East Asia

North Korea's military on June 16 threatened to move back into zones that were demilitarized under inter-Korean peace agreements as the country continued to dial up pressure on rival South Korea amid stalled nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration.

South Korea says that North Korea has exploded an inter-Korean liaison office building just north of the tense Korean border.
Seoul's Unification Ministry says the destruction of the building at the North Korean border town of Kaesong happened at 2:49 p.m. on June 16.

The northern segment of the Great Wall of China was built not to block invading armies but rather to monitor civilian movement, an Israeli archaeologist said on June 9.

When researchers fully mapped the Great Wall's 740-kilometer (460-mile), Northern Line, for the first time, their findings challenged previous assumptions.

The Western Balkans not only provides China with a convenient foothold inside of Europe but is also in need of infrastructure investment and possesses a well-educated and reasonably priced labor force.

Furthermore, the region's comparatively weaker and looser regulatory policy framework that governs business activity also makes the Western Balkans appealing to Chinese corporations.

World military expenditure rose 3.6 percent year-on-year in 2019, the largest annual rise in a decade, according to an international survey released on April 27.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said the global military spending reached $1.9 trillion last year.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "continues to work with documents"

South Korea plans to send 600,000 coronavirus test kits to the United States tomorrow as the first part of a shipment ordered by Washington. This was announced today by a South Korean official, quoted by Reuters.

On March 25, the president of the United States made a phone call with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in to request the tests.

North Korea's latest test of super-large multiple rocket launchers a day earlier was a success, state media said on March 30.

North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Sunday, the latest in a flurry of launches that South Korea decried as "inappropriate" amid the coronavirus pandemic.

North Korea fired two projectiles that appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, South Korea's military said on March 21, after what analysts said was a show of confidence during the coronavirus epidemic by announcing an April legislature session.

North Korea fired two unidentified projectiles into its eastern sea on March 2 as it begins to resume weapons demonstrations after a months-long hiatus that could have been forced by the coronavirus crisis in Asia.