Donald Trump said he's willing to do what President Obama proposed in 2007, which had both parties fuming. 

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GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is a "kind of propaganda or advertisement" in the election race, a senior North Korean official said on Monday.

Trump, in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in New York last week, said he is willing to talk to the North Korean leader to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program, proposing a major shift in U.S. policy toward the isolated nation.

"It is up to the decision of my Supreme Leader whether he decides to meet or not, but I think his (Trump's) idea or talk is nonsense," So Se Pyong, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said told Reuters on return from Pyongyang after attending the first ruling party congress in 36 years.

"It's for utilization of the presidential election, that's all. A kind of a propaganda or advertisement," he added. "This is useless, just a gesture for the presidential election."

North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket in February, triggering tougher international sanctions.

So, who is also North Korea's ambassador to the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament, reiterated that his country was prepared to return to stalled six-party talks on its nuclear program. China and Russia backed the idea, but the United States and its allies South Korea and Japan reject it, he said.

"As a responsible nuclear state ... we never use them first," So said. "If the United States use their nuclear weapons first, then we have to use also that one."

But he added: "As a responsible nuclear state, we keep and observe the obligations of non-proliferation of nuclear technology". 

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

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North Korean forced laborers, in the heart of the European Union? It sounds impossible to believe.

But a VICE investigation has found extensive evidence of North Koreans working in conditions of forced labor in Poland, with their wages funding the DPRK regime.

We were able to confirm that North Koreans are employed as manual workers in multiple locations across the country with their salaries apparently traveling through a network of companies directly into the pocket of the dictatorial Workers' Party.

VICE gained access to confidential documents such as service contracts, payment records, registers of persons, passport copies, and excerpts from a population register smuggled out of North Korea, the latter indicating a Polish company may be being run by a high-ranking member of the North Korean military.

The investigation was sparked by the death of a North Korean working as a welder at a major shipyard in the Gdansk region. He suffered 95 percent burns in an accident that was only possible because of inadequate working equipment and unsafe practices, the yard's responsible work inspector Tomasz Rutkowski told us.

After obtaining a copy of the official accident report by the Polish National Labor Inspectorate (PIP), we unraveled a complex web of organized exploitation, bureaucratic chaos, official indifference, and political ignorance that extends all the way to the European Commission.

Most of all, the investigation shines a light on working conditions that appear to meet the definition for forced labor as laid out in the European Convention on Human Rights and by the International Labor Organization — labor that companies across Europe are profiting from as leader Kim Jong-un fills his coffers with foreign currency.

A document seen by VICE revealed that PIP found 14 different Polish companies using North Korean workers between 2010 and 2016.

A company known as the Korea Rungrado General Trading Corporation, which is directly owned by Kim's Workers' Party and has been implicated in the illicit shipment of Scud missile parts to Egypt, was also named in the document.

Our investigation focused on Rungrado and three Polish companies, two of which we discovered supply North Korean workers to two major shipyards which build and repair ships for clients across the European Union (EU).

PIP documents seen by VICE show two companies, Armex and Alson, owned by the same Polish businesswoman Cecylia Kowalska, supply North Korean laborers to Nauta, one of Poland's oldest shipyards, and Crist, where one worker lost his life after his clothes caught on fire last year. Nauta cites its "low labor costs" as one of the reasons it is "an ideal place for repairs of naval vessels for other NATO countries."

The PIP documents also show that between 2013 and 2016 Armex was supplied with North Korean workers by Rungrado, which a promotional brochure says is a company that trades cosmetics, clothing, and mineral water, among other things.

A comprehensive United Nations report published in February implicated Rungrado in the illicit shipment of Scud missile parts to Egypt, and it is also suspected of smuggling luxury goods into North Korea.

Rungrado also supplies North Korean laborers to Atal, a leading Polish development company specializing in luxury apartment buildings, according to the PIP information. In response to VICE's questions, an Atal spokesperson said the North Koreans did not work for the company but for a sub-contractor, JP Construct, whose general manager Mateusz Zbigniew Juroszek is the son of Atal's chairman Zbigniew Juroszek.

VICE visited one Atal construction site in the city of Wroclaw, where we saw North Koreans at work. They worked constructing the floors and the walls, the Polish man guarding the site told us. "Atal had been working with Koreans for over eight years," he said, "which certainly means we can count on them."

PIP's documents show that North Koreans were also found working in industries such as surface construction, furniture production, agriculture, metalworking, medicine, and finance.

Conversations we managed to have with North Korean shipyard workers revealed they frequently work 11 to 12 hours a day, five days a week, with shorter seven hour shifts on Saturdays. We also observed workers being brought to an Atal construction site in Warsaw on a bus at 5.52am and picked up after 7pm, then taken to living quarters inside a heavily guarded compound in an isolated rural area.

We managed to speak to one North Korean by telephone, who when asked if he and his colleagues were supervised by guards as they worked said: "Of course we are." He could tell us "nothing more than that," he said, sounding nervous. We asked if talking to us could cause him problems and he replied: "Nothing good would come of it."

