North Korea launches rocket over Japan…

North Korea just fired their missile right over Japan, isn’t that against the rules or something?

‘Provocative act,’ U.S. says; Japan calls for emergency U.N. meeting

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea defied international warnings and sent a rocket hurtling over the Pacific on Sunday, a launch President Barack Obama called an illicit test of the regime's long-range missile technology that threatened the security of nations "near and far."

Obama and European Union leaders meeting in Prague condemned the move and said North Korea's dangerous defiance demanded an international response. Diplomats at the United Nations scheduled an emergency Security Council session for later Sunday to discuss what Obama called a clear violation of U.N. resolutions.

"North Korea broke the rules once more by testing a rocket that could be used for a long-range missile," Obama said. "This provocation underscores the need for action — not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons."

Listen to what the people of North Korea think all this is about…

Four hours after the launch, North Korea declared it a success. An experimental communications satellite reached outer space in just over nine minutes and was orbiting Earth, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said from Pyongyang.

"The satellite is transmitting the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans 'Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung' and 'Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il' as well as measurement data back to Earth," it said, referring to the country's late founder and his son, its current leader.

Kim Jong Il’s brainwashing and human rights violations of his own people are reminicent of a cult.  Actually, he reminds me of Jim Jones but on a much larger scale.  With that, I say to the poor people of North Korea, “don’t drink the kool-aid!”

North Korea launches rocket over Japan - North Korea- msnbc.com

Technorati Tags: North Korea,Kim Jong Il,Japan,world news,missile,nuclear weapons,politics

Escapee Tells of Horrors in North Korean Prison Camp

By Blaine Harden

Washington Post Foreign Service

SEOUL -- In Camp No. 14, the North Korean political prison where Shin Dong-hyuk was born and where he says he watched the hanging of his mother, inmates never saw a picture of Kim Jong Il.
"I had no idea who he is," Shin said, referring to the leader whose photograph is displayed nearly everywhere in North Korea.
Inmates did not need to know the face of their "Dear Leader," as Kim is called. Behind electrified fences, they tended pigs, tanned leather, collected firewood and labored in mines until they died or were executed.
The exception is Shin, who is 26 and lives in a small rented room here in Seoul. He is a thin, short, shy man, with quick, wary eyes, a baby face, and sinewy arms bowed from childhood labor. There are burn scars on his back and left arm from where he was tortured by fire at age 14, when he was unable to explain why his soon-to-be-hanged mother had tried to escape. The middle finger of his right hand is cut off at the first knuckle, punishment for accidentally dropping a sewing machine in the garment factory at his camp.
There are 14,431 North Korean defectors living in South Korea, according to the latest government count. Shin is the only one known to have escaped to the South from a prison camp in the North.
Shin's story could not be independently verified, but it has been vetted and vouched for by leading human rights activists and members of defector organizations in Seoul. They came to know Shin when he arrived in South Korea in 2005 and was hospitalized with post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Olbermann's World's Worst 6/27 - Hannity Flip Flops on Korea

Fox News’ Sean Hannity applauded the Bush Administrations for lifting some of the sanctions on North Korea. However, moments later when his guest, former UN Ambassador John Bolton disagreed, Hannity quickly changed mind.



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Koreas seek formal end to Korean War

By Jonathan Thatcher
SEOUL (Reuters) - Leaders of the two Koreas agreed on Thursday to try to bring peace to the Cold War's last frontier, just a day after the North signed up to an international deal to disable its nuclear facilities.
But some analysts said the pledges at only the second summit between North and South Korea were limited, with the hermit North clearly reluctant to break much new ground."North and South Korea shared the view they must end the current armistice and build a permanent peace regime," President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said in a joint statement at the end of their three-day meeting in Pyongyang.
They will push for talks next month with China and the United States to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which technically is still going on because a peace treaty has yet to be signed.If Beijing and Washington did agree, it would mark an end at last to the Cold War in the region but the United States has already made clear that one condition would be for Pyongyang to give up all nuclear weapons -- something the North shows no sign of being in a hurry to do.
The two leaders also agreed to set up the first regular freight train service for half a century, linking two countries divided by a heavily fortified border.
There will also be meetings of ministers and defense officials and the establishment of a cooperation zone around a contested sea border on the west of the Korean peninsula.
The summit ended just a day after North Korea agreed to disable the three main nuclear facilities at its Yongbyon site -- and a source of material for atomic weapons -- and provide a full declaration of all its nuclear programs by the end of the year.

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