North Korea

Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader who lives in constant fear of assassination, has reportedly hired Russian ex-KGB bodyguards to protect him in case of an attempt on his life. Japan’s Asahi Shinbum reported that Kim hired about 10 former KGB counterterrorism agents to train his bodyguards on how to detect and respond to terrorist […]

Ukraine has released footage of two North Korean spies exuberantly photographing fake missile designs in 2011, as part of a sting operation that eventually landed the pair in jail, as CNN reports. Ukraine, once home to thousands of Soviet nuclear ICBMs, continues to produce missiles today as it faces a Russian-backed insurgency in the countries east. […]

Moscow decided to double down on its complaints about joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises being conducted on the Korean peninsula by conducting their own show of force: flying intelligence gathering aircraft and nuclear capable “Bear” bombers through the region on Wednesday, an uncommon act even for Russia’s often aggressive air force. The United […]

A report filed by a panel of independent U.N. experts filed earlier this month shows that two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country’s chemical weapons program have been intercepted within the last six months, indicating that the two nations have been cooperating in the development of weapons of mass […]

The military war games conducted by the United States and South Korea elicited a typical North Korean response. Pyongyang threatened both countries on Tuesday with “merciless retaliation” over their ongoing joint military drills. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News (KCNA) had a bombastic warning that both countries they “should take the whole responsibility for catastrophic results […]

(Editor’s note:  Pusan is now spelled and pronounced Busan.  In this article, historical quotes and names–such as the name of the battle–will use the previous pronunciation in order to maintain contextual integrity.) As the continued trouble in North Korea has hijacked our headlines with Kim Jong-un and President Trump trading jabs of rhetoric, pushing the […]

The United States issued a new series of sanctions aiming to hinder North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile platforms needed to carry them, this time, targeting a number of Chinese and Russian entities and individuals accused of skirting U.N. and U.S. sanctions. Kim Jong-un’s North Korean regime’s ballistic missile program has […]

The military war games conducted by the United States and South Korea elicited a typical North Korean response. Pyongyang threatened both countries on Tuesday with “merciless retaliation” over their ongoing joint military drills. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News (KCNA) had a bombastic warning that both countries they “should take the whole responsibility for catastrophic results […]

Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country’s chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential United Nations report on North Korea sanctions violations. The report by a panel of independent U.N. experts, which was submitted to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month […]

On Monday, the United States and South Korea are set to commence a new series of joint defense drills, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian 2017.  While these types of joint military exercises between the two nations occur with some regularity, however, Ulchi Freedom Guardian comes on the heels of a slight reduction in tensions on the […]

The wall around the Yuzhmash rocket factory in east Ukraine is in places overgrown with weeds, a sign of hard times at a plant which a new study says could be the source of engines that power North Korean missiles. Workers at the plant have had their hours cut and wages are in arrears, but […]

In a meeting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis co-hosted with their Japanese counterparts, America’s top diplomat and senior military leader reaffirmed America’s “ironclad commitment” to the mutual defense of its allies in the Pacific. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera joined the two American officials […]