Asia
North Korea 'ready to defend itself against US'

North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, has said his country could defend itself in any war started by the US.
He was making a rare public speech as part of mass celebrations involving troops, and military vehicles in Pyongyang to mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party.
Thousands of soldiers - many with red banners - marched past him through the city's main square in tight formation.
An aircraft flypast forming the number 70 flew over the square.
Tanks and missile carriers rolled past the podium where Mr Kim spoke.
Parade in pictures
At the scene: Steve Evans, BBC News, Pyongyang
Media Highlights of the parade in North Korea
The parade was truly amazing in its immensity and organisation. It lasted for two hours with countless rows of soldiers and then civilians marching past without break.
It felt at times like a meeting of a cult with citizens of North Korea jumping up and down and waving ecstatically at Kim Jong-un.
The message was clear from the podium: China stands by North Korea - signalled by Kim Jong-un clutching the hand of a senior Chinese leader - and, secondly, that Mr Kim shows no sign of a softer stance towards the United States. As he put it: "The party's revolutionary armament means we are ready to fight any kind of war waged by the US imperialists".
If his words were not clear enough, the hardware on parade underlined them - line upon line of trucks with missiles following line upon line of heavy artillery.
The changing face of North Korea
Strange history of North Korea's Communist Party
State television carried the events live, adding an emotional commentary.
"Iron spirit and the united forces of our army and people have enabled us to break through the imperialists' sanctions and isolation, are forcing the enemies to extreme anxiety and fear," Mr Kim said.
Later, as the parade continued, tens of thousands of civilians, including school-children, danced and waved coloured pom-poms.

When it announced plans for the anniversary earlier this year, the government spoke of "cutting-edge" weaponry suitable for modern warfare, and the day's event will have been closely watched for any new military hardware indicating the North's military development.
No world leaders attended but China, North Korea's closest ally, sent a senior Communist Party official to the anniversary.
The North Korean leader began the day by paying respects to his late father and grandfather at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, official media reported.
The celebrations continued, after a downpour of rain, with an evening torchlight parade which thousands of Pyongyang citizens have been seen practising for in public squares across the city.
A late-night concert featuring the all-female Moranbong Band - North Korea's most popular musical group - was also held, which cost foreigners wanting to attend about $115 (�75), the Associated Press news agency reports.
North Korea's nuclear programme has long been a cause for alarm in the region.
Pyongyang is believed to have conducted three underground nuclear tests and is threatening a fourth, despite international condemnation and sanctions.

Last month, it announced it was restarting its main nuclear facility Yongbyon and that it was improving its nuclear weapons "in quality and quantity".
The North claims it has made a nuclear device small enough to fit into the warhead of a missile.
US officials, however, have cast doubt on this claim and experts say it is difficult to assess the progress North Korea has made on miniaturisation.
North and South Korea remain technically at war because the 1950-1953 war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34493672/

* 3 short videos on link*

3 generations of crazy here.

And he is so meticulous, or OCD, & wants everything so choreographed, that they use chalk to mark off where, people should stand for his parade..

One day someone is going to chalk mark his body on that square.

I wouldn't worry too much about him, he's nothing but a noisy neighbour.
The pain in the backside that lives a few doors away, he has parties and makes a lot of noise but is just a harmless crank really.
The type you kind of feel sorry for.

Just making his Generals feel good so they won't kill his azz.

a parade, soldiers, weapons display, a fly-over..and KJU mouths off for a half-hour...
not a whole lot going on there....

I read in an article that they think a lot of the newer weapons and missiles they are seeing at these parades are all for show, non working models.

his Hairdo is enough to put everyone in Surrender-Mode!



and you think Trump's is bad!

Mr. Trump will put this little brat over his knee and give him one well deserved spanking.

Can Kim Jong-Un Control The Weather?

http://news.sky.com/story/1569288/can-kim-jong-un-control-the-weather/
* 3 short videos on link*

,Wednesday 14 October 2015
Alistair Bunkall

Reporting from Pyongyang under the supervision of the North Korean government provided an opportunity to question officials about the secretive state and its leader.

Where does Kim Jong-un live?

The White House, The Kremlin, Downing Street, the Elysee Palace, all world famous seats of power and the list could go on.

So this sounds a silly question, right? But we asked government officials, repeatedly, where Kim Jong-un lived, and got no answer. They either blanked over, looked away, changed the topic or walked off.

I suspect he spends most of his time in a secure base somewhere in the countryside outside Pyongyang.

I can't work out whether the people we asked knew and had been told not to say, or simply had no idea.

So why the mystery? Security perhaps, for a leader who believes the US is planning to invade. And yet, for a dynasty that demands idolisation from its people, and fear from the rest of the world, not to have a focal point of that power is just, frankly, odd.

How strong is Kim Jong-un's leadership?

It appears absolute. The citizens worship him, there is little dissent, and any that is, is swiftly dealt with.

A strategy of high-profile executions of senior military generals has fed the fear of opposition. And that is just the discipline that we know of.

But he has weaknesses.

