North Korea Video Feature: The Wonderful World of the Regime's YouTube Channel (McFadden)

Disney, Take Note --- the North Korean regime's cartoon animals portray conflict and re-unification

---

One of the more striking cartoons features a young boy, who falls asleep while doing his math homework and dreams of blowing up American warships and landing craft with missiles. While the other boys in his dream are successful at hutting their targets, the main character does not know how to zero in on the proper coordinates because he did not learn from his homework. When he wakes from the nightmare, he immediately returns to his studies.

Click to read more ...

Korea Latest: As US-South Korea Drills Begin, Journalists Ordered to Leave

UPDATE 1110 GMT: Yonhap News interprets South Korea's flurry of varying message on China's call for six-party talks:

The foreign ministry said Sunday that China's offer to resume six-party talks on North Korea "should be studied very carefully," stressing that creating the right atmosphere for reopening the negotiations is a priority.

The reaction was seen as a de facto rejection of Beijing's proposal that the chief delegates from the six nations meet in early December to discuss tensions on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea's deadly artillery strike on a South Korean island.

UPDATE 1035 GMT: South Korea has shifted its position (see 0909 GMT) on the Chinese intervention, now saying it will "carefully consider" Beijing's call for a resumption of six-party talks.

Click to read more ...

Korea Update: A (Dismissed) Signal from the North, A March in the South

The immediate crisis over North Korea's shelling of Yongpyeong Island has eased. There was a flutter on Friday when the North carried out a military drill with artillery fire only miles from the island, which is just off the western coast of the North-South border, and the state news agency pronounced, "The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war." 

The display was more bravado than threat, however, offering a response to the tour of Yongpyeong by the top U.S. commander in South Korea and Sunday's planned US-South Korea military exercise, headed by an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in the Yellow Sea.

An important story emerged this morning. On 3 August, North Korean radio issued a clear warning, as a notice from the Western Front military command, that Pyongyang would carry out a military strike in response to any South Korean drills near the border and North Korean waters.

Click to read more ...

Korea Update: North Threatens New Attacks, South to Bolster Military Arsenal, US Asks China to Step In

UPDATE 1730 GMT: The spin out of Seoul is that the President's inner circle of ministers, in their emergency meeting,decided that old rules of engagement put too much emphasis on prevention of escalation. In future, South Korea will implement different levels of response, depending on whether the North attacked military or civilian targets, but the new rules call for retaliation "with shots two to three times more powerful than the enemy artillery".

UPDATE 1420 GMT: China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi has cancelled a visit to Seoul on Friday. Chinese officials claimed a scheduling conflict, but South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Young-sun indicated Seoul has concerns.

UPDATE 1115 GMT: President Lee Myung-Bak has accepted the resignation of South Korea's Minister of Defense,Kim Tae-Young.

Click to read more ...

Breaking: North Korea Shells South Korea Island; Seoul on Highest "Non-War Alert"

UPDATE 1220 GMT: The South Korean President's office says Lee Myung-bak has ordered the military to strike North Korea's missile base around its coastline artillery positions if it shows signs of additional provocation.

The spokeswoman added that, in a video conference with Gen. Han Min-koo, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President ordered "multiple-fold retaliation" against North Korea for its artillery attack today.

UPDATE 1130 GMT: The South Korean military has confirmed its two-day exercise on Yongpyeong Island before the North Korea attack, but it says South Korean forces fired west and not north.

Click to read more ...