North Korea

UTAH – Brigham Young University student and returned missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who disappeared and was thought to have died in China in 2004 may be alive in North Korea.According to a Yahoo Japan article, David Sneddon may have been kidnapped by the North Korean government years ago when he disappeared while hiking in western China.The Chinese government suggested 24-year-old Sneddon died while hiking in Tiger Leaping Gorge in the Yunnan Province.Sneddon's parents, Kathleen and Roy, say they have always been skeptical of that theory because their son's body was never recovered.

HONG KONG (CNN) -- Satellite images of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility have again raised questions about whether the country has restarted its plutonium production reactor -- regarded by western experts as a key component in the development of a nuclear weapon.Researchers from U.S.-based groups examined satellite images from August 31.

(CNN) -- In The World According to Dennis Rodman, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he just saw on his second trip to the country, is quite likeable."He has to do his job, but he's a very good guy," Rodman said Monday at a news conference, announcing plans for a "basketball diplomacy" event that will involve players form North Korea.Meanwhile, Kim presides over one of the most repressive regimes on Earth.As Human Rights Watch puts it, Kim's succession as supreme leader after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in December 2011, "had little impact on the country's dire human rights record."People are subjected to torture and thrown into prison camps based on political charges.

(CNN) -- Former basketball star Dennis Rodman arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday on a five-day visit amid speculation he may try to negotiate the release of jailed U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae, China's Xinhua news agency reported.In Beijing, the gateway for flights to Pyongyang, Rodman told Reuters he was on another "basketball diplomacy tour" and would not be discussing the release of Bae."I'm not going to North Korea to discuss freeing Kenneth Bae," Rodman told Reuters in a telephone interview before he left Beijing for Pyongyang. "I've come out here to see my friend (Kim) -- and I want to talk about basketball," he added.Later pushing through a throng of journalists at Beijing airport, the 6 foot 7 inch (2.01 meter) former basketballer said: "I'm just trying to go over there to meet my friend Kim, the Marshal.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- North Korea may be increasing its ability to enrich uranium at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, according to an analysis of recent satellite imagery.The Institute for Science and International Security report concluded that North Korea appears to have greatly expanded a building in the fuel fabrication complex that is used for gas centrifuges in the uranium enrichment process at the reactor facility.The development amounts to a doubling in size of the complex from its original construction.Construction on the building expansion appears to have preceded an announcement by the North Korean government earlier this year that it planned on restart all the nuclear facilities at the previously mothballed site."This announcement may have been partially intended as an oblique effort to reveal this new construction; one missed publicly at the time," wrote David Albright and Robert Avagyan, the authors of the report.The imagery reveals an internal floor plan divided into three sections according to the report.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- North Korea appears to have stopped work on a long-range missile launch site, according to newly released satellite imagery.The analysis by 38 North, a blog run by the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, shows construction at the Tonghae launch site appears to have stopped eight months ago.But as with everything when it comes to the opaque workings of North Korea, the search for a definitive reason behind the stoppage remain elusive."It's almost certain they are not going to stop developing long-range missiles.

PANAMA CITY, Panama (CNN) -- Four days have passed since Panamanian authorities discovered undeclared military weapons hidden aboard a North Korean ship, and the painstaking process of examining the entire vessel is crawling at a snail's pace.The ship has five cargo holds, only one of which has been emptied as of Thursday."The technicians on board have told us that this cargo was loaded in a way that makes it difficult to unload," Panamanian Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino said.The North Korean crew had resisted the Panamanian authorities and cut the cables to the onboard cranes.

PANAMA CITY, Panama (CNN) -- North Korea has a message for Panamanian authorities who seized a cargo ship packed with sugar and weapons: Release the boat and let the crew go."The Panamanian investigation authorities rashly attacked and detained the captain and crewmen of the ship on the plea of 'drug investigation' and searched its cargo but did not discover any drug," a spokesman for North Korean's Foreign Ministry told state-run KCNA on Wednesday. "Yet, they are justifying their violent action, taking issue with other kind of cargo aboard the ship.

(CNN) -- It was a mystery that Panama's president said his country was struggling to solve.What was the massive military equipment hidden under hundreds of thousands of sacks of brown sugar on a North Korean boat?

(CNN) -- Former Chicago Bulls' basketball player Dennis Rodman thinks he should be in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this year.In Sports Illustrated's annual "Where Are They Now" issue, the hall of famer applauds Kim Jong Un for what could be called restraint on behalf of the reclusive leader. "Fact is, he hasn't bombed anywhere he's threatened to yet.

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea has proposed high-level talks with the United States to "ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula," its state news agency reported early Sunday.The topics that "can be sincerely discussed" include easing military tensions, changing a truce treaty to a peace treaty, and nuclear matters, according to a statement from the North's National Defense Commission, as reported by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

(CNN) -- North Korea proposed high-level talks with the United States to "ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula," its state news agency reported early Sunday.The topics that "can be sincerely discussed" include easing military tensions, changing a truce treaty to a peace treaty and nuclear matters, according to the report in the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea on Monday fired more projectiles into the sea off its east coast, South Korean officials said, urging Pyongyang to refrain from "tension-creating acts."But Pyongyang described the launches as a "regular military exercise."The South Korean Defense Ministry still needs to analyze exactly what the North has been firing for the past three days, said Choi Yong-su, an official in the ministry representative's office.They could be short-range missiles or a new kind of large-caliber artillery rocket, the ministry said.The North fired three projectiles into waters off its east coast Saturday and a fourth Sunday.