We were also able to speak to workers who enjoyed a slightly greater level of freedom, as they left the Crist shipyard by bicycle to travel home in groups of three or more — but even these workers told us they were not allowed to have cellphones or to have access to cash.

"We don't receive the money personally in our hands," said one. "We let the company look after it. When I return to [North] Korea I'll get the money. If we carried cash, there's a chance that we could lose it. Anyway we don't need any money on the way to and from work. We leave it to the company, that's safest."

He was unable to tell us how much he earned per hour or per month. When asked about the name of the North Korean company that had sent him to Poland, the worker said: "That's a secret."

At their living quarters, four to five workers share a room with one bed each, another North Korean told us. As they are also required to work night shifts, there are usually two to three persons sleeping in the room at any time, he said.

We asked another if he was able to talk to Polish co-workers. "We simply don't have time. We go to work and then we go back home. That's all we do," he said.

When asked if it was true that workers were not allowed to keep wages, and their employer kept a large proportion, he said: "Unfortunately I cannot answer that question." After a pause, he added: "Let me clarify. We are working for the firm Armex. This firm, Armex, gives the money to our firm. Our firm then distributes the money to us."

Armex refused to speak to us when contacted by telephone and email — but when we turned up at the headquarters we were able to speak to Kowalska.

She categorically denied that workers were not paid directly, stating that each worker was personally paid in cash each month, and signed a receipt for that pay packet.

"We personally hand them their money every month in an envelope," she said. "Some even count the notes."

Kowalska also said claims that workers were denied freedom of movement were entirely false. "They go out, go shopping, go sightseeing," she said. Maciej Kowalski, her son and an Armex board member, said North Koreans socialized with Polish colleagues, despite the language barrier. "They drink beers with Poles, go out for pizza," he said. "The shipyard told us this information."

Both VICE's observations and previous in-depth reports suggest if Armex's claims were true, their workers' situation would be highly unusual.

According to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, workers abroad are deprived of the majority of their wages, which are paid in foreign currency direct to the DPRK, serving as a method of bypassing UN sanctions. "Laborers are rarely allowed to leave work sites or to come into contact with locals throughout their periods of forced labor.

Access to media is denied, communication with family members in North Korea is limited, and ideological indoctrination lessons are more pervasive than those conducted in the DPRK," it said in a report published last September which was based on interviews with defectors.

The UN estimated in a report last year there are about 50,000 North Koreans abroad, earning the Kim regime $1.2billion to $2.3bn per year. The workers are paid very little, with their employers paying "significantly higher amounts" directly to the North Korean government, said special rapporteur Marzuki Darusman.

Research indicates workers are mostly from Pyongyang, and must be loyal to the regime, and married — allowing the threat of consequences for family members to act as leverage to ensure good behavior.

They are allowed a 40-day vacation back home after two years work, after which they work abroad for another three years. One worker we spoke to said he had been in Poland for five years.

Remco Breuker, a professor of Korean Studies at Holland's Leiden University who chairs a working group of experts to research North Korean forced laborers in the EU, puts the situation bluntly: "In my view, North Korea is the world's largest illegal job agency. They send people where they're needed to whoever wants to pay. There is no real North Korean state — there is North Korea or Pyongyang Incorporated. It's a company. It does everything to make sure the CEO and his director stay in power and that they make as much money as they can."

VICE also learned that the businesswoman Kowalska, who runs Armex and Alson, also co-founded a Polish company Wonye — Korean for "horticulture"— with two North Korean men in 2015.

According to Kowalska, this business is inactive. But when VICE traveled to the Polish address at which one of the North Korean founders is registered, we discovered it was a gas station 15 miles south of Warsaw situated close to a large tomato-growing warehouse where locals said North Koreans worked.

This North Korean founder's name is Kang Hong-gu, according to the company registration. There was only one person by this name registered in Pyongyang in a population register for 2004 obtained by VICE, and he had the same birth year as that listed for the Kang Hong-gu in the Polish company registration documents.

According to information in the Pyongyang population register, Kang served as a brigade commander in the North Korean military as recently as 2004.

The Polish Department of Labor was unable to tell VICE how many North Korean laborers are currently in Poland, nor why no action was being taken regarding the credible evidence that they were working under illegal conditions.

All it was able to supply was information for the number of work permits regional authorities throughout the country had issued for North Korean workers between 2010 and 2015: a total of 1,972.

It said during the last seven years there had been 377 inspections of North Koreans' work status in Poland — 77 of these found instances of irregular employment, meaning workers did not have the required permits.

Its inspections also found violations of labor rights including workers being deceived about the conditions of their employment and being denied the right to take vacations or rest between shifts.

The International Labour Organization defines forced labor as "situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle means such as accumulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities."

The deputy director of Poland's government agency responsible for foreign workers in the Warsaw region, Jacqueline Sánchez-Pyrc, was clear. "Without doubt, there are signs of [forced labor]," she said. "And we are not the only ones getting these signs."

But she told us it was not an issue for which her agency was responsible. "All we can do is report such things to lawmakers, right?" she said. "To request that they work on a solution to clean up the situation."

Sánchez-Pyrc was unable to tell us why work permits continued to be issued to North Koreans despite evidence of forced labor; she was also unable to tell us how many permits her department had issued, as the database currently in use records both North and South Koreans simply as "Koreans."

In an interview with the Polish edition of Newsweek in November last year, the country's border police described the situation as follows: "[The North Korean laborers] are an isolated group that doesn't take advantage of their right to move freely within our country, and all activities... could only be undertaken... in the presence of an appointed representative who permanently resides in Poland and who acts as a minder."

A spokesperson from Poland's immigration authority told VICE that asylum was granted to a North Korean who fled while working in Poland in 2015, but provided no further details.

Kim Seung-cheol escaped during a work assignment in Russia in 1999, though sources who spoke to VICE upon condition of anonymity claimed no more than 50 out of every 50,000 North Koreans who work abroad successfully flee. According to Kim, the secret police visit the families of disobedient workers and he told VICE that his son and mother were deported and then died shortly after he fled his employment. "My whole family was destroyed," he said.

Breuker is clear the North Koreans are working under duress. "It's definitely forced labor as far as I can tell. Whether these people can be considered slaves, that's a difficult question to answer — I would probably say they come very close to being slaves," he said. "You can't really speak of voluntary labor.

Everybody wants to go out of North Korea. How much worse can things be outside of the country? In my mind, there is no voluntary action involved there. You try to survive and you sign up to go abroad."

In January 2015, Dutch member of the European Parliament (MEP) Kati Piri asked the European Commission if it was aware of any agreements between a EU member state and North Korea that included the leasing of laborers, and if it had taken steps to improve the situation of North Korean forced laborers in Europe.

The commission replied that North Koreans were working in the EU and subject to the laws of their respective country of residence; forced labor is prohibited in all EU member states, it pointed out.

Eight months later Piri asked the EU Commission if it had data on the EU companies hiring North Koreans, of which there were 800 in Poland according to Piri's information. The response was sobering: "The commission holds no records on companies in the EU employing third-country nationals."

Not only is the commission apparently turning a blind eye to the reality of North Korean labor in the EU, it is also providing financial assistance to companies benefiting from it.

Research by Leiden University has found that between 2010 and 2015 the Crist and Nauta shipyards have received more than 70 million euros ($79.2 million) in loans or subsidies originating from the European Regional Development Fund — some of which has been investigated by the commission for being given unlawfully.

Thomas Händel, a German MEP who is chair of the EU Parliamentary Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and a member of the EU delegation for relations with the countries of Southeast Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said if what VICE had established was correct, the commission must investigate.

"It shouldn't actually be possible. We have clear UN and ILO conventions against slavery, which have, to my knowledge, also been ratified by Poland," he said. "In which case, it would be absolutely scandalous for an EU member state to behave in this way."

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SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean missile launch attempt early on Tuesday morning appears to have failed, a South Korean military official told Reuters. 

The launch attempt took place at around 5:20 a.m. Seoul time (2020 GMT), said the official, who asked not to be identified, without elaborating.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said the attempted launch appeared to have been of an intermediate-range Musudan missile.

Japan put its military alert on Monday for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch, state broadcaster NHK reported.

(Writing by Se Young Lee; Editing by Paul Tait)

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The United States on Wednesday declared North Korea a "primary money laundering concern," and moved to further block its ability to use the U.S. and world financial systems to fund its weapons programs.

The U.S. Treasury Department called for a prohibition on certain U.S. financial institutions opening or maintaining correspondent accounts, which are established to receive deposits from or make payments on behalf of a foreign institution, with North Korean financial institutions.

Crucially, Treasury also prohibited the use of third parties' U.S. correspondent accounts to process transactions for North Korean financial institutions.

The announcement came days after the latest failed missile launch by the isolated state. Tensions in the region have been high since January when North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test and then followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.

Those efforts have all fueled calls in Washington, and abroad, for a clampdown on Pyongyang.

U.S. law already generally prohibited U.S. financial institutions from engaging in transactions with North Korean institutions, but Treasury's latest actions would impose additional controls, especially the prohibitions on the use of third-country banks' U.S. accounts to process transactions for North Korea.

"This is meaningful," said Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is designating the entire country, which means essentially that any entity that is interested in interacting with U.S. financial institutions should no longer have any business with North Korea,"

"Most, if not all, entities, if faced with the choice of having access to the U.S. financial system or doing business with North Korea, are going to make the obvious choice," Cha added.

Adam Szubin, acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Washington expected other governments and financial authorities to make similar moves to prevent Pyongyang from "abusing" global financial institutions to support its development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.

"The regime is notoriously deceitful in its financial transactions in order to continue its illicit weapons programs and other destabilizing activities," Szubin said in a statement.

The Treasury was required to assess North Korea's status as a money laundering jurisdiction under the "North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act," passed nearly unanimously by the U.S. Congress in February.

A U.N. Security Council resolution in early March also required member states to sever correspondent banking relationships with North Korean financial institutions within 90 days.

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North Korea appears to have reopened a plant to produce plutonium from spent fuel of a reactor central to its atomic weapons drive, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday, suggesting the country's arms effort is widening.

Pyongyang vowed in 2013 to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main reactor at its Yongbyon site that had been shut down and has been at the heart of its weapons program.

It said in September that Yongbyon was operating and that it was working to improve the "quality and quantity" of its nuclear weapons. It has since carried out what is widely believed to have been a nuclear test.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has no access to North Korea and mainly monitors its activities by satellite, said last year it had seen signs of a resumption of activity at Yongbyon, including at the main reactor.

"Resumption of the activities of the 5 megawatt reactor, the expansion of centrifuge-related facility, reprocessing, these are some of the examples of the areas (of activity indicated at Yongbyon)," IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told a news conference during a quarterly IAEA Board of Governors meeting.

Centrifuges are machines that enrich uranium, a process that can purify the element to the level needed for use in the core of a nuclear weapon. Reprocessing involves obtaining plutonium from spent reactor fuel, the other main route to a bomb.

"There are indications the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon has been reactivated," an IAEA spokesman said later on Monday. "It is possible that it is reprocessing spent fuel." 

Little is known about the quantities of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium that North Korea possesses, or its ability to produce either, though plutonium from spent fuel at Yongbyon is widely believed to have been used in its nuclear bombs.

North Korea has come under tightening international pressure over its nuclear weapons program, including tougher U.N. sanctions adopted in March backed by its lone major ally China, following its most recent nuclear test in January.

The website 38 North reported in April that exhaust plumes had been detected on two or three occasions in recent weeks from the thermal plant at Yongbyon's Radiochemical Laboratory, the site's main reprocessing installation.

The U.S. national intelligence director said in February that North Korea could be weeks away from recovering plutonium from Yongbyon, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had also expanded its uranium enrichment facility there.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

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NOW WATCH: Experts are skeptical of North Korea’s recent hydrogen bomb announcement

North Korea's nuclear capabilities and ambitions often make headlines, but recently the country has focused more on building national strength in more conventional, yet equally threatening ways.

Last month, for the first time in decades, North Korea opened its doors to outsiders for the North Korea Workers Party Congress.

At this Congress, the idea of Kim Jong Un's "byungjin," or a two-sided push toward economic and nuclear development, was discussed.

As Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, explained: “Lots of people say that if they have a nuclear deterrent, they won’t need conventional weapons ... But under the Kim Jong Un era, there has been a big increase in spending on the economic and conventional military side,” The Washington Post notes.

Using satellite imagery, one of the few windows into the secretive nation, Melvin claims to have spotted construction indicating that a railway was coming to the Korean People’s Army naval base and the shipyard at Wonsan.

According to North Korean media, Kim Jung Un has commented that the naval base would be useful for bolstering the economy.

As it stands now, the hermit kingdom already possesses a fearsome array of artillery installations across the DMZ just 30 or so miles from Seoul.

Against these low-tech weapons, advanced defenses like the Patriot missile-defense system and possible deployment of the THAAD system meant to guard against ballistic missiles are of little use.

Additionally, there is reason to believe that Kim Jung Un has had some success in revitalizing the military by instituting new military leadership after a rash of executions removed some of the old brass.

Joseph S. Bermudez, an expert on North Korea’s military, told The Washington Post: “I get a sense that when Kim Jong Un came to power, he looked around and said, ‘We have all these old guys running things who haven’t been in the field for 15 or 20 years. We need people who know what they’re talking about.’”

“Before, you had leaders of special forces who couldn’t run a mile. Now, we see artillery division commanders that actually have an artillery background,” Bermudez continued.

The North Korean dictatorship claims to have a military that is 1.2 million people strong with an "unlimited reach" from government to conscript citizens into service.

The threat from North Korea's conventional forces and nuclear forces has triggered nations around the world to tighten sanctions against the rogue nation and the US to engage in vigorous military exercises with South Korea, should the need for decisive action arise.

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Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would welcome North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to the US for negotiations if he were elected president.

Speaking to supporters at a rally in Atlanta, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that while he would not meet with the dictator in North Korea, Trump would host Kim for talks in the US, albeit without the fanfare of a traditional meeting.

"If he came here, I would accept him," Trump said.

"But I wouldn't give him a state dinner like China or all these other nations who are ripping us off."

Trump first floated the meeting in an interview with Reuters in May, saying that he would "absolutely" meet with the leader of North Korea.

The real-estate mogul doubled down on the claim on Wednesday, suggesting that it could help end the "little fits" the North Korea dictator was subject to over perceived military aggression from adversaries.

"Who the hell cares? I'll speak to anybody," Trump said on Wednesday. "There's a 10% or 20% chance I could talk him out of having his damn nukes, because who the hell wants him to have nukes?"

The former reality-TV star has repeatedly claimed that the US should renegotiate defense treaties with Japan and South Korea, which allow the US to maintain bases in their territories in exchange for protection in the event that either country is attacked. Trump has also advocated for China to assert pressure on North Korea to back off its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"It's something I've been talking about for a long time. You have this madman over there who probably would use [nuclear weapons]," Trump said of the North Korean dictator during an interview in January.

"And nobody talks to him, other than, of course, Dennis Rodman. That's about it."

