Under the Obama administration, the US and South Korea agreed to the deployment of a US missile defence system in South Korea. The US and South Korea say the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) will defend South Korea from North Korean missile threats. While campaigning, Donald Trump accused South Korea and Japan of not paying enough for US military support. There are just under 28,500 US military personnel based in South Korea, as part of a post-war arrangement. Both Japan and South Korea rejected this idea.

?The Ryugyong Hotel [the arrow-shaped building in the centre of the picture] is the most hideous building in Pyongyang,? says Kang. ?The rumour is that the structure of the hotel is flawed and can never be opened unless the whole structure is rebuilt,? he addsPhotograph: Chris Petersen-Clausen/NK News

?We have to spray gasoline on North Korea, and let the North Korean people set fire to it.?Thae, 54, has said publicly that dissatisfaction with Kim prompted him to flee his post. Thae has said more North Korean diplomats are waiting in Europe to defect to South Korea. North and South Korea are technically still at war as their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. North Korea?s elite is outwardly expressing its discontent towards Kim Jong-un and his government as more outside information trickles into the isolated nation, the country?s former deputy ambassador to London has said. Thae Yong-ho defected to South Korea in August last year and since December has been speaking to media and appearing on television to discuss his defection and his life as a North Korean envoy.

?I am ready to give my all to uniting the divided country and making South Korea a first-rate nation,? Mr. Ban said. But another visitor, Kim Ki-tae, also a Ban fan, feared that Mr. Ban might not survive the thrust and parry of domestic politics. Critics called Mr. Ban a turncoat when he later appeared to align himself closely with conservatives, including Ms. Park. PhotoSince he has returned home, Mr. Ban has defined himself as a ?progressive conservative? who can mend an ideologically fractured country. One of the first things Mr. Ban did after his homecoming was support the deployment of an American missile defense system that has angered North Korea and China.

(North Korean diplomats are required to leave a child in the North, a measure intended to prevent their defection. Their English friends taunted them with questions, like why Mr. Kim had smoked a cigarette inside a nursery. Schooled for several years in Switzerland, Mr. Kim was expected to help modernize his impoverished country. While in London, his sons began asking questions, like why the North Korean government executed people in public without a proper trial, Mr. Thae said. Another sign of Mr. Kim?s weakening control, Mr. Thae said, is evident at the unofficial markets in North Korea where women trade goods, mostly smuggled from China.

PhotoSEOUL, South Korea ? A professor whose book about Japan?s World War II-era military brothels angered Korean women who once worked there was acquitted on Wednesday of defaming the women. In a case closely followed by the South Korean news media, a judge in the Eastern District Court