Britain said on Sunday it was hopeful the United Nations Security Council will deliver a resolution against North Korea that includes tougher financial sanctions, after the isolated state’s nuclear test last week.
“There is a genuine world concern, and hopefully a consensus will come from that,” Ann Taylor, British Minister for International Defense and Security, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday on the sidelines of a regional defense conference.

South Korea and the United States raised the military alert level for the peninsula on Thursday after the communist North warned the truce ending the Korean War was dead and it was ready to attack.
North Korea ramped up tensions this week with a series of provocations rarely seen since the 1950-53 Korean War, including war threats, missile launches and a nuclear test that puts it closer to having an atomic bomb.
The joint command for the 28,500 U.S. troops that support South Korea’s 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a …

A North Korean rocket appears to have passed over Japan, the Japanese government said on Sunday, having dropped booster stages to the east and west of the country.
“The projectile launched from North Korea today appears to have passed over towards the Pacific,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
North Korea has said it was putting a satellite into space and but regional powers say Pyongyang is testing a missile designed to carry a warhead to U.S. territory.

North Korea defied the United States, China and a series of United Nations resolutions by launching a rocket on Sunday that the country said was designed to propel a satellite into space, but that much of the world viewed as an effort to prove it is edging toward the capability to shoot a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.
North Korea launched the rocket at 11:30 a.m. local time, or 10:30 NYTime said the office of the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak. Early reports from the Japanese prime minister’s office …

Japan and South Korea say they will seek high-level action at the United Nations to punish North Korea if it proceeds with its announced long-range rocket launch.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan says North Korea will be breaking international law if it launches a long-range rocket – regardless of what is on board.
He says any North Korean launch, whether it is a missile or a satellite, will be brought to the United Nations Security Council for a possible response.
North Korea informed international agencies Thursday of launch coordinates for when Pyongyang …

North Korea has announced that it is preparing to launch a rocket carrying a communications satellite.
It did not give a date for the launch, but said it would mark a great step forward for the communist state.
Correspondents say the statement is Pyongyang’s clearest reference yet to what neighbours believe may be the imminent test of a long-range missile.
When it tested the Taepodong-1 missile in 1998, it claimed to have put a satellite in orbit.
In July 2006 it test-fired the three-stage long-range Taepodong-2, but the missile blew up shortly after launch.

South Korea will retaliate if North Korea attacks its naval ships in waters near their disputed maritime border, the defense chief told lawmakers Friday.
The unusually strong warning comes as North Korea steps up its war rhetoric in anger over South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s tough stance toward the North.
The North Korean military has said it is “fully ready” for war with the South, and state-run media have warned that clashes between the two sides could break out at any time.

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea wants to advance nuclear disarmament steps if its aid demands are met and it played down concerns over possible missile launches, a former senior U.S. diplomat just back from Pyongyang said on Saturday.
Pyongyang, which may be moving to test-fire its longest range Taepodong-2 missile in a bid to grab the attention of new U.S. President Barack Obama, said it had the right to make such a launch.
Stephen Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and now dean at the Fletcher School of diplomacy at …

The Bush administration’s five-year push to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program collapsed Thursday when U.S.-led talks with the communist regime fell apart in Beijing – leveling another blow against President Bush’s hopes for a signature achievement on his way out of office.
The White House said it would “rethink” its approach to North Korea, which Mr. Bush included as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002 before taking a more diplomatic approach to the country in 2007.

PAJU, South Korea (Reuters) – A cargo train between North and South Korea and tours from the South to the communist state stopped on Friday under a border clampdown called for by Pyongyang in anger at the conservative government in Seoul.
But a large number of South Koreans who work at a joint industrial enclave in the North Korean border city of Kaesong were being allowed to keep permits to enter the factory park there, despite an earlier vow by Pyongyang to expel many of them by December 1, officials said.