North Korea was not so keen on Trump's proposed meeting.

A North Korean senior state official told Reuters that it was "nonsense."

"It's for utilization of the presidential election, that's all. A kind of a propaganda or advertisement," said So Se Pyong, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations. "This is useless, just a gesture for the presidential election."

For her part, Hillary Clinton criticized Trump's suggestions as naive.

In a broad national security speech last week, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said that Trump's insistence that other nations pay the US more for protections ignored America's national security interests.

"It’s no small thing when he suggests that America should withdraw our military support for Japan, encourage them to get nuclear weapons, and he said this about a war between Japan and North Korea — and I quote — 'If they do, they do. Good luck, enjoy yourself, folks,'"Clinton said.

"I wonder if he even realizes he’s talking about nuclear war."

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea launched what appeared to be a second intermediate-range Musudan missile on Wednesday that flew about 400 km (250 miles), in what appeared to be its most effective test yet, hours after another launch failed, South Korea's military said.

It was not immediately clear if the second Musudan launch, about two hours after the first, was considered a success or failure, or how the flight ended.

However, the distance it covered was theoretically more than halfway towards the southwest coast of Japan's main Honshu island.

The first missile was launched from the east coast city of Wonsan, a South Korean official said, the same area where previous tests of intermediate-range missiles were conducted, possibly using mobile launchers.

Yonhap, quoting a government official, said it disintegrated mid-air after a flight of about 150 km (95 miles).

The launches were in continued defiance of international warnings and a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the North from using ballistic missile technology, which Pyongyang rejects as an infringement of its sovereignty.

Wednesday's first launch would have been the fifth straight unsuccessful attempt in the past two months to launch a missile that is designed to fly more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles) and could theoretically reach any part of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam.

However, Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said failures were a normal part of testing and that North Korea would fix the problems with the Musudan sooner or later.

"If North Korea continues testing, eventually its missileers will use the same technology in a missile that can threaten the United States," Lewis told Reuters.

Serious provocation

Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea's repeated missile launches were a "serious provocation" and could not be tolerated.

He said further provocative action from Pyongyang could not be ruled out, and suggested the twin launches could have been timed to coincide with the 66th anniversary of the start of the Korean War in 1950.

Japan had indicated after the first launch that it would protest strongly because it violated a United Nations resolution. While the launches posed no threat to Japanese security, Nakatani also said repeated failures indicated possible problems with the missiles' engines.

In Seoul, South Korea's presidential office said a national security meeting would be convened later on Wednesday morning to discuss the latest missile launches.

The U.S. military detected the two missiles, most likely Musudan, from North Korea, the U.S. military's Pacific Command said. A Pentagon spokesman said the missiles both fell into the Sea of Japan.

Japan put its military on alert on Tuesday for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch. South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, citing an unidentified government source, said the North had been seen moving an intermediate-range missile to its east coast.

North Korea is believed to have up to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed around 2007, although the North had never attempted to test-fire them until April.

The U.N. Security Council, backed by the North's main diplomatic ally, China, imposed tough new sanctions in March after the isolated state conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket that put an object into space orbit.

North Korea has conducted a series of tests since then that it claimed showed progress in nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile capabilities, including new rocket engines and simulated atmospheric re-entry.

The two Koreas technically remain in a state of war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said North Korea should channel its efforts into the welfare of its people and peace on the Korean peninsula rather than developing its missile technology.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in WASHINGTON and Linda Sieg and Nobuhiro Kubo in TOKYO; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)

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North Korea's parliament awarded Kim Jong Un a new post on Wednesday, adding to a long list of titles for the young leader.

The North's state television said Kim was made chairman of the state affairs committee, a body that appears to be newly formed and whose function was not immediately clear.

He also has the titles of the Dear Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, First Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army.

Kim, believed to be in his early 30s, attended the assembly meeting on Wednesday. He also holds the rank of marshal in the North Korean military, and is more usually referred to "our marshal" in propaganda and common parlance.

The parliament meets once or twice a year to formally approve budgets or policies set out by the ruling Workers' Party. It also has the authority to grant Kim new titles or positions within North Korea's opaque leadership structure.

The meeting was called to implement policy aims stated in a rare Workers' Party congress in May, during which Kim Jong Un announced a five-year economic plan.

On June 22, North Korea launched two Musudan intermediate-range missiles, drawing strong condemnation from South Korea, Japan and the United States for infringing UN sanctions designed to stop Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development programs.

North Korea referred to the missile as a "Hwasong-10" and said the test did not put the security of neighboring countries at risk.

(Reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. State Department report said on Wednesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was subject to U.S. sanctions over human rights violations.

"The Government of (North Korea) continues to commit serious human rights abuses including extra judicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, forced labor and torture," according to the report sent to members of Congress, which was seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

The report listed those responsible for the commission of serious human rights abuses and censorship in North Korea, in a list topped by the North Korean leader.

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: 'If he came here, I'd accept him'

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US officials closely monitor North Korea's activities, so it might come as a surprise that we've been missing some basic information on its leader, Kim Jong Un.

