North Korea Executed Envoy Over Trump-Kim Summit, Chosun Reports. Monet 'Haystacks' painting sells for $110.7 million in New York - CNN Style. A painting from Claude Monet's "Haystacks" series has sold for $110.7 million, making it the most expensive Impressionist artwork ever to be bought at auction, according to Sotheby's in New York.
It took six bidders just eight minutes to reach a record-breaking sum for the oil painting, which went to an anonymous bidder Tuesday. The 1890 painting is widely regarded as the best of Monet's "Meules" (Haystacks) series, the auction house said. Only four artworks from the 25-strong series have appeared at auction this century, and just eight remain in private hands. The painting becomes the ninth most expensive ever to sell at auction. Credit: Courtesy Sotheby's via AP "One of the most recognizable images in art history, Monet's 'Haystacks' series has long served as an inspiration to countless artists since its creation in the early 1890s," said the auction house's head of Impressionist and modern art, August Uribe, in a press release. Shadowy ‘Free Joseon’ Group That Raided Madrid’s North Korean Embassy Claims it Shared Info With FBI. Time. North Korea’s Envoy to Italy Disappears, Raising Suspicions of a Defection.
North Korea's weak spots: Poker, games and petty crime - Axios. The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage. Many experts pointed out that though North Korea is often portrayed as irrational, the Kim family had to be “both brutal and smart,” as Lankov said, to maintain its relative power on the world stage, especially for such a small, impoverished country. What incentive would they have to lose a valuable bargaining chip, especially when they had never been so thoughtless before? To these experts, it made much more sense that Otto was treated like all other detained Americans and that an unexpected catastrophe occurred. But despite the experts' doubts, none of them could disprove the intelligence reports indicating that Otto had been beaten. However, a senior-level American official who reviewed the reports told me, “In general, the intel reports were wrong, as the medical examinations have shown.
They were apparently not even correct about where Otto was or when he was beaten, for God's sake. 10. One in five North Korean children malnourished, says UN chief during rare visit. About a fifth of all North Korean children are affected by malnutrition, the most senior United Nations humanitarian aid official has said during a tour of the country, the first such visit since 2011.
Mark Lowcock, the under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, made the comments at the end of the first day of his tour of North Korea, which he has said is aimed at raising awareness of the dire conditions faced by ordinary people. “One of the things we’ve seen is very clear evidence of humanitarian need here,” he said in a video posted to the UN website and his official Twitter account. “More than half the children in rural areas, including the places we’ve been, have no clean water, contaminated water sources.” Time. (SHAH ALAM) — Two Southeast Asian women on trial for killing the estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader are trained assassins who used “criminal force” to rub the toxic VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s eyes and face, prosecutors said Thursday.
The women’s claim that they were duped by North Korean agents into thinking they were playing a harmless prank for a hidden camera show was an “ingenious attempt … to cover up their sinister plot in order to obscure the eyes of the public and the court,” prosecutor Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin told the court in his closing arguments. Indonesia’s Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam, who face the death penalty if convicted, have pleaded not guilty to murdering Kim in a crowded airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. Kim died within two hours. Trump-Kim meeting: why North Korea threatened to pull out. North and South Korea Set Bold Goals: A Final Peace and No Nuclear Arms. North Korea nuclear test site Mantapsan mountain collapse makes it unusable for Kim Jong Un, scientists say.
BEIJING -- Research by Chinese geologists suggests that the mountain above North Korea's main nuclear test site has likely collapsed.
That collapse has likely rendered the site unsafe for further testing and will require that it be monitored for any leaking radiation. The findings by the scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China may shed new light on North Korean President Kim Jong Un's announcement that his country was ceasing its testing program ahead of planned summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump. The results also support some of the findings of an earlier study by another group of Chinese researchers that was published last month by the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The Quiet Diplomacy to Save the Olympics in a Nuclear Standoff. Kim Jong Un's sister: Mysterious sibling and gatekeeper. But there will be no avoiding the flashing lights when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, heads to the Olympics in South Korea this month.
