Pyongyang

Nearly 1,000 Westerners attended Sunday’s Pyongyang Marathon – twice as many as last year – according to a tour company that specializes in North Korean travel.

The U.N. Security Council will receive a report this week outlining North Korea’s remarkable success at evading sanctions against its nuclear missile program. According to the report, Pyongyang has been able to import petroleum, export coal, and sell weapons in spite of the toughest sanctions ever imposed against it.

A diplomatic crisis between Italy and North Korea is brewing over the alleged abduction of the 17-year-old daughter of Jo Song Gil, who until November was North Korea’s ambassador to Rome.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to North Korea to meet with Chairman Kim Jong-un on Sunday in preparation for a second denuclearization summit between President Donald Trump and the Asian country’s dictator, a Department of State spokesperson said Tuesday.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Thursday that America’s stance on negotiations with North Korea has not changed regarding denuclearization and that Washington would take no “corresponding measures” to please Pyongyang before the communist rogue state fully dismantles its illegal nuclear program.

The Chinese government and its carefully controlled media professed extreme pleasure with the summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un Wednesday, lavishing praise on the North Korean leader and gushing over the glimpse of North Korea’s “modern” and upscale capital city of Pyongyang.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s third summit meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, held in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, produced an offer on Wednesday for Kim to visit South Korea “in the near future.”

Leftist South Korean President Moon Jae-in has assembled an entourage of over 200 big business CEOs, pop stars, politicians, and journalists to accompany him to Pyongyang on Tuesday for his third summit this year with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

China is continuing to undermine international sanctions on North Korea by increasing trade with their close communist ally, NBC News revealed in a report Wednesday.

South Korea’s special envoy to the North, Chung Eun-yong, met with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on Wednesday and said the North Korean dictator wants to denuclearize during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term. Chung said Kim professed “unwavering trust for President Trump” despite recent diplomatic tensions between the United States and North Korea.

North Korea’s state newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, warned readers Monday the country may soon face a significant economic downturn that will require “belts tightened” to secure the future, the South Korean news service Yonhap reported.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boarded a plane to North Korea early Thursday for his first overnight stay in the rogue communist regime. He is scheduled to hold discussions with high-ranking officials in the country on how to begin defining specifics necessary to implement a plan to end Pyongyang’s illegal nuclear weapons program.

According to a tour group based in Beijing, North Korea has decided to hold its “Mass Games” event for the first time in five years. The North Korean government has never explained why the games were halted in 2013 after a big show to commemorate the Korean War armistice, or why they are being relaunched now, but the obvious inference is that Pyongyang wishes to appear more open to the West and welcoming to tourists as diplomacy with the United States unfolds.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad plans to visit North Korea for a personal meeting with leader Kim Jong-Un, Pyongyang’s state media reported Sunday.

North Korean media reported on Wednesday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will “soon” visit Pyongyang for a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho. The Russian Foreign Ministry subsequently announced that Lavrov would make the trip on Thursday, following up on an invitation Ri issued in early April.

An anonymous “official with knowledge of the discussions” told CNN on Wednesday that the head of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is planning his first official visit to Pyongyang.

North Korea’s state media outlets, which have remained largely silent on talks for an in-person meeting between communist dictator Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump, did not disclose on Wednesday the news that CIA Director Mike Pompeo met Kim personally in Pyongyang.

South Korean politicians and analysts are divided over North Korea’s proposal for a summit between dictator Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang. Some are supportive of the idea or, at least, think it is worth a few days of President Moon’s time, while others believe the summit could be counterproductive or even dangerous.

Despite the diplomatic “thaw” that made North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics possible and a general media atmosphere of excitement around Pyongyang’s relative openness after years of defiant isolation, South Korean officials say North Korea has not responded to their call for military talks.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis plans to take his first official visit to China in the spring, to seek further cooperation on North Korea, according to the South China Morning Post.

The North Korea monitor site 38North published a report on Wednesday citing officials within the communist government suggesting that Pyongyang is “extremely serious” about the possibility of war with the United States, considering an American attack an existential threat to the country.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis confirmed on Monday that the United States has discussed with South Korea the option of employing tactical nuclear weapons to defend against North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The Foreign Ministry on Monday condemned North Korea’s latest nuclear test and hydrogen bomb claim and called for a “firm international response” to curb Pyongyang’s rogue weapons programs.

A controversial French comic with past convictions for anti-Semitic commentary and Holocaust denial is heading to North Korea next month.

Prior to President Trump’s inauguration, North Korea made it clear it was prepared to give the new U.S. administration time to review the policy and come up with something better than President Obama’s.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday titled, “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account.” The secretaries argue that the Trump administration is using a “peaceful pressure campaign” to achieve the “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a dismantling of the regime’s ballistic missile programs.”

North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile test was a “gift” to “American bastards” on their independence day, Pyongyang’s official news agency on Wednesday cited leader Kim Jong-Un as saying.

North Korea proclaimed Tuesday that it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile — a watershed moment in its push to develop a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that China’s state-run National Petroleum Corporation has suspended fuel sales to North Korea for an undetermined period of time. CNPC is the primary supplier of fuel to North Korea.

The family of the now deceased University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier kept his Jewish faith a secret so officials could negotiate his release from North Korea, according to an official who negotiated the student’s release.