A Seoul-based rights group said Monday it has supplied contacts in North Korea with satellite phones to expand news coverage of the secretive communist state and minimise the use of riskier cellphones. Free North Korea Radio, run by North Korean defectors, said it gave satphones to "correspondents" in the North five months ago to try to break down the ...

South Korea Friday rebuffed North Korean pressure to lift a tourism ban which has cost Pyongyang millions of dollars, and a Seoul official said trade worth millions more dollars could dry up unless ties improve. The shutdown of the Mount Kumgang resort has intensified an acute hard currency shortage in the impoverished North, which was also hit by tougher UN ...

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Friday criticised excessive bank profits following the global slump and said tougher financial regulations would be the key issue at this year's G20 summit. "Look at the profit of the banking sector this year following the crisis: this is unacceptable. We must be strongly determined to balance this within the G20," Kouchner said ...

North Korea has executed a top financial official in a desperate attempt to quell public anger at its bungled currency revaluation, South Korean news reports and analysts said Thursday. Pak Nam-Ki, who was earlier reported sacked as chief of the ruling communist party's planning and finance department, was shot dead last week at a military range in Pyongyang, Yonhap ...