Think twice' before you 'Thunder': N Korea threatens to scrap Trump summit

North Korea abruptly canceled talks with South Korea and warned the U.S. to “think twice” about the fate of President Donald Trump’s planned meeting with Kim Jong Un next month, tamping down hopes of a breakthrough at the historic summit.

North Korea told South Korean authorities that it was “indefinitely” suspending minister-level talks planned for Wednesday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. North Korea cited the annual South Korean-U.S. “Max Thunder” air defense drills in its decision to call off the meeting, which was intended to discuss implementing last month’s peace declaration with South Korea.

“The U.S. will have to think twice about the fate of the DPRK-U.S. summit now on high agenda before a provocative military racket against the DPRK in league with the south Korean authorities,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday, using an abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name. “We will closely watch the ensuing behavior of the U.S. and the South Korean authorities.”

Trump's contrasting avatars: Peace in Korea, World War in West Asia

The president giveth and he taketh away.

Donald Trump is a stern and wrathful leader. He thinks nothing of raining down fire and fury upon the enemies of his “chosen people.” Indeed, he even flirts with ending the world if he doesn’t receive due respect and the requisite number of burnt offerings. But he can also reward his followers, and those who curry his favor, with positions of power and untold riches.

This month, Trump will appear as both of these avatars. By meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump promises to wave his hand and create peace where before there was nothing but strife and dissension. At the same time, Trump the Destroyer has pledged to take the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and bring the world that much closer to apocalypse.

It’s a peculiarly hypocritical position to take, but strangely consistent for a two-faced leader.

The deal with Iran closed off all possibility of the country going nuclear for a decade or more. A rich country, Iran could create quite a nuclear arsenal if it so wanted. Iran has abided by the terms of the current Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and yet Trump has called the deal “horrible.” Indeed, the president believes that he can “fix” the JCPOA. That’s quite a delusion.

Singapore likely to be the venue for Trump-Kim meeting in June

US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un are likely to meet in Singapore next month, reports said Monday, as anticipation builds for unprecedented talks between the mercurial leaders.

Trump said at the weekend that the two sides had settled on a date and location for the summit -- the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader -- without providing details.

"We'll be announcing it soon," Trump told reporters. The landmark summit will take place in "mid-June", South Korea's Chosun Ilbo daily reported Monday, citing diplomatic sources who quoted Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton.

The newspaper suggested that the possibility of Singapore hosting the landmark meeting had "increased greatly", after a decision by Trump to host South Korean president Moon Jae-in at the White House later this month, without giving further explanation.

Bolton met his South Korean counterpart Chung Eui-yong in Washington late last week to discuss plans for both locations, according to local media reports.

A similar report on the weekend from South Korea's Yonhap news agency also said Singapore was firming as the favoured location for the summit.

GM union faces big job losses but South Koreans don't care about it

When Lee Bum-yeon lost his job along with nearly 2,000 other union workers in 2001 after South Korea's Daewoo Motor went bankrupt, his neighbours at supermarkets and bakeries gave his young daughters free snacks and bread.

"People felt sorry. People felt heart-broken. They were worried how we were going to make a living," 55-year-old Lee said.

Now, with General Motors cutting some 2,600 jobs and threatening to leave South Korea in the absence of steep union concessions, the once sympathetic public is nowhere to be seen.

"I don't think anyone is feeling for us anymore," a grim-faced Lee, who was rehired by GM a year after it bought Daewoo in 2002, told Reuters outside GM's Bupyeong factory near Seoul.

South Korea's reputation for militant unions and rigid labour practices has long been cited as contributing to high labour costs and a persistent discount for corporate Korea. Shares of South Korean companies are typically undervalued in comparison to their global peers, a phenomenon known as the "Korea Discount".

Trump hails 'progress' after agreeing to meet Kim Jong Un; sanctions remain

US President Donald Trump hailed “great progress” in talks with North Korea after agreeing to meet Kim Jong Un in what would be an unprecedented summit.


“Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearisation with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze,” Trump said on Twitter late Thursday in Washington. “Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said earlier the meeting would occur at “a place and time to be determined.” The announcement was first made by South Korean National Security Council chief Chung Eui-yong, who told reporters in Washington that Kim “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible” and that Trump “said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearisation.”

North Korea's Kim ready to give up nukes if his regime safety is guaranteed

North Korea is open to denuclearization if the safety of Kim Jong Un’s regime is guaranteed, South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s office said.
The two leaders will meet for a summit at the end of April along the border, the statement said, adding that North Korea was ready for candid talks with the U. S. to normalize relations.
“North Korea has clearly expressed its intention for denuclearlization on the Korean peninsula, and if there is no military threat, and North Korea’s regime security is promised, they have clarified that there is no reason to hold nuclear weapons,” Moon’s office said.
US President Donald Trump has said that North Korea must be willing to denuclearize before talks can begin.

Tensions have risen over the past year as Kim has sought the capability to strike the US homeland with a nuclear weapon.
North Korea has agreed to halt nuclear and missile tests while talks are taking place, Moon’s office said. It also pledged to avoid using nuclear or conventional weapons against South Korea, it said.

South Korean delegation holds talk with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

A South Korean delegation met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday, a South Korean official said, after arriving in the North on a visit aimed at encouraging North Korea and the United States to talk.

Both North Korea and the United States have expressed a willingness to talk, but US President Donald Trump demands the North first gives up its nuclear weapons programme.
The North, which has vowed never to give up its nuclear deterrent against what it sees as U. S. hostility, says it will not sit down to talks under preconditions.
Reclusive North Korea, which has made no secret of its pursuit of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the mainland United States in defiance of U. N. Security Council resolutions, is also concerned about a joint U.

S.-South Korea military exercise, which it sees as preparation for war.
South Korean officials have said the drill will start next month as planned, after being postponed for the Winter Olympics held last month in South Korea.

Surprise arrest of Lotte Chairman creates leadership vacuum, shares down

The shock arrest of the head of South Korea's Lotte for bribery sent shares in group firms plunging on Wednesday as investors fretted about a leadership vacuum at a challenging time for the country's fifth-largest conglomerate.

The Seoul Central Court on Tuesday sentenced Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin to two years and six months in prison in a case tied to an influence-peddling scandal that has rocked the country's business and political elite.

Sporting events that rocked world politics, from Hitler to Nixon

The Winter Olympics starting this week in South Korea are the latest in a string of sporting events that have helped shape global politics.

Whether it be an emerging power challenging a dominant one (1908), a dictator looking for a propaganda coup (1936) or a terrorist group looking to shock the world (1972), global sporting events are often more about what goes on away from the playing field.

This year, South Korean President Moon Jae-in invited North Korea in the hope that a detente would help avert a devastating war over its nuclear program. While it’s unclear if the Games will lead to a lasting peace, they’ve already been successful for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un: He’s grabbed more headlines than any of the athletes.

World's busiest air routes: Tiny South Korean island beats London, New York

The world’s busiest air route isn’t London to Paris or New York to Los Angeles, but the trip between Seoul and a tiny island off the coast of South Korea.

Planes made 65,000 trips between the Korean capital and Jeju island -- a journey of little more than an hour -- in 2017, equivalent to 178 flights a day, according to data from OAG Aviation Worldwide Ltd. That’s almost double the 35,000 trips on the busiest North American route: Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Asian cities dominated the list, cementing the region’s status as the world’s fastest-growing travel market. Among the 10 busiest routes in the world last year, Los Angeles-San Francisco was the only North American entry and there wasn’t a single European destination. The top European route in OAG’s rankings was Dublin-London Heathrow with about 14,500 flights.
Jeju-Seoul

The beaches and resorts of Jeju, an island off the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula, have drawn local holiday-makers for decades. These days, Japanese and Chinese tourists are joining the South Koreans on the sand.

Melbourne-Sydney

Unless you have 10 hours to spare and love driving, a 90-minute flight is the best way to shuttle between Australia’s two biggest population centers. Weekday rush-hour connections are the domain of suited bankers and business travelers. Shoppers, sports fans and tourists take the cheaper seats.

READ MORE

European Union adopts blacklist of 17 tax havens

European Union finance ministers adopted on Tuesday a blacklist of tax havens which includes 17 extra-EU jurisdictions seen as not cooperative on tax matters, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates are the countries listed, officials said.

Le Maire said that other 47 jurisdictions are included in a public "grey" list of countries that are currently not compliant with EU standards but have committed to change their tax rules.

Following multiple disclosures of offshore tax avoidance schemes by companies and wealthy individuals, EU states launched a process in February to list tax havens in a bid to discourage setting up shell structures abroad which are themselves in many cases legal but could hide illicit activities.

Blacklisted countries could lose access to EU funds. Other possible countermeasures will be decided in coming weeks, Le Maire said.

