It looks like Kim Jong-un got cold feet and decided not to travel to Russia after all:

South Korea sees no abnormal signs in North Korea which might have caused its leader, Kim Jong-un, to cancel his planned trip to Russia next week, a Defense Ministry official said Friday.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters that the North Korean leader will not visit Moscow for a celebration to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, saying that the decision “is related to internal Korean affairs.”

South Korean and Russian officials had expected the leader of the reclusive nation to attend a military parade and hold a bilateral meeting with Putin. It would have been his first foreign trip since taking office in 2011 upon the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

“We don’t believe that any notable internal affairs are taking place in North Korea (that are) serious enough to cause Kim not to attend the event,” the official said, requesting anonymity.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but experts think that Kim Jong-un decided not to go because he is not ready to share the stage with many other national leaders.

Singer IU poses during a fan meet in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province on Sunday.[Chosun Ilbo]

https://twitter.com/SouthKoreaDaily/status/593862593443340288

Three child monk preschoolers come out of the main hall of Sinheung Temple on Mount Seorak in the eastern coastal city of Sokcho on April 28, 2015, after taking part in a British ritual to have their heads shaved and receive their Buddhist names. The ritual is part of a 30-day program to experience the life of Buddhist monks on the occasion of Buddha’s Birthday that falls on May 25. (Yonhap)

Considering that North Koreans officials are reportedly being executed for not listening to the regime; I would have to believe that the scene these diplomats made was ordered by the regime leadership:

A U.S.-organized event on North Korea’s human rights briefly turned into chaos at the U.N. on Thursday as North Korean diplomats insisted on reading a statement of protest, amid shouts from defectors, and then stormed out.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, tried to quiet the diplomats at the event that featured more than 20 defectors. She called North Korea’s statements “totally self-discrediting.”

The North Korean diplomats did not comment as they left the chamber after diplomat Ri Song Chol read out a statement in protest of the event, even as North Korean defectors stood and shouted in their faces.

Nuclear-armed North Korea has been on the defensive ever since a groundbreaking U.N. commission of inquiry detailed vast rights abuses there. North Korea has repeatedly referred to defectors who cooperated in the inquiry “human scum.”

Defectors stood up and shouted in Korean as Power and others called for calm and a U.N. security team assembled. An observer who speaks Korean said the shouts included “Shut up!” ”Free North Korea!” ”Down with Kim Jong Un!” and “Even animals know to wait their turn.”  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link.

It seems like if Prime Minister Abe really wanted to showcase a “New Japan” he should do more on the historical issue front, but at least he said he stood by the previous Kono Statement that offered an apology for World War II atrocities:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe drummed up support for the new Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation in his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday, and signaled a “New Japan” is ready to enter into a liberalizing trade agreement with the United States.

The prime minister’s speech, the first given by a Japanese leader before a joint session of Congress, praised the U.S.-Japan alliance for winning the Cold War and allowing Japan to grow and prosper.

But as the new defense pact goes into plan, Washington and Tokyo have agreed the U.S. military presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa will be diminished and relocated to places outside Japan.

According to Abe, Japan will provide up to $2.8 billion to help “improve” U.S. bases in Guam.

Tokyo, in turn, will expand its self-defense role in the Pacific to include deploying deterrence against potential missiles headed for U.S. territory, a historic reinterpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution…………………………….

“I will uphold the views expressed by the previous prime ministers,” Abe told the joint session of Congress, indirectly referring to the 1993 Kono Statement that acknowledged the Japanese military had forced comfort women to endure sexual slavery in brothels. [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

Here we go again with North Korean soldiers allegedly murdering Chinese civilians:

China verified three Chinese nationals were killed on Saturday, in a region bordering North Korea, as some Chinese and South Korean media outlets reported the suspects were desperate North Korean soldiers.

The victims included a 55-year-old man with the surname Zhao, his daughter, 25, and a 67-year-old man with the surname Sun, reported South Korean news agency Yonhap.

Two of the victims died immediately and one died while receiving treatment at a nearby hospital, according to locals in Jilin province.

China’s Beijing News reported three suspects wearing North Korea military uniforms entered northeastern China’s Jilin province. There, they killed the three Chinese nationals residing in a sub-district of Helong, a city with an ethnic Korean majority less than 25 miles from the North Korea border.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Hong Le said Beijing has confirmed the killings and the police were investigating, reported The New York Times.

The incident is the third of its kind in this region closest to North Korea.

Last September a North Korean civilian who crossed into China killed a family of three while attempting a robbery, and in December an armed North Korean soldier killed four Chinese citizens because he was hungry – which drew formal complaints from Beijing.

Military personnel in North Korea are given food priority but low-level soldiers go hungry, making prosperous China an easy target for desperate North Koreans.  [UPI]

You can read the rest at the link.

https://twitter.com/SouthKoreaDaily/status/593496512610607106

Members of South Korea’s emergency response team arrive at Incheon airport, west of Seoul, on April 27, 2015, before heading to Nepal to assist South Korean citizens in the earthquake-stricken country. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit two days earlier has devastated Nepal, leaving more than 2,000 people dead with some estimates putting the death toll as high as 4,500. (Yonhap)

Just when you thought things could not get any worse in Baltimore it does with CNN trying to push a narrative that US military veterans caused the riots:

In a pathetic suck-up interview with Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummins, Baldwin never once had the moral courage to ask the failed Baltimore City congressman if the left-wing policies ushered in by a half-century of a Democrat monopoly in Baltimore might have something to do with the city’s ills. Instead, she said of young military veterans who become police officers, “I love our nation’s veterans, but some of them are coming back from war, they don’t know the communities, and they are ready to do battle.”

The context was a discussion about increased training and retraining for the Baltimore police.  [Breitbart]

Does she even know how many people in the Baltimore police department are veterans?  Then those that are veterans how many have even deployed or seen combat?  You would think a news reporter would do some basic fact checking before making such a sweeping statement. Here is how she tried to initially rationalize what she said:

Folks. Please don't misunderstand me. Dear friends/family of mine are veterans. I was repeating a concern vocalized to me lately. That's it.

— Brooke Baldwin (@BrookeBaldwin) April 28, 2015

So if someone made a inappropriate sweeping statement about the rioters with no facts to substantiate it would she vocalize that as well?  Since then she has been forced to apologize on air for the remark.

What is ironic about this is that it is the military veterans in the National Guard that had to come in to restore order.