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.

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.

SEOUL, – North Korea complained during rare military talks with the South on Monday about anti-Pyongyang leaflets being sent into its territory by balloons, with a South Korean civic group sending a new batch over the communist state.
The talks were held despite a threat about 10 days ago from impoverished North Korea to cut off all ties with the South, a major supplier of aid and cash, in anger at the hardline policies of its president, whom it brands a U.S. sycophant.