READ MORE

North Korea fires ICBMs that can hit DC, NYC

North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Wednesday that can reach the "whole" American mainland, in a bold act of defiance against US President Donald Trump after he put the country back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. The latest launch drew swift global condemnation with Pyongyang's ally Beijing expressing "grave concern".

The Hwasong-15 missile, described by the state television as the country's "most powerful", was launched around 3 a.m. local time. It landed in Japanese waters but flew higher than any other missile the North had previously tested.

North Korea claimed the entire US mainland was within reach after "successfully" testing the missile that it claimed can carry a "super-large heavy warhead" to unprecedented heights of almost 4,500 kilometres.

State news agency KCNA said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un personally signed off on the launch of the missile that reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometre and flew 950 kilometre in 53 minutes.

The distance travelled appeared to be significantly greater than that of the two previous ICBMs, which flew for 37 minutes on July 4 and for 47 minutes on July 28.

Trump, together with his counterparts in South Korea and Japan and the UN Secretary General, condemned the launch. "We will take care of it," he told reporters at the White House, calling it a "situation we will handle".
READ MORE

In a show of power, Japan, US begin joint naval drills off Korean Peninsula

Japan and the US on Thursday began joint naval drills south of the Korean Peninsula in a show of power against North Korea.

The US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three destroyers and around 14,000 troops to participate in the drills that will be conducted until November 26 in waters near the Okinawa archipelago, the US Navy said in a statement cited by Efe news.

South Korea and the US on Sunday had launched other joint drills covering larger ground in the Sea of Japan (called East Sea in the two Koreas), also as "a show of might" to Pyongyang.

After a meeting with the Commander of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had stressed on the need to reinforce the capacity of deterrence and joint response by Tokyo and Washington owing to a worsening security situation in the region.

The meeting between Abe and Harris in Tokyo comes a week after the US President Donald Trump's visit to Japan, as part of his Asia tour, during which he had urged Abe to jointly apply maximum possible pressure on Pyongyang to force it to abandon its weapons programmes.

From Japan, Trump had travelled to Seoul, where he had harshly condemned the North Korean regime in a speech at the South Korean National Assembly and underlined the strategic positioning of military assets in the region.
READ MORE

US bombers train over South Korea ahead of Donald Trump's visit

Two US strategic B-1B bombers conducted drills over South Korea on Thursday, the US Air Force said, days before President Donald Trump arrives in the country amid high tensions with North Korea over its nuclear weapon programme.

News of the drills was first reported by North Korean state news agency KCNA on Friday, which said the exercises involving South Korean and Japanese fighter jets were a “surprise nuclear strike drill”.

“The reality clearly shows that the gangster-like US imperialists are the very one who is aggravating the situation of the Korean peninsula and seeking to ignite a nuclear war,” KCNA said.

Trump arrives in Asia on Sunday, beginning his first trip to the region as president in Japan before heading to South Korea and China, then Vietnam and the Philippines.

A series of missile tests by North Korea and its sixth and largest nuclear test have fuelled the most critical international challenge of Trump’s presidency.

The goal of Trump’s visit will be to increase international support for efforts to deprive North Korea of resources as leverage to coerce it to give up nuclear weapons, US officials said.

READ MORE

Donald Trump won't go to DMZ during South Korea visit: White House

US President Donald Trump will not be going to the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the Korean peninsula when he visits South Korea next week, a senior administration official said today.

The decision to skip the DMZ at a time of high tensions with nuclear-armed North Korea was attributed to time constraints.

"The president is not going to visit the DMZ, there is not enough time in the schedule," the official said.

Trump, who departs Friday on a five-nation Asian tour with world attention on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, will instead visit Camp Humphreys, which is south of Seoul and away from the DMZ, the official said.

The DMZ, a razor's edge separating North and South Korean forces, is a common stop for visiting presidents and other high-level US officials wanting to see one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints.

But the senior administration official downplayed the decision not to go.

"We just had Secretary Mattis there last week, we had Vice-President Pence there earlier this year," the official said, referring to Pentagon chief Jim Mattis and Trump's number two, Mike Pence.

"It's becoming a little bit of a cliche, frankly.
READ MORE

North Korea rouses neighbours to reconsider nuclear weapons

As North Korea races to build a weapon that for the first time could threaten American cities, its neighbours are debating whether they need their own nuclear arsenals.

