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 …

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 …

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.

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.

South Korean activists have sent another batch of propaganda leaflets across the border into North Korea, ignoring calls from the South Korean government to stop the airdrops which it says are inflaming already tense relations on the peninsula.
Activists said the latest batch of 100,000 plastic-covered leaflets was carried across the heavily-fortified border by unmanned helium balloons on Thursday.

PYONGYANG (Reuters) – It took six decades for the divided Koreas to meet to talk about Japan’s colonial past, but it took them just two hours to agree they had common grievances with their Asian neighbor.
Despite the 1950-53 Korean War that killed millions and decades of animosity, there was little dispute between a South Korean group that visited Pyongyang last week and their North Korean hosts, as they agreed Japan’s colonial rule still casts a shadow over the peninsula.

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea blamed Seoul for a sharp deterioration in relations after years of detente, accusing South Korea’s conservative president Friday of wanting neither reunification nor dialogue.
Relations between the two Koreas, which fought a devastating war in 1950-53 and remain divided by the world’s most heavily fortified border, reached a new low this week with North Korea’s military announcing it will halt border crossings Dec. 1.

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea, angry at a leaflet campaign by Seoul groups urging the overthrow of its leader, accused South Korea Tuesday of planning a pre-emptive strike and threatened to reduce it to “debris” in retaliation.
The North’s military said it would use a “more powerful and advanced” strike of its own if South Korea launches a pre-emptive strike.