A South Korean left-wing activist was arrested Thursday for an unauthorized visit to North Korea, a South Korean national police official said.  Paula Hancocks meets a South Korean man who moved his family to North Korea and now bitterly regrets the decision.  North Korea called a joint military drill among U.S., South Korea and Japan "reckless military provocations" that could lead to "nuclear war" as the allies started their operations Thursday amid tensions in the region.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that North Korea's new leader, Kim Jung Un, "has a choice to make" -- become a "transformative leader" or continue the Communist nation's existing policies, which she predicted would lead to its demise.  Paula Hancocks explains Kim Jong Un's address to North Korea signals a departure in leadership style but not in policy.  Oh Kil-nam refuses to keep a single photo of his family in his home. He says it's just too painful.  North Korea proclaimed itself a "nuclear state" this week following a revision of its constitution earlier this year.  Analysis of satellite images indicate North Korea may be preparing for another nuclear test. Paula Hancocks reports.  Watching the public execution of his mother and older brother, Shin Dong-Hyuk thought the punishment was just. They had planned to escape the North Korean labor camp they were being held in until Shin overheard them and reported them to the prison guards.  North Korea is facing possibly its worst drought in 50 years, state media reported this week.  China warns North Korea. What will the North's next nuclear test reveal? CNN's Chris Lawrence reports.  The top U.S. envoy for North Korea warned Pyongyang Monday against a possible third nuclear test.  North Korea has resumed work on the construction of a reactor that could help it push forward its nuclear weapons program, according to an academic group's analysis of a recent satellite image.  After weeks of military analysts examining the latest North Korean rocket before and after its failed launch, the focus now has turned to a truck.  CNN's Stan Grant attends celebrations in Pyongyang, where the new leader gives his first public speech.  CNN's Stan Grant reports from North Korea on the reaction from government leaders on the failed rocket launch.  North Korea says its scientists have concluded their investigation into the failure of the country's long-range rocket launch last week, but it declined to divulge why the flight ended in a trail of debris strewn across the sea.  While tensions remain high between the United States and North Korea, the relationship is more cordial between their scientists.  North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un spoke before hundreds of troops and others in Pyongyang on Sunday as part of a massive, orchestrated celebration marking 100 years since the birth of the nation's founder, his grandfather.  CNN's Stan Grant views the bleak North Korean landscape from a train, after so many years reporting from the outside.  The United Nations has condemned North Korea's attempt to launch a long-range missile.  It was meant to be a show-stopping display of military might, a rocket poised to enter orbit to celebrate 100 years since the birth of the man who founded North Korea.  Paula Hancocks reports on what the possible fallout could be for South Korea after North Korea's failed rocket launch.  Former NASA engineer Homer Hickam explains how North Korea's rocket works and likely reasons why it failed.  CNN's Barbara Starr reports on what North Korea's rocket launch will show the U.S. about its capabilities.  It really doesn't look like much, this mission control.  As the window opened for North Korea's latest rocket launch opened Thursday morning, the nation's neighbors were watching developments at the remote base nervously.  CNN's Stan Grant reports North Korean officials insist the country's planned rocket launch is for a satellite.  North Korea said the assembly of a rocket it plans to launch in the coming days should be completed Tuesday, setting the stage for a move that has been widely criticized by other nations.  Japan readies its missile defense as North Korea prepares to launch a rocket. CNN's Kyung Lah reports.  All eyes this week are on North Korea, which looks set to move forward with a provocative long-range missile launch.  In the next week North Korea will launch a satellite to coincide with the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung, the late "Great Leader," and the man perhaps most responsible for the reclusive state's status as the world's most irresponsible country.  North Korea is planning a new nuclear test in the area where it staged previous atomic blasts, according to a report from South Korean intelligence officials obtained by CNN.  As North Korea presses forward with a controversial rocket launch, journalists were granted a rare glimpse Sunday of the reclusive country's preparations.  Shin Dong-hyuk is the only known person born in a North Korean prison camp that escaped and survived to tell the tale.  North Korea said Monday that a special conference of its ruling Workers' Party would take place next week, an event expected to solidify the authority of its new leader ahead of a controversial rocket launch.  Pyongyang is not on the agenda of Seoul's nuclear summit, but its ears must still be burning. Paula Hancocks reports.  Japan will shoot down any part of the long-range rocket that North Korea plans to launch next month that enters its territory, the Japanese defense minister, Naoki Tanaka, said Friday.  CNN's Barbara Starr reports a new satellite image shows activity on a North Korean missile launch pad.  Just hours after the United States warned that North Korea would achieve nothing with threats or provocations, Pyongyang moved a long-range rocket it plans to test fire to a launch pad Monday, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said.  Former North Korean propaganda artist Song Byeok has embraced satire since defecting to the U.S. in 2001.  The Japanese defense minister said Friday that he had ordered the country's military to prepare a missile defense system ahead of a planned rocket launch by North Korea next month.  CNN's Erin Burnett talks to North Korea expert Gordon Chang about Pyongyang's plans to launch a satellite.  North Korea has more uranium enrichment facilities than it has admitted to previously, a U.S. scientist charged Thursday.  North Korea will invite foreign space experts and journalists to witness the launch of a satellite that the United States and other nations see as a provocation, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.  As senior U.S. officials sought to figure out how to respond to North Korea's announcement that it will launch a satellite using ballistic missile technology, a State Department spokeswoman said Friday that an agreement by the United States to deliver food aid to the impoverished country would be put on pause.  On the morning late last year that North Korea announced the death of Kim Jong Il, the dictator who for 17 years had presided over the world's most isolated regime, James (Chin-Kyung) Kim, a 76-year-old Korean-American educator, was in an interesting place: his office in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. That alone is remarkable for a man who had in 1998 been a political prisoner of Kim Jong Il. But the fact that the institution James Kim created -- the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) -- is up and running in the heart of North Korea is a minor miracle.  When Stewart Lone makes one of his regular visits to Pyongyang, he usually stops by the Pyolmuri Café, a Western-style coffee house in the centre of town. It's a pleasantly quiet spot in a city that's getting surprisingly frenetic in parts.  North Korea's agreement to halt portions of its nuclear and missile programs and accept the return of nuclear inspectors is a "modest step in the right direction," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday.  U.S. food aid is going to North Korea for the first time in three years. CNN's Eunice Yoon reports.  A U.S. envoy expressed optimism that food aid would find its way to those in need in North Korea after two days of talks with officials from Pyongyang, but it remained unclear when the shipments might begin.  New video broadcast on North Korean television shows a military unit carrying out live-fire drills in sight of a South Korean island.  [Updated 2:30 p.m. Monday, March 5] This intricately decorated subway station is in Pyongyang, North Korea. The photo was taken four years ago, around the time when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra became the first U.S. orchestra to play in the country.  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his troops to be on the highest alert Sunday as he visited the DMZ, or demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.  Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  The announcement Wednesday of a diplomatic breakthrough between the United States and North Korea is a welcome surprise at a critical time. Not only are more than 6 million North Koreans facing food shortages, but also the window is quickly closing for the United States to have any leverage over North Korea's nuclear program, given the changing global balance of power.  Never a regime to do something for nothing, North Korea took what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called a "modest first step" in agreeing to halt its nuclear and missile program in exchange for food aid.  In return for food aid from the United States, North Korea has agreed to stop nuclear activity at its main facility in Yongbyon, both countries said Wednesday.  North Korea has agreed to stop nuclear testing and allow inspectors back into the country in exchange for food aid.  North Korea has agreed to halt nuclear tests, long-range missile launches and enrichment activities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for food aid from the United States, the State Department said Wednesday.  North Korea said it's ready to fight a war with the United States and South Korea, as the two allies kicked off their annual joint military drills Monday, according to state-run media.  The South Korean government on Friday approved the first shipment of food aid to North Korea since the death of dictator Kim Jong Il last month.  North Korea has angrily denied allegations that it punished some of its citizens for inadequately mourning the death of its late leader Kim Jong Il.  North Korea apparently test-launched three short-range missiles this week, the South Korean Defense Ministry said Friday, an indication that the reclusive state's military is operating normally after a leadership transition.  North Korea said Tuesday that it would release an unspecified number of prisoners in February to mark the birthdays of the two dictators who ruled the reclusive nation for a total of more than 60 years.  Representatives of South Korea, Japan and the United States will meet "in the near future" to discuss North Korea, a U.S. State Department official told reporters Friday in Tokyo at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  South Korea is "open to dialogue" with the new North Korean leadership, despite harsh recent comments from Pyongyang, Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan said Thursday.  A top U.S. diplomat will arrive in Beijing on Tuesday at the start of a tour around Northeast Asia, which is still adapting to the change of leadership in North Korea following the death of Kim Jong Il last month.  North Korea is urging its people to show allegiance to the death for new leader Kim Jong Un.  Kim Jong Un has assumed "the supreme commandership" of the North Korean army, state media reported Saturday.  A top U.S. diplomat will travel to three nations around North Korea early next year in the first such talks since longtime leader Kim Jong Il's death, the State Department announced Thursday.  As North Korea mourns the death of its "Dear Leader," CNN's Anna Coren looks at how the state controls its people.  Two departed leaders, two very different legacies. CNN's Jim Clancy contrasts the lives of Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il.  North Korea continued to mourn its late leader Saturday while calling his successor son the "supreme commander," as the country faces a transition of power following Kim Jong Il's death one week ago.  A father-son succession occurred once in North Korea, so why not again? CNN's Paula Hancocks reports.  North Korea will admit delegations from the South that wish to visit Pyongyang to express their condolences following the death of the leader Kim Jong Il, according to a statement posted on a government website run by the North.  While North Korea's recently departed leader Kim Jong Il will probably be most remembered for his pompadour, jumpsuits and relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons, the world must never forget the legacy of anguish and terror he left for millions of his people.  How worried should the world be about North Korea? CNN's Chris Lawrence evaluates the regime's nuclear capability.  Kim Jong Il's passing closes a sad and tragic chapter for the people of North Korea. His 17-year reign will be remembered as a dark period in their history characterized by great suffering and steady and dangerous provocations to the outside world.  CNN's Christiane Amanpour discusses the future for North Korea amid leadership transition.  The leadership of North Korea appeared to pass to a third generation of the Kim family Monday after the weekend death of Kim Jong Il, who ruled the reclusive Stalinist state since 1994.  CNN's Barbara Starr interviews the Joint Chiefs chairman who says he is worried about the transition in North Korea.  CNN's Alina Cho gives rare glimpse inside one of the most secretive societies in the world.  North Korea's government was famously accused in 2002 by U.S. President George W. Bush of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction, along with fellow "axis of evil" countries, Iran and Iraq.  Is North Korea a bigger threat after Kim Jong Il's death? CNN's Chris Lawrence reports.  Investors have been paying a lot of attention to one continent lately and giving the other six (well, I guess there's little that could happen in Antarctica to roil the markets ... penguins tend to be fiscally responsible) short shrift.  Kim Jong Il, the absolute dictator of North Korea, made a very rare trip outside the protection of his own borders this past August, albeit on a heavily armored private train. The reason for the trip was a meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to talk about forming deeper trade and labor alliances between the two countries. This would all seem quite normal and boring if it weren't for the fact that a) nothing is ever normal when it comes to North Korea and, b) Vice happened to also be in the Amur region at the exact same time as Kim Jong Il. But we were there to track down a different kind of North Korean in Siberia: slaves.  Jim Clancy interviews a key North Korean lawmaker on prospects for reviving talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons.  One day after South Korea staged exercises near Yeonpyeong Island marking the anniversary of North Korea's deadly shelling, the North's military threatened "a sea of fire" upon the South's presidential office, the South's Yonhap News Agency reported Thursday.  The sense of security that South Koreans had enjoyed for almost 60 years was shattered one year ago, when the North launched an attack on the civilian island of Yeonpyeong, killing two marines and two civilians.  South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev pledged to cooperate on a gas pipeline project that will run between the two nations through North Korea, according to Seoul's presidential office.  The pace of North Korea's planned regime change from Kim Jong Il to his twenty-something son appears to have slowed at the moment, two senior U.S. military officials said Thursday.  A senior State Department official is tempering expectations on how quickly North Korea could respond to just-concluded discussions with the United States in Geneva, Switzerland.  An interagency team of U.S. officials, led by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, will meet with a North Korean delegation next week in Geneva, Switzerland, the State Department said Thursday, as the Americans prepare to restart talks with the reclusive nation.  France is to open an office in North Korea in the coming days to build cultural ties and help with aid efforts, the French Foreign Ministry said Thursday.  China is calling Monday for the resumption of six party talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament two days before planned inter-Korean talks. "We are happy to see that there have been some new, positive interactions between the parties concerned surrounding the restart of the six party talks," Foreign minister Yang Jiechi told a seminar in Beijing. "The parties must seize these opportunities."  British tour company Lupine Travel embarks on a Journey through North Korea to take part in an amateur golf tournament.
North Korea's youthful leader, Kim Jong Un, has married a woman named Ri Sol Ju, according to a report by state news agency KCNA Wednesday.