But it wasn't until yesterday that the US Treasury Department, after placing sanctions on Kim, officially identified his date of birth as January 8, 1984.

So he's 32 years old.

In doing so, the Treasury Department added his information into its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list — a compilation of individuals and companies owned or controlled by targeted countries. After being added, the individual's assets would be blocked, and US citizens would be prohibited from dealing with them.

The hermit kingdom is notoriously opaque, and until now, the public didn't know for sure what year Kim was born. CNN noted last year that North Korean state media hasn't ever acknowledged Kim's exact date of birth.

Some experts have speculated that he was born in 1982, while others have suggested it was 1983.

Kim's youth could be a reason behind the enigma.

"It could be because he is a young leader," Cheong Seong-chang, a senior research fellow at South Korean think tank the Sejong Institute, told CNN. "Being young could have its advantage and disadvantage."

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On Wednesday, the US for the first time sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for "notorious abuses of human rights," a decision that prompted the hermit kingdom to call the sanctions a "declaration of war."

The sanctions affect 10 other individuals besides the North Korean leader, five government ministries and departments, and property within US jurisdiction, according to the US Treasury Department statement.

"Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture," Adam J. Szubin, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence said in a statement.

"Considering the sanctions name Kim Jong Un, the reaction from Pyongyang will be epic," Michael Madden an expert on North Korean leadership told Reuters. "There will be numerous official and state media denunciations, which will target the U.S. and Seoul, and the wording will be vituperative and blistering."

Here's some of the offenses outlined in the US Treasury Department statement:

The Ministry of State Security engages in torture and inhumane treatment of detainees during interrogation and in detention centers. This inhumane treatment includes beatings, forced starvation, sexual assault, forced abortions, and infanticide.

According to the State Department report, the ministry is the lead agency investigating political crimes and administering the country’s network of political prison camps, which hold an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people, including children and other family members of the accused. In addition, the Ministry of State Security’s Prisons Bureau is responsible for the management and control of political prisoners and their confinement facilities throughout North Korea. 

The Ministry of People’s Security operates a network of police stations and interrogation detention centers, including labor camps, throughout North Korea. During interrogations, suspects are systematically degraded, intimidated, and tortured. 

The Ministry of People’s Security’s Correctional Bureau supervises labor camps (kyohwaso) and other detention facilities, where human rights abuses occur such as those involving torture, execution, rape, starvation, forced labor, and lack of medical care. The State Department report cites defectors who have regularly reported that the ministry uses torture and other forms of abuse to extract confessions, including techniques involving sexual violence, hanging individuals from the ceiling for extended periods of time, prolonged periods of exposure, and severe beatings.  

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry called on China to urge North Korea to cooperate on human rights standards.

"China's engagement is critical," Kerry said during a news conference while visiting Kiev. Kerry also added that the US is "ready and prepared" to return to discussions of North Korea abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

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North Korea fired a ballistic missile from a submarine on Saturday but it appears to have failed soon after launch, South Korea's military said.

The launch comes at the end of a week of sharply rising tensions on the peninsula. It is only a day after the U.S. and South Korea pledged to deploy an advanced anti-missile system to counter threats from Pyongyang, and two days after North Korea warned it was planning its toughest response to what it deemed a "declaration of war" by the United States.

That followed Washington's blacklisting of the isolated state's leader Kim Jong Un for alleged human rights abuses.

The South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile was launched at about 11:30 a.m. Seoul time (0230 GMT) in waters east of the Korean peninsula.

The missile was likely fired from a submarine as planned but appears to have failed in the early stage of flight, the Joint Chiefs said.

Neighboring Japan, the United States, and South Korea's military condemned the missile launch as a flagrant violation of U.N. sanctions.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the missile's engine successfully ignited but the projectile soon exploded in mid-air at a height of about 10 km (6 miles), and covered not more than a few kilometers across the water.

The South's military declined to confirm those details citing its policy of not publicly commenting on intelligence matters.

The missile was detected in the sea southeast of the North Korean city of Sinpo, South Korea's military said. Satellite images indicate Pyongyang is actively trying to develop its submarine-launched ballistic missile program in this area, according to experts.

The U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission is to detect and prevent strategic attacks against the United States and its allies, said it had detected what it believed was a KN-11 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).

It was fired from North Korea's east coast port of Sinpo and then fell into the sea between there and Japan, the command said in a statement.

ABE CONDEMNS

Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the Japan, South Korea and the South's main ally, the United States.

The missile launch is a "clear challenge to U.N. Security Council resolutions," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Saturday, according to Kyodo news agency.

"We should strongly condemn the launch by working with the international community," Abe told reporters.

Abe said the launch did not gravely affect Japan's national security.

The U.S. said it was monitoring and assessing the situation in close coordination with its regional allies and partners.

"We strongly condemn North Korea's missile test in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, which explicitly prohibit North Korea's use of ballistic missile technology," said Gabrielle Price, spokeswoman for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

"These actions, and North Korea's continued pursuit of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities, pose a significant threat to the United States, our allies, and to the stability of the greater Asia-Pacific," she added.

The North has conducted a string of military tests that began in January with its fourth nuclear test and included the launch of a long-range rocket the following month.

The U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country in March for its nuclear test and rocket launch.

North Korea rejects the sanctions as infringement of its sovereignty and its right to space exploration.

Late last month, North Korea launched what appeared to be an intermediate-range missile to a high altitude before it plunged into the sea after covering 400 km in the direction of Japan, SouthKorean military officials said. That was widely seen as a technological advance for the isolated state after several test failures.

South Korea and the United States said on Friday they would deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system with the U.S. military in South Korea to counter the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea, drawing a sharp and swift protest from neighboring China, Pyongyang's sole major ally.

China's foreign minister said on Saturday that THAAD exceeded the security needs of the Korean peninsula. "We have every reason, and the right, to question the real conspiracy behind this move," Wang Yi was quoted by the state news agency Xinhua as saying during a trip to Sri Lanka.

Pyongyang last conducted a test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in April, calling it a "great success" that provided "one more means for powerful nuclear attack," although it had not had a successful SLBM test flight.

A report on 38 North, a website run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., said in May that North Korea’s submarine-launched ballistic missile program is making progress, but it was unlikely to become operational before 2020.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Warsaw, U.S. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, the top NATO commander and former commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, said he worried about North Korea's potential to hit the continental United States with a ballistic missile.

"Kim Jong Un and his regime continue to test and work on their ballistic missile capability, and with every launch they're getting better and they're working out their problems," Scaparrotti said. "It's a serious threat."

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in SEOUL, Taiga Uranaka in TOKYO, John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI; Editing by Ed Davies and Martin Howell)

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North Korea is allowing Chinese tourists to visit without a passport on half-day tours, Chinese state media reported on Monday, as the isolated country seeks more sources of foreign currency after a recent wave of international sanctions.

The passport-free visits, which began on Saturday, allows Chinese tourists to travel from the border city of Dandong to the North Korean city of Sinuju, within a "designated zone" of 30,000 square meters (7.4 acres), the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

The tourists must travel on a particular tourism package.

Visitors pay 350 yuan ($52) for the trip. The manager of the Chinese tour company arranging the trips told Xinhua the zone would grow to 130,000 square meters in the future to accommodate more tourists.

About 10,000 Chinese tourists to North Korea from Dandong every day during peak times, Xinhua said.

China is North Korea's sole major ally and most important trading partner but China disapproves of its banned nuclear weapons program.

China backed international sanctions targeting the North this year after it conducted its fourth nuclear test.

But last week, China criticized a decision by the United States to blacklist North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses.

International experts believe sanctions, which have targeted North Korea's banking sector as well as its shipping and trade in natural resources, have made it tougher for the North to earn foreign currency. 

(Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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North Korea said on Monday it has told the United States it will sever the only channel of communication between them, at the United Nations in New York, after Washington blacklisted leader Kim Jong Un last week for human rights abuses.

All matters related to the United States, including the handling of American citizens detained by Pyongyang, will be conducted under its "wartime law," the North's official KCNA news agency said.

The move is the latest escalation of tension with the isolated country, which earlier on Monday threatened a "physical response" after the United States and South Korea said they would deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea.

"As the United States will not accept our demand for the immediate withdrawal of the sanctions measure, we will be taking corresponding actions in steps," KCNA said.

"As the first step, we have notified that the New York contact channel that has been the only existing channel of contact will be completely severed," it said.

"The Republic will handle all matters arising between us and the United States from now on under our wartime laws, and the matters of Americans detained are no exception to this."

It was not clear how "wartime laws" would affect the handling of the two Americans detained. But North Korea has indicated in the past that wartime laws would mean that detainees will not be released on humanitarian grounds.

The North and the United States remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Washington sided with the South, ended only with a truce.

The two Americans known to be detained in North Korea include Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan, according to North Korean state media. The other, Korean-American Kim Dong Chul, is serving a 10 year sentence for espionage, state media said.

A University of Virginia spokesman said the university remains in touch with Warmbier's family but did not have additional comment.

The so-called New York channel has been an intermittent point of contact between the North and the United States, which do not have diplomatic ties, to exchange messages and, less frequently, hold discussions.

North Korea said last week it was planning its toughest response to what it deemed a "declaration of war" by the United States after Washington sanctioned Kim.

On Saturday, the North test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, but it appeared to have failed after launch.

ESCALATING TENSION

The United States and South Korea said on Friday that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system will be used to counter North Korea's growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

The announcement was the latest move by the allies against the North, which conducted its fourth nuclear test this year and launched a long-range rocket, resulting in tough new U.N. sanctions.

"There will be physical response measures from us as soon as the location and time that the invasionary tool for U.S. world supremacy, THAAD, will be brought into South Korea are confirmed," the North's military said early on Monday.

"It is the unwavering will of our army to deal a ruthless retaliatory strike and turn (the South) into a sea of fire and a pile of ashes the moment we have an order to carry it out," the statement carried by KCNA said.

The North frequently threatens to attack the South and U.S. interests in Asia and the Pacific.

South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun warned the North not to take "rash and foolish action". Otherwise, he said, it would face "decisive and strong punishment from our military."

The move to deploy the THAAD system also drew a swift and sharp protest from China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday that THAAD exceeded the security needs of the Korean peninsula, and suggested there was a "conspiracy behind this move."

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday the THAAD system was not intended to target any third country but was purely aimed at countering the threat from the North, in an apparent message to Beijing.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official said selection of a site for THAAD could come "within weeks," and the allies were working to have it operational by the end of 2017.

It will be used by U.S. Forces Korea "to protect alliance military forces," the South and the United States said on Friday. The United States maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Tony Munroe)

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Yeonmi Park, 22, is in the rare position of being able to contrast Western societies with the secretive, authoritarian state of North Korea.

Park, who grew up in the North Korean city of Hyesan, told Business Insider that her childhood was dominated by hunger pangs — especially when she was 9 and her father was imprisoned after being accused of trading goods on the black market.

In 2007, at age 13, Park fled with her mother to China, travelling through mountains and across a frozen river. At the Chinese border, the men they bribed with money turned out to be gangsters. The men, who ran prostitution rings, trafficked them around northern China, according to The Guardian.

Eventually the mother and daughter took a chance to escape to South Korea through the Gobi desert. In South Korea, Park studied Criminal Justice at Dongguk University. She has since become a prominent defector, speaking at various international summits, including the UN Human Rights session on North Korea.

This spring, Park moved from South Korea to New York City, where she studies economics at Columbia University. We caught up with Park to find out how she is finding life in the US.

Park said the contrast between the US and her home country was vast. "I feel like I'm living in a different universe and I can see both sides," she told Business Insider.

"Americans are great people," she said, adding that she did miss one thing about North Korea.

"What I miss about North Korea is the human connection you get," Park said. "We didn't have text messages. I'm so grateful that I learned how to connect with someone without a phone, without text messages."

In the US, Park said, this real-life connection is lacking. "We have every tool to love someone and love ourselves, but somehow we are so disconnected," she said.

"When I call people here, they are like: 'Why are you calling me? Just text me.' I say: 'I want to hear your voice.' I think that's the irony I feel in this place," she added.

Park said she was much happier in the US than she had been in North Korea. But she said she had trouble understanding people's problems in Western society when comparing them with those of her family back home.

"This is a great world, and I can't ask for more," Park said. "This is a beautiful world and we have everything, but somehow I see that people are confused, and for me there's no reason for us to be confused or not satisfied."

• SEE: Rare photos from inside North Korea's mysterious buildings

Studying at Columbia University is 'hard, very hard'

You might expect everything to be easy after fleeing a brutal leader, spending two years in the control of human traffickers, and having to learn an entirely new culture, language, and worldview. But Park has acknowledged that she is finding the range of compulsory classes at Columbia a real struggle.

"It's hard — it's very hard," she said. "I'm taking calculus class, and I've never seen a supply-and-demand graph until this moment. Education is hard, learning is painful sometimes."

"At Columbia, everybody already studied math at high school and middle school, but I never did math," she said.

In North Korea, Park left school and starting working at the local farm at just 9 years old.

But the challenge of education is worth it, she said, adding that books have helped to change her life.

She credits George Orwell's "1984" with illustrating how the North Korean state controlled her own psychology.

'For most people, North Korea is about Kim Jong Un's haircut'

Initially, Park said that when she gained freedom and independence, she found it "a struggle" to know what to do with herself. She said it felt strange to be "the master of [her] own life."

Now that Park has found her voice, though, she feels it is her duty to use it.

"It was very hard for me to get this voice and freedom," Park said. "Every day I feel so powerful, so empowered."

Park wants to use her platform to explain the gravity of the situation in North Korea.

"For most people, North Korea is about Kim Jong Un's haircut and nothing more than that," Park said.

"It is crucial for the rest of the world to know what is happening to the country and know what is happening to average people," she said, "and what they have to do to be free."

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WASHINGTON— The South Korean defense ministry revealed that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile-defense system will be deployed to Seongju, in the southeastern part of the country.

The ministry said in a statement:

"By operating the US THAAD battery in Seongju, we will be able to better protect one half to two-thirds of our citizens from North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

"It will dramatically strengthen the military capabilities and readiness to defend critical national infrastructure such as nuclear power plants and oil storage facilities, as well as the military forces of the South Korea-US alliance."

Meanwhile, North Korea's military threatened to retaliate with a "physical response" once the location of THAAD was decided.

South Korea's defense ministry, in conjunction with the US, plans to have the unique air-defense system operational by the end of 2017. Earlier this month, the Pentagon agreed to equip South Korea with the advanced missile system.

The pressure to deploy THAAD began after North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on January 6 and then launched a long-range rocket on February 7.

"Oh, it's going to happen. It's a necessary thing," US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said during a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in April. "We need to defend our own people. We need to defend our own allies. And we're going to do that."

There are five THAAD batteries — each of about 100 soldiers — assigned to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. One of those batteries was deployed to Guam in April 2013 in order to deter North Korean provocations and further defend the Pacific region.

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NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: America’s answer to North Korean threats