingya refugees chased out by the Buddhist-majority country's military. Bangladesh says it's preparing for the transfer, but it might need more time. And the refugees themselves? In interviews in recent weeks with dozens of the nearly 700,000 Rohingya who've poured into Bangladesh since August in what's become the world's worst refugee crisis, The Associated Press has found deep skepticism, if not outright terror, about returning to a place where they say t...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — After one of the most fraught years on the Korean Peninsula in recent memory — threats of war amid North Korea's strongest-ever nuclear bomb test and repeated missile launches — an unexpected, very tentative interest in peace seems to have broken out. In rapid succession: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un floats the idea in a New Year's speech of better ties with his southern rival. Maybe, he says, he'll even send a delegation to next month's Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Seoul quickly offers to meet and talk....
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in an extraordinary and direct rebuke, called President Donald Trump "deranged" and said he will "pay dearly" for his threats, a possible indication of more powerful weapons tests on the horizon. Kim said Trump is "unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country." He also described the U.S. president as "a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire." The dispatch was unusual in that it was written in the first person, albeit filtered through the North's state media, w...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un lobbed a string of insults at President Donald Trump on Friday, calling him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" and hinting at a frightening new weapon test. It was the first time for a North Korean leader to issue such a direct statement against a U.S. president, dramatically escalating the war of words between the former wartime foes and raising the international nuclear standoff to a new level. Trump responded by tweeting that Kim is "obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or k...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — On the surface it seems like more of the same: North Korea responds to another threat by U.S. President Donald Trump by calling him a "deranged" old man who will "pay dearly" for his insults. These words, however, carry the weight of an unprecedented personal rebuke from North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un. Behind Kim's colorful language released Friday is a remarkable window into the thinking — albeit filtered through state media — of the leader of a country that, despite opposition by the world's sole super...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Was it a bluff? A warning that Washington would shoot down North Korea's next missile test? A restatement of past policy? Or simply just what it seemed: a straightforward threat of annihilation from the president of the United States? Officials and pundits across Asia struggled Wednesday to parse Donald Trump's vow Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly to "totally destroy North Korea" if provoked. In a region well used to Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and c...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan into the northern Pacific Ocean on Friday, U.S. and South Korean militaries said, its longest-ever such flight and a clear message of defiance to its rivals. Since President Donald Trump threatened the North with "fire and fury" in August, Pyongyang has conducted its most powerful nuclear test, threatened to send missiles into the waters around Guam and launched two missiles of increasing range over U.S. ally Japan. It tested its first-ever intercontinental bal...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — With Seoul expecting another North Korean missile test, South Korean warships conducted live-fire exercises at sea on Tuesday in a second straight day of military swagger from a nation still rattled by the North's biggest-ever nuclear test. The test on Sunday, which North Korea said was a hydrogen bomb, was a huge advance in the North's push for nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. It has also resulted in South Korea boosting its own military capabilities. Washington and Seoul agreed to lift re...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected the loading of a hydrogen bomb into a new intercontinental ballistic missile, Pyongyang's state media said Sunday, a claim to technological mastery that some outside experts will doubt but that will raise already high worries on the Korean Peninsula. As part of North Korea's work to build an arsenal of viable nuclear ICBMs that can reach the U.S. mainland, Kim inspected during a visit to the North's Nuclear Weapons Institute the loading of a "homemade" H-bomb into an ICBM. The...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for more weapons tests targeting the Pacific Ocean, Pyongyang announced Wednesday, a day after his nation for the first time flew a ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload over Japan. Tuesday's aggressive missile launch — likely the longest ever from North Korea — over the territory of a close U.S. ally sends a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct war games nearby. Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said it was a Hwasong-12 inter...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's military on Tuesday presented leader Kim Jong Un with plans to launch missiles into waters near Guam and "wring the windpipes of the Yankees," even as both Koreas and the United States signaled their willingness to avert a deepening crisis, with each suggesting a path toward negotiations. The tentative interest in diplomacy follows unusually combative threats between President Donald Trump and North Korea amid worries Pyongyang is nearing its long-sought goal of being able to send a nuclear missile to t...
