Pyongyang accused the US and South Korea of conducting at least 1,100 spy plane missions over its territory in the first half of this year, official media said.
They carried out more than 170 flights last month alone, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Saturday.
North Korea has issued a monthly report on alleged US and South Korean spy plane missions which it denounces as preparations to invade the country despite repeated denials from Washington and Seoul.
The two Koreas, despite recent peace initiatives aimed at ending enmity dating back to the Korean War, still remain technically at war as the conflict was ended in an armistice not a peace treaty.
KCNA said the US had mobilized such reconnaissance planes as the U-2, RC-135, E-3, EP-3, RC-7B and RC-12 to spy on the North while South Korea has also used RC-800 and RF-4C aircraft for the spy missions.
Meanwhile, the six governments involved in talks aimed at a non-nuclear North Korea should meet to work out the details of Pyongyang's promised shutdown of a plutonium-producing reactor, a UN official said.
"The next logical step is that they talk with each other and agree on technical arrangements," now that Pyongyang has agreed on measures to monitor and verify the process, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Director Olli Heinonen said.
Heinonen spoke on Saturday upon arrival in Beijing following a five-day visit to North Korea, where he and other agency officials worked out a basic agreement on Friday with Pyongyang on how to verify a shutdown of the reactor.
In February, North Korea pledged to shut down and disable the 5-megawatt reactor, which can produce enough plutonium to manufacture one nuclear bomb a year, in exchange for economic aid and political concessions.
Pyongyang negotiated the deal with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US -- its partners in the six-party forum created in 2003 and meant to check the North's nuclear ambitions.
The efforts took on added urgency after Pyongyang carried out its first atomic test explosion last October.
South Korea said on Saturday it will send its first shipment of heavy fuel oil, promised to the North as part of the deal, within two weeks.
South Korea will "do its best to complete" the total aid delivery within 20 days of the first shipment, the Unification Ministry said in a statement.
Heinonen reiterated to reporters in Beijing on Saturday the IAEA and the North "reached an understanding on how we are going to monitor the sealing and shutting down of the Yongbyon facility."
The visit by Heinonen and three other agency officials included the UN nuclear watchdog's first trip to the Yongbyon reactor since inspectors were expelled from the country in 2002.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS