North Korea on Monday hailed 2006 as a “year of great victory” thanks to its first ever nuclear weapons test and vowed to keep putting its military first in the coming year.
A joint New Year editorial in the hardline communist state’s major newspapers also vowed to restructure the creaking economy and called for unbending loyalty to leader Kim Jong-Il.

“Our access to a nuclear deterrent was an auspicious event in the national history as it meant the realization of the Korean people’s centuries-old desire to have national strength no one could dare challenge,” said the editorial carried jointly by the party, military and youth newspapers.

“Our nuclear deterrent serves as a powerful force for defending peace and security in Northeast Asia and guaranteeing the victorious advance of the cause of independence,” it added, referring to the nuclear test on October 9.

The editorial termed 2006 a “year of great victory” and made no mention of the international condemnation or UN sanctions which were sparked by the nuclear test and by earlier missile tests in July. (more…)

North Korea on Saturday accused the United States of having conducted at least 2,200 spy plane missions over the communist country this year, its official media said.
“This means six reconnaissance planes were involved in the espionage on a daily average,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Pyongyang has said such missions show the US aims to invade North Korea despite Washington’s categorical denials. Both sides are locked in a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.

The KCNA said “the US imperialist aggression forces” had carried out their spy missions with reconnaissance planes including the U-2, RC-135, E-3, EP-3, RC-7B and RC-12, either based in South Korea or overseas. (more…)

BEIJING — The U.S. envoy at talks on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons held out the possibility on Wednesday of agreement on first steps toward that goal, weeks after Pyongyang defiantly staged its first nuclear blast.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said U.S. and North Korean negotiators were fleshing out plans to set in motion a joint statement from September 2005 promising North Korea aid and security assurances in return for nuclear disarmament.

“Certainly we are talking about much more than just agreeing on things on paper. We’re discussing actual developments on the ground, and for that reason these discussions are not easy,” Hill told reporters after a third day of talks in Beijing. He added that agreement could come by Friday. (more…)

An ex-collaborator of disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk claimed Monday that he succeeded in cloning a female dog after last year’s breakthrough of creating the world’s first cloned dog, which was male.

An Afghan hound, named Bona, was born on June 18 using cloning technology, said Lee Byeong-chun, a veterinary professor of Seoul National University. Two more of the same breed were born later, he said. DNA tests showed that the three female dogs are clones, he said.

Lee was a key member of Hwang’s research team, most of whose purported breakthroughs in cloning human stem cells were found to be fake. But the team’s success in cloning the world’s first dog, Snuppy, was confirmed. Lee was the main scientist that led the dog cloning. (more…)

North Korea set out sweeping demands on Monday for scrapping its nuclear arms and the United States warned that its patience was running out — an inauspicious start to six-party talks after a year-long hiatus.

Addressing the six-party forum at the first talks since the North’s October 9 nuclear test, Pyongyang’s chief envoy demanded an end to U.N. sanctions and U.S. financial curbs and the grant of a nuclear reactor before it would consider disarmament.

In response to this “exhaustive list”, chief U.S. envoy Christopher Hill warned that Washington’s patience had “reached its limits”. (more…)

North Korea, a reclusive Stalinist nation that cannot feed its people or power many of its factories, has striven for decades to develop nuclear weapons.
The country whose ideology is “juche”, or self-reliance, has depended on food aid for much of the past decade to feed many of its 23 million people. Hundreds of people died in a famine that started in 1995 and went on for years.

Refugee aid group Helping Hands Korea has warned that North Koreans may again face famine this winter as disenchanted international donors cut back on aid after missile tests in July and a nuclear test on October 9.

South Korea suspended regular rice and fertiliser aid shipments after the missile tests and continued the suspension after the nuclear detonation. (more…)

Top US envoy Christopher Hill called on North Korea Sunday to “get serious” about ending its nuclear weapons programs, as six party talks on the issue were set to resume after a year’s delay.
Upon arrival in Beijing, Hill said he was prepared to meet one-on-one with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan, who Saturday voiced pessimism over the talks and accused the United States of a “hostile policy.”

“What the DPRK (North Korea) needs to do is to get serious with denuclearization,” Hill said.

“If they get serious with denuclearization, a lot of good things can happen … if they do not get serious about denuclearization such things will go away.” (more…)

North Korea may stage a second nuclear weapons test to strengthen its hand during upcoming negotiations on scrapping its nuclear programme, South Korea’s new defence minister warned Friday.

Kim Jang-Soo, a former army chief of staff, ordered the 650,000-strong military to step up combat-readiness to deter possible aggression from the North, the defence ministry said.

“We have to be thoroughly prepared to counter the possibility of a second or third nuclear test by North Korea and a possible hostile act by it in the process of negotiations over its nuclear weapons programme,” Kim said in a written order to his troops. (more…)

North Korea has indicated it is ready to “deal in specifics” about giving up its newly proven nuclear arsenal when it returns to six-party disarmamant negotiations next week in Beijing, the top US negotiator said Wednesday.
But Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill predicted “very tough negotiations” when the talks resume on Monday after a 13-month break and said there were no guarantees the process would achieve its goal of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“I’m not here to predict success or express optimism,” said Hill, who has held two rounds of preliminary talks with the North Koreans since they agreed to return to the negotiating table after carrying out their first test of a nuclear bomb on October 9. (more…)

US Defense Secretary designate Robert Gates said Tuesday he no longer favors military action to stop North Korea from producing more nuclear weapons.
Gates said he believes Washington’s current diplomatic strategy of engaging Pyongyang through six party talks is the best course of action.

“I’ve changed my view on how to deal with North Korea. I believe that clearly at this point the best course is the diplomatic one,” he said in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, quoted from a 1994 paper in which Gates argued that the only option was to destroy North Korea’s plutonium reprocessing facility to keep its nuclear arsenal from growing larger. (more…)

Two major unidentified explosions occurred on North Korean territory not far from the border of the Korean Demilitarized Zone at around 0430 Moscow time (0130 GMT) on Monday 4 December, Russian news agencies report citing South Korean media.

The Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk seismological station did not record any earthquakes in the area of the Korean peninsula on Monday, Interfax reported on the same day. (more…)

TOKYO — North Korea has offered Russia exclusive rights to its natural uranium deposits in exchange for Moscow’s support at six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing Pyongyang, a report said Sunday.

Russia had requested that North Korea give Moscow exclusive rights to import Pyongyang’s natural uranium, with plans to profit by enriching and exporting it as nuclear fuel to China and Vietnam, the Tokyo Shimbun reported in a dispatch from Vladivostok in eastern Russia.

The two countries have been secretly in talks since 2002 on the deal, but Pyongyang only recently showed a positive attitude on the deal, demanding Russian support its position in the stalled six-party talks as a precondition for the deal, the newspaper said, citing unnamed Russian government sources. (more…)

The United States urged North Korea to completely close off the nuclear facilities that conducted the October 9 atom bomb test before resuming the six-nation talks, a Japanese newspaper said Saturday.

Christopher Hill, the US negotiator to the six-party talks, told his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan that the North must satisfy four conditions before coming back to the talks, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said, citing Japanese and US government sources.

During the meetings in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday, the negotiators discussed laying the groundwork for the next six-party talks, to which Pyongyang agreed to return under heavy international pressure and UN sanctions condemning the nuclear test. (more…)

North Korea wants the United States to free its overseas bank accounts and for countries to drop sanctions imposed after Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency on Wednesday quoted its envoy as saying.

North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan made the demands in meetings on Tuesday with envoys from other countries in six-way talks on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs, Yonhap said, citing a source in Beijing familiar with the talks.

According to the unnamed source, Kim said these were preconditions for the impoverished state to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. (more…)

North Korea is prepared to return to six-country talks on its nuclear weapons program at any time now that it has “gained a defensive position” with a nuclear test, a senior envoy of the communist state said on Tuesday.

But Kim Kye-gwan told reporters in Beijing that North Korea still had differences to narrow with the United States, which has squeezed Pyongyang’s external sources of financing for more than a year.

North Korea agreed to return to the six-party talks, which it had boycotted for a year, after its October 9 nuclear test triggered U.N.-backed sanctions.

“Because after the nuclear test, we have gained a defensive position against those who are trying to suppress us. Now we are in a very confident position and so we are ready to come back to the talks any time,” Kim told reporters. (more…)