It is looking like the Kim regime is getting closer to being able to miniaturize their nuclear weapons capability to be able to fit on to a delivery system:

South Korea’s defence ministry said Tuesday that North Korea appeared to have achieved a “significant” level of technology to miniaturise a nuclear device to be fitted on the tip of a missile.

The ministry made the warning in a white paper due to be released later Tuesday, although defence officials said the nuclear-armed North has yet to demonstrate its miniaturisation capacity.

“North Korea’s capabilities of miniaturising nuclear weapons appear to have reached a significant level,” the ministry said in a statement.

Pyongyang has conducted three nuclear tests, most recently in February 2013.

The defence ministry said the North had probably secured some 40 kilos (88 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, and that it is working on a highly enriched uranium programme.

Pyongyang mothballed the five-megawatt reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord, but began renovating it in mid-2013. The facility is the country’s main source of weapons grade plutonium.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but I would have to think they would first be focusing on miniaturizing the nuclear weapon to fit on a warhead that can be delivered via artillery to threaten South Korea with. Developing nuclear warheads for an intercontinental ballistic missile to threaten the US with is a far more complicated endeavor.

Japanese gamer's Dance Dance Revolution technique stuns the world http://t.co/we1ylvSw2z pic.twitter.com/IBKs2nEGrF

— DramaFever (@dramafever) January 3, 2015

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) tours an orphanage in Pyongyang on Jan. 1, 2015. (KCNA-Yonhap)

It seems like smuggling drugs is risky enough, but to smuggle them into a country that will not hesitate to kill you just seems stupid:

China executed a South Korean national last week for smuggling and trading drugs, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Monday, following Beijing’s execution of three South Korean drug dealers five months earlier.

Despite Seoul’s repeated pleas for clemency, the Chinese authorities on Tuesday executed the South Korean national, identified only by his surname Kim, who was sentenced to death for drug smuggling and transportation in China, the ministry said.

Kim was arrested in China in May 2010 on charges of smuggling some 5 kilograms of drugs into the country and trafficking them.

A Chinese district court sentenced him to death in April 2012 and an appellate court upheld the ruling eight months later. China’s highest court also confirmed the sentence.

Seoul’s foreign ministry expressed regret over China’s execution of the South Korean national despite its repeated calls for clemency.

“The Korean government regrets that the execution took place although Seoul had requested Beijing to refrain from handing carrying it out on humanitarian grounds and the principle of reciprocity,” the foreign ministry said. “We plan to beef up cooperation with related countries to prevent Korean nationals from being involved in drug-related crime.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

This is a nice gesture by the Park administration which hopefully the Chinese government appreciates:

South Korea plans to return some 60 sets of remains of Chinese soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War to their homeland, a defense ministry official here said Monday.

In a symbolic gesture of friendship toward its former battlefield foe, South Korea pledged to repatriate the bodies to China by March during the Seoul-Beijing security talks held in Seoul earlier in the day, according to the official.

“After the repatriation last year, we’ve unearthed some 60 more bodies of the Chinese servicemembers. After taking some necessary steps, we will send them back to their home by March,” the official said, asking not to be named. “The Chinese side expressed gratitude for the decision.”

In March last year, the South Korean government returned the bodies of 437 Chinese soldiers killed on Korean soil during the war on humanitarian grounds, after President Park Geun-hye made such an offer during a 2013 summit with her Chinese counterpart.  [Yonhap]

I have to wonder if this is an attempt by competing Korean retailers to shutdown a foreign competitor?  There are plenty of shopping areas in Korea with horrible traffic:

Swedish furniture retailer IKEA faces a business suspension here because of severe traffic congestion on roads surrounding its first mall, in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi Province.

The municipal city recently demanded IKEA to come up with a “dramatic breakthrough” by Wednesday, or the mall would be shut from Jan. 15.

The mall has operated since Dec. 18 under temporary approval. Gwangmyeong officials said there were no legal problems to withdrawing approval.

“People’s frustration caused by the congestion has reached boiling point,” said an official familiar with the case. “Not only drivers but also people living or working near the outlet are affected.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but IKEA has been under attack in Korea from even before they opened their doors.

Good @Michael_NKLW summary of Kim Yong-chol, who heads North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau https://t.co/qmAJRNWWQ0

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) January 3, 2015

Shown is a file photo of the headquarters of the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. in southern Seoul. Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo said on Jan. 2, 2015, that the company will build a 105-story building on the KEPCO land as part of a global business center that incorporates its affiliates, a hotel and an auto theme park modeled after Germany’s Autostadt by 2020. Hyundai Motor Group won a bidding war against Samsung Electronics Co. last year to buy the land by offering 10.55 trillion won (US$10.14 billion). (Yonhap)

Well at least Prime Minister Abe is showing remorse for World War II instead of expanding regional anger with his administrations’ past historical revisionist statements:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday that his government would express remorse for World War II on the 70th anniversary of its end in August.

Abe is known for his nationalist views, and many analysts have speculated that he may downplay Japan’s responsibility for the war. At a year-opening news conference Monday, he sought to reassure the world that he wouldn’t veer from past official statements on Japan’s wartime responsibility.

“The Abe Cabinet will uphold the general stance on history of successive prime ministers, including the Murayama statement,” he said, referring to the 1995 apology made by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the 50th anniversary of the war’s end.

He said the government would draft a new statement “that includes Japan’s remorse for the war,” though he stopped short of saying it would apologize.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Via One Free Korea comes this Foreign Policy article where the author Micah Zenko doesn’t believe North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism:

On Friday, Dec. 19, the FBI declared that it “has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible” for the purported hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Soon after, President Barack Obama warned, “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Given the relatively meager leverage that the United States — at least unilaterally — has over North Korea, there are precious few practical response options that would deter future comparable malicious actions. According to a senior administration officials, one option under consideration is placing North Korea back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from where it was removed in 2008. Those included on the list are, “Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

A small problem with such a designation is that North Korea simply is not a state-sponsor of terrorism. As the latest State Department Country Reports on Terrorism explicitly stated: “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.” The North Korean sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March 2010 was deemed a violation of the 1953 armistice agreement, but was also declared by a State Department spokesperson to have been “a provocative action but one taken by the military or the state against the military of another state. That, in our view, does not constitute an act of international terrorism.” Thus, by putting it back on the terrorism list, North Korea would be proportionally responded to by reclassifying its government for undertaking a behavior that the United States acknowledges it does not actually do. [Foreign Policy]

You can read the rest at the link, but it is amazing how much this guy leaves out to support his position.  As One Free Korea writes there has been a number of kidnap and assassination attempts and arming of terrorist groups carried out by the Kim regime.  Also using this guy’s logic in regards to the sinking of the Cheonan, was the marine barracks bombing in Lebanon not terrorism as well then?  Or how about Khobar towers or the attack on the USS Cole?  These were all attacks against non-hostile military targets just like what happened with the Cheonan.  Zenko also leaves out the fact that North Korea shelled an island killing civilians.  What does Zenko define that as?  Most importantly North Korea has never come clean on the 1987 Korean Air bombing.  When Libya came off of the terrorism list they had to make huge concessions in regards to their responsibility for downing Pan Am Flight 103.  Why hasn’t North Korea been forced to make these same concessions to get off the list in the first place?