(CNN) -- North Korea fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, according to South Korea's semiofficial news agency Yonhap, citing a South Korean military official.On Saturday, North Korea launched three short-range guided missiles into the sea, also known as the East Sea, off the Korean Peninsula's east coast, Yonhap reported.The missiles on Saturday were fired in a northeasterly direction, away from South Korean waters, the ministry said.South Korea has beefed up monitoring on North Korea and is maintaining a high level of readiness to deal with any risky developments, the ministry added, according to Yonhap.According to the Arms Control Association, a U.S.-based organization, short-range guided missiles are generally classified as those traveling less than 1,000 kilometers (about 620 miles).Tensions in the region have eased since a period last month that included near daily North Korean threats of war.U.S. and South Korean officials feared at that time that Kim Jong Un's regime was planning to carry out a test launch of longer-range ballistic missiles, believed to be Musudans.

(CNN) -- Two North Korean Musudan missiles have been withdrawn from a launch site in the eastern part of the country and sent to a storage facility, a U.S. official confirmed Monday.The United States had been worried about the prospects of the regime firing the missiles.For weeks last month, North Korea dished out daily sabre-rattling threats aimed at South Korea and the United States.The North's rhetoric intensified after the U.N. Security Council voted in March to slap tougher sanctions on the regime and amid U.S.-South Korean military drills in the region.

(CNN) -- If North Korea continues with its controversial missile and nuclear tests, it "will move closer" to its objective of reaching the United States with nuclear weapons, according to a Pentagon report.During recent heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, Pyongyang repeatedly threatened the possibility of nuclear attacks against the United States and South Korea, prompting questions on the progress of its weapons program.North Korea's secretiveness has made it hard for Western intelligence agencies to gauge exactly what is going on inside its research facilities.Many clues have come from the regime's large-scale tests such as the long-range rocket launch in December and the underground nuclear detonation in February.The Pentagon's annual report to Congress on Thursday provided an overview of the military threat posed by North Korea, but it didn't say how long it believed it would take the isolated, Stalinist state to develop a fully operational nuclear missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.It described North Korea's ballistic missile program as "ambitious" and said that "the pace of its progress will depend, in part, on how many resources it can dedicate to these efforts and how often it conducts tests."Doubts over North's capabilitiesA sign of differing views on North Korea's nuclear missile capabilities among U.S. intelligence agencies emerged last month.Addressing the House Armed Services Committee, a congressman read out an excerpt from a report by the Pentagon's intelligence arm that said it believed with "moderate confidence" that the North had nuclear weapons that could be delivered by ballistic missiles, albeit with low "reliability."But after the disclosure of that assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), top U.S. officials including President Barack Obama said the U.S. government didn't think North Korea was yet able to fit a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.The Pentagon report Thursday included no reference to the DIA excerpt, which didn't specify the range of the ballistic missiles that it was talking about.The report said that the type of long-range rocket that North Korea launched in December to put a satellite in orbit "could reach parts of the United States if configured as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of carrying a nuclear payload."But it noted that "a space launch does not test a re-entry vehicle (RV), without which North Korea cannot deliver a weapon to target from an ICBM."The December launch and the display in April 2012 of an untested but road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile help underscore "the threat to regional stability and U.S. national security posed by North Korea," according to the report.Like father, like sonIts authors said they didn't expect much change under North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, from the strategy shaped by his father, Kim Jong Il, who died in December 2011.The focus of that approach, they said, includes "coercive diplomacy to compel acceptance of its diplomatic, economic and security interests; development of strategic military capabilities to deter external attack;" and challenges to South Korea and the U.S.-South Korean alliance.Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea has so far continued the pursuit of more advanced nuclear and missile technologies, which according to the report, the regime sees as "essential to its goals of survival, sovereignty and relevance."The long-range rocket launch in December and underground nuclear test in February prompted international condemnation and tougher U.N. sanctions.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama has said he doesn't believe North Korea can fit a nuclear warhead on a missile, casting strong doubt on an alarming assessment disclosed last week by the Pentagon's intelligence arm.And he warned the young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that weeks of threats against the United States and South Korea had only served to isolate the regime further.Asked in an NBC News interview whether North Korea could put a nuclear weapon on a ballistic missile, Obama said, "Based on our current intelligence assessments, we do not think that they have that capacity."According to a snippet of a document read out by a congressman at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency believes "with moderate confidence" that the North has developed nuclear weapons it could deliver on a ballistic missile, although with low reliability.U.S. defense and intelligence officials sought to qualify the DIA's words soon after they were made public, saying North Korea hadn't "fully" demonstrated the capabilities mentioned.

(CNN) -- North Korea is raising the temperature on its neighbors, saying in its latest threat that it would not give any advance warning before any attack on South Korea."Our retaliatory action will start without any notice from now," Pyongyang said in a statement published Tuesday by its official news agency, KCNA.North Korea said it was responding to what it called insults from the "puppet authorities" in the South, claiming that there had been a rally against North Korea in Seoul -- a rally it called a "monstrous criminal act."The renewed menacing rhetoric came a day after North Koreans celebrated the birthday of their country's founder, Kim Il Sung, who launched the Korean War.Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, said the latest threat from the North was regrettable.Amid concern that Pyongyang could carry out a missile test, Kim Min-seok said South Korea continued to closely monitor the North's military movements.Also Tuesday, a U.S. Marine helicopter participating in annual joint military exercises in South Korea made a hard landing in a province that borders North Korea, the U.S. military said.The drills by South Korean and U.S. forces have upset North Korea, as they have done in previous years.