Being young, 30-something, Kim Jong-un is more inexperienced than his father Kim Jong-il and his Grandfather Kim Il-sun. Unlike them, he has no heroic military fable for his public to indulge.

Portraits of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sun hang in every classroom, office, hotel and, I would imagine, house. But none of the current leader. Why?

Simply, he doesn't have the depth of character or qualifications his relatives had, and that could become a problem if you continue to demand total support from - in particular - the military.

And then there is the economy. It is struggling, and I mean struggling in North Korean terms.

Some 90% of exports are to China; it was around 50% in the 2000s. And the value of those exports fell 9.8% over the past year to August.

If Kim Jong-un wants to keep his apparatchiks onside, he must continue to fund their elite lifestyle.

How capable is North Korea's military?

I watched tens of thousands of soldiers goose-step past me in Kim Il-sun square. Next came the hardware; tanks, rocket launchers, missiles bigger than any I’d ever seen before. Huge things. Too huge.

State television, in its daily homage to Kim Jong-un, shows pictures of him observing military exercises.

North Korea wants the world to fear it. They invited the media, as they have before, to witness the military parade and all the best bits about the country. And yet, as far as I know, no outsider has ever been allowed to witness the North Korean military in action, first hand.

The military is vast in size, certainly. Such is the way in states with national conscription.

But how strong are they really?

Can Kim Jong-un control the weather?

Maybe.

The weather, when we woke up on the morning of the military parade, was overcast and rainy. The forecast said it was set to stay like that all day.

For hours we waited in our hotel, wondering what the delay was. We had been told the event would start mid-morning. It was obvious the weather was raining on Kim Jong-un's parade.

But watch the television pictures back and you'll see the event took place in brilliant sunshine and then about an hour after the parade finished, it started raining again. Russia and the Chinese are known to have the ability to temporally disperse the clouds using a chemical.

"Is this what the North Koreans did?" we asked our government guide.

"No! Our great President, the founder of DPRK Kim Il-sun is The Sun and he shone down from heaven and made the sun shine," was the immediate reply.

"Um, er, could it have been anything else?" we gently queried.

Pause…

"Yes, maybe

Obama Open to Nuclear Deal With North Korea's Kim Jong-Un
BY REUTERS 10/16/15

U.S. President Barack Obama at news conference with South Korea's President Park Geun-hye in Washington, D.C. REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE
FILED UNDER: World, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Barack Obama, Kim Jong-Un
U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Friday they were open to negotiations with North Korea on sanctions but Pyongyang needed to show it was serious about abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

Asked if he saw the possibility of a deal with North Korea like that reached with Iran, Obama told a joint news conference after talks with Park in Washington that he saw no indication that North Korea envisioned a future without nuclear weapons.

"At the point where Pyongyang says we are interested in seeing relief from sanctions and improved relations and we are prepared to have a serious conversation about denuclearization, I think it’s fair to say that we’ll be right there at the table," he said.

"We haven’t even gotten to that point yet, because there has been no indication on the part of the North Koreans as there was with the Iranians that they could foresee a future in which they did not possess or were not pursuing nuclear weapons."

Park said it was important to have concerted international efforts towards a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue and said she had agreed with Obama on the need to strengthen diplomatic efforts.

However, she said in language certain to infuriate North Korea: "There is a saying: You can take a horse to the trough, but you can’t make it drink water."

North Korea said in June its nuclear weapons are an "essential deterrence" and it has no interest in a deal like that reached with Iran.

Park said she would seek to strengthen cooperation on the North Korean issue at a three-way summit with China and Japan that she will host in Seoul early next month.

OBAMA URGES PARK TO SPEAK OUT ON CHINA

The United States has been keen to encourage better relations between South Korea and Japan, its two biggest allies in Asia, given concerns about North Korea and an increasingly assertive China.

Park has worked to warm up ties with China and raised some eyebrows in Washington when she attended Beijing's military parade to mark the end of World War Two last month.

Obama said the United States wanted to see a strong South Korean relationship with China, just as it wanted such a relationship itself, but Washington wanted to see Seoul speak out when Beijing did things that weakened international rules.

Obama was apparently referring to China's behavior in pursuit of maritime claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which has alarmed Asian neighbors.

"Obviously, given the size of China right there on your doorstep, if they are able to act with impunity and ignore rules whenever they want, that's not going to be good for you - whether that's on economic issues or security issues," he said.

Park did not address the issue of Chinese behavior at the news conference.

She said she had agreed with Obama to cooperate closely on possible South Korean participation the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement that was agreed last month.

Park said on Thursday that TPP, the principal economic pillar of Obama's Asian "rebalance" to counteract China's rise, would benefit businesses in both South Korea and the United States if her country were to join.

http://www.newsweek.com/obama-open-nuclear-deal-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-384489/

Holy Kim,Batman!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/10521123/Kim-Jong-un-in-pictures-The-bizarre-photoshoots-of-North-Koreas-leader.html

One shovel full and that lil pudgy bastards heart is about to explode

Planting Christmas trees? How nice.