It's the first time a member of the Kim dynasty has ever visited the country. Born in 1987, Kim Yo Jong studied in Switzerland like her brother and is believed to have attended Kim Il Sung University and a European school for her higher education. She is believed to be the youngest of seven siblings their father, Kim Jong Il, had with four women. Many of them are half-siblings, but Kim Jong Un and Kim Yo Jong have the same mother, Ko Yong Hui.
Kim Yo Jong was always close to her father, and after returning from Switzerland she was appointed to positions of responsibility in the government, according to Michael Madden, who runs the blog North Korea Leadership Watch. She would act as an advance-team leader, inspecting sites before official visits and taking on administrative duties. Exclusive: Despite sanctions, North Korea exported coal to South and Japan via Russia - intelligence sources. South Korea seizes second North Korean ship amid sanctions row. South Korea has seized a second ship as part of what it describes as an ongoing effort to monitor North Korea's attempts to evade UN sanctions.
Officials seized the KOTI, a Panamanian-flagged vessel, after it was suspected of illegally selling oil to North Korea, maritime authorities told South Korea's Yonhap news agency. The ship, which can carry 5,100 metric tons of oil, is currently docked in Pyeongtaek-Dangjin port on South Korea's west coast after security officials reportedly decided on December 21 not to allow the vessel to leave the port, according to Yonhap citing a local maritime office.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry told CNN Sunday that authorities have launched an investigation into a ship it has seized, but it would not give further details "due to the sensitivity of the issue," about whether that vessel was suspected of transferring oil to North Korea in violation of international sanctions on the hermit kingdom. Exclusive: Russian tankers fueled North Korea via transfers at sea - sources. North Korean Soldier Defects Through DMZ, and Gunfire Erupts. Kim Jong Un’s Brutal Regime in North Korea Is Worse Than Nazi Concentration Camps, Human Rights Leader Says. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversees a system of political prisons that are worse than the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, according to an Auschwitz survivor serving on a panel probing human rights violations carried out by the isolated regime.
Thomas Buergenthal, one of three jurists tapped by the International Bar Association to gather statements from former North Korean prisoners and guards, said Kim should face charges for crimes against humanity for his efforts to retain power and wield fear. "I believe that the conditions in the [North] Korean prison camps are as terrible, or even worse, than those I saw and experienced in my youth in these Nazi camps and in my long professional career in the human rights field," Buergenthal told The Washington Post in a report published Monday. The panel concluded that Kim's political prison camps were guilty of 10 of the 11 internationally recognized war crimes, including murder, enslavement and sexual violence.
Rape and no periods in North Korea's army. Image copyright Reuters A former soldier says life as a woman in the world's fourth-largest army was so tough that most soon stopped menstruating.
And rape, she says, was a fact of life for many of those she served with. For almost 10 years Lee So Yeon slept on the bottom bunk bed, in a room she shared with more than two dozen women. Every woman was given a small set of drawers in which to store their uniforms. On top of those drawers each kept two framed photographs. It was more than a decade ago that she left, but she retains vivid memories of the smell of the concrete barracks. North Korean defector: What we've learned from dramatic footage. Media playback is unsupported on your device Extraordinary footage of the recent defection of a North Korean soldier across the border to the South has been released.
On 13 November the soldier drove up to the border within the Joint Security Area (JSA) and then sprinted to the other side, a hail of bullets following him. The JSA is the only place in the 250km (155-mile)-long Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) where soldiers from both sides face each other. Located in the village of Panmunjom, it's a popular tourist attraction for South Koreans. The UN Command, which oversees the military forces supporting South Korea, said the footage showed clear violations of the armistice brokered after the Korean War, with North Korean soldiers firing across the border and crossing the demarcation line. But it also provides a rare insight into what happened during the defection and how each side coped. North Korean defector found to have 'enormous parasites' Image copyright Getty Images A North Korean soldier who was shot while fleeing across the border has an extremely high level of parasites in his intestines, his doctors say.
The defector crossed the demilitarised zone on Monday, but was shot several times by North Korean border guards. Doctors say the patient is stable - but "an enormous number" of worms in his body are contaminating his wounds and making his situation worse. How North Korean hackers stole 235 gigabytes of classified US and South Korean military plans. In September 2016, North Korean intelligence services stole a huge batch of classified US and South Korean military plans — including a plan to assassinate North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un and other top government officials.
Yet this was not the stuff of an old-school John le Carré spy novel, with shady figures in trench coats exchanging documents at a dark rendezvous spot in the woods. North Korea’s data theft was done entirely through computer systems. According to a South Korean politician, last fall North Korean hackers gained access to South Korea’s Defense Integrated Data Center and stole 235 gigabytes of classified military plans.
Inside North Korea, and Feeling the Drums of War - The New York Times. Next target Guam, North Korea says - CNN. The country's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported leader Kim Jong Un presided over the dawn launch Tuesday of the "ultra-modern rocket system," the first missile ever fired from the capital Pyongyang. North Korean officials told CNN in Pyongyang that Kim was "very satisfied with the performance of the missile. " The intermediate-range missile, identified by the North Koreans as the Hwasong-12, flew over Japan, further fueling tensions between North Korea and the United States and its allies, Japan and South Korea.
The launch was "the first step of the military operation of the (North Korean military) in the Pacific and a meaningful prelude to containing Guam," state media said. North Korea shipments to Syria chemical arms agency intercepted: U.N. report. Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury’ Against North Korea if It Endangers U.S. - The New York Times. BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Trump threatened on Tuesday to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States, as tensions with the isolated and impoverished nuclear-armed state escalated into perhaps the most serious foreign policy challenge yet of his administration.
In chilling language that evoked the horror of a nuclear exchange, Mr. Trump sought to deter from any actions that would put Americans at risk. But it was not clear what specifically would cross his line. Administration officials have said that a pre-emptive military strike, while a last resort, is among the options they have made available to the president. UN imposes tough new sanctions on North Korea. The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved tough new sanctions Saturday to punish North Korea for its escalating nuclear and missile programs including a ban on coal and other exports worth over $1 billion — a huge bite in its total exports, valued at $3 billion last year. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called the resolution "the single largest economic sanctions package ever leveled against the North Korean regime" and "the most stringent set of sanctions on any country in a generation.
" But she warned that it is not enough and "we should not fool ourselves into thinking we have solved the problem — not even close. " "The threat of an outlaw nuclearized North Korean dictatorship remains ... U.S. Confirms North Korea Fired Intercontinental Ballistic Missile - The New York Times.
Neither North Korea nor the United States want all-out war: Here's why. If the conflict reignited, it could be even more cataclysmic this time around with the specter of nuclear weapons looming. "The threat of war on the peninsula -- major war or a limited war -- has been present off and on since the end of the Korean War," Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told CNN. "Both the United States historically and also North Korea have proved that they can demonstrate restraint, de-escalate a crisis (and) step back from the brink of war ...
Otto Warmbier dies days after release from North Korean detention. Otto Frederick Warmbier in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo Feb. 29, 2016. U.N. envoy urges North Korea to explain why freed U.S. man is in coma. Dennis Rodman just gave Kim Jong Un ‘The Art of the Deal.’ And it may be a genius move. Suspected N.Korea drone photographed US missile defense site. In this Friday, June 9, 2017 photo provided by South Korean Defense Ministry on Tuesday, June 13, 2017, a suspected North Korean drone is seen in a mountain in Inje, South Korea.