The North’s rapidly advancing capabilities have scrambled military calculations across the region, and doubts are growing the United States will be able to keep the atomic genie in the bottle.

For the first time in recent memory, there is a daily argument raging in both South Korea and Japan — sometimes in public, more often in private — about the nuclear option, driven by worry that the United States might hesitate to defend the countries if doing so might provoke a missile launched from the North at Los Angeles or Washington.

In South Korea, polls show 60 per cent of the population favours building nuclear weapons. And nearly 70 per cent want the United States to reintroduce tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. There is very little public support for nuclear arms in Japan, the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack, but many experts believe that could reverse quickly if North and South Korea both had arsenals.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has campaigned for a military build-up against the threat from the North, and Japan sits on a stockpile of nuclear material that could power an arsenal of 6,000 weapons.

This brutal calculus over how to respond to North Korea is taking place in a region where several nations have the material, the technology, the expertise and the money to produce nuclear weapons. Beyond South Korea and Japan, there is already talk in Australia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnam about whether it makes sense to remain nuclear-free if others arm themselves — heightening fears that North Korea could set off a chain reaction in which one nation after another feels threatened and builds the bomb.
READ MORE

Airlines get ready for new US security rules that take effect tomorrow

New security measures including stricter passenger screening take effect on Thursday on all US-bound flights to comply with government requirements designed to avoid an in-cabin ban on laptops, airlines said.

Airlines contacted by Reuters said the new measures could include short security interviews with passengers at check-in or the boarding gate, sparking concerns over flight delays and extended processing time.

They will affect 325,000 airline passengers on about 2,000 commercial flights arriving daily in the United States, on 180 airlines from 280 airports in 105 countries.

The United States announced the new rules in June to end its restrictions on carry-on electronic devices on planes coming from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa in response to unspecified security threats.

Those restrictions were lifted in July, but the Trump administration said it could reimpose measures on a case by case basis if airlines and airports did not boost security.

European and US officials said at the time that airlines had 120 days to comply with the measures, including increased passenger screening. The 120-day deadline is Thursday. Airlines had until late July to expand explosive trace detection testing.
READ MORE

North Korea nuke threat 'critical, imminent,' Japan warns US, South Korea

The threat from North Korea has grown to a “critical and imminent level” and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told his US and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.

Onodera’s remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo after North Korean weapons tests, including test firing missiles over Japan, as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.

His comments broke from more measured language on Monday by US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo, as the three men met on the sidelines of a gathering of Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines.

“(The) threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level. Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat,” he said, speaking through a translator, at the start of talks in the Philippines.

South Korea’s Song also acknowledged that “North Korea’s provocative behaviour is becoming worse and worse,” in public remarks before reporters were escorted out of the meeting room.
READ MORE

SUV war: Hyundai launches new Genesis sports sedan to take on BMW 3 Series

South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co will launch its first new sedan under the premium Genesis marque in Seoul on Friday, hoping to cement the brand's place in the luxury segment and make up for its lack of a strong SUV line-up.

US pop singer Gwen Stefani will perform for about 10,000 people at a gala event to launch of the G70, the third sedan to carry the Genesis name but the first to be marketed exclusively under Hyundai Motor's  fledgling premium brand.

Starting from $33,000, the sporty four-door offers bang for the buck as it takes on rivals including affiliate Kia Motor's Stinger sedan and BMW's 3 Series.

But analysts say the G70 will not solve Hyundai's troubles in the United States, where sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are all the rage and the two previous Genesis-branded sedans failed to take off.

"Look at Cadillac, with just one crossover, the brand is struggling in the U.S. It will be much the same story for Genesis until they can get a crossover to market," said Dave Sullivan, product analysis manager at U.S. consultancy AutoPacific.
READ MORE

US will receive more 'gift packages,' warns North Korea after nuclear test

A top North Korean diplomat on Tuesday warned that his country is ready to send “more gift packages” to the United States as world powers struggled for a response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear weapons test.

Han Tae Song, ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, confirmed that North Korea had successfully conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test on Sunday.

”The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a gift package addressed to none other than the US,” Han told a disarmament conference, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s formal name.

“The US will receive more ‘gift packages’ ... as long as it relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK,” he added without elaborating.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday accused North Korean leader Kim Jong Un of “begging for war” with a series of nuclear bomb and missile tests, and urged the 15-member Security Council to impose the “strongest possible” sanctions to deter him and shut down his trading partners.

READ MORE