South Korean Defense Ministry said on Tuesday, June 13, 2017, the suspected North Korean drone found near the Korean border was found to have taken photos of a U.S. missile defense shield in the South. Dennis Rodman returns to North Korea, vowing to try to 'open a door' Exclusive: Kim's rocket stars - The trio behind North Korea's missile program. Why does North Korea hate the United States? Let’s go back to the Korean War. North Korean soldiers take part in a military parade. North Korea claims CIA plot to kill Kim Jong-un. North Korea detains US citizen Tony Kim as tensions rise. Kim Sang Duk, also known as Tony Kim, was teaching at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a statement from the school said. Pence tells North Korea not to test American resolve, offering Syria and Afghanistan strikes as examples. (Reuters) Cookies are Not Accepted - New York Times. As a candidate, Donald Trump seemed to pay no more attention to North Korea’s accelerating nuclear weapons program, which his predecessor has warned is America’s most urgent threat, than he did to other complex foreign policy issues.
North Korea fires ballistic missile as Trump, Xi prepare to meet. Malaysia says Kim Jong Nam’s body released to North Korea. North Korea Link Probed in $81 Million Theft of Fed Funds: Sources - Bloomberg. Failed North Korean missile exploded 'within seconds,' US says. Exclusive: Trump administration weighing broad sanctions on North Korea - U.S. official. Crazed North Korean despot Kim Jong-un blows up US aircraft carrier and shoots down bomber in propaganda video. Log In - New York Times. Log In - New York Times. The U.S. wants to stop North Korean missiles before they launch. That may not be a great idea. US to deploy missile-capable drones across border from North Korea.
As North Korea’s arsenal grows, experts see heightened risk of ‘miscalculation’ Nbcnews. U.S. starts deploying anti-missile system in South Korea after defiant North's latest test. North Korea launches more missiles; 3 land in Japanese waters - The Washington Post. Log In - New York Times. Log In - New York Times. Malaysia expels North Korean ambassador over Kim probe - The Washington Post. Kim Jong-nam death: North Korean detainee to be released. South Korea suggests North's suspension from UN over airport killing. Amazingly, North Korea is making itself even less popular (opinion) For Kim Jong Nam, a sad ending to a lonely life. Log In - New York Times.
China say North Korea's nuclear plan is a problem between U.S. and North Korea. Www.nbcnews. Www.nbcnews. What is VX nerve agent, and what could North Korea do with it? - CNN.com. Log In - New York Times. Log In - New York Times. Malaysia detains woman as probes widen into killing of North Korean leader’s half-brother - The Washington Post. North Korean leader's brother Kim Jong-nam killed at Malaysia airport - BBC News. North Korea fires ballistic missile, first since Trump elected in U.S. - The Washington Post.
Trueactivist. Exclusive photos show flood devastation in North Korea - VICE News. AP Photos: Pyongyang starts day early with patriotic music. North Korea makes rare public appeal for flood relief. Cash for Kim: How North Koreans Are Working Themselves to Death in Europe. Kenneth Bae, Longest-Held U.S. Prisoner of North Korea, Reveals Details of Ordeal. Obama on why the U.S. won't "destroy North Korea" Defector TV: the North Korean escapees who sparked a reality show craze. Defections Rock North Korea. 13 North Korean waitresses defect to Seoul. North Korea Tried to Jam GPS Signals Across Border, South Korea Says. Defiant North Korea fires ballistic missile into sea, Japan protests. UN Calls for Kim Jong-un to Be Prosecuted for Crimes Against Humanity.
U.N. imposes harsh new sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program. North Korea slams UN rights body for criticism of its record. I Tried to Make a Film About North Korea and Fell Victim to Its Propaganda Machine. U.S. student held in North Korea 'confesses' US Stealth Jets Fly Over S. Korea Amid N. Korea Standoff. North Korea’s Best Building Is Empty: The Mystery of the Ryugyong Hotel. Seoul: N. Korean leader Kim had his military chief executed. Belligerence as strategy: Pyongyang and its provocations. Seoul: North Korea fires rocket seen as covert missile test. North Korea urged to stop planned satellite launch. Uk.businessinsider.
Businessinsider. New Photographs from Inside North Korea. North Korea: inside 'the most amusing destination on earth' How do you investigate North Korean human rights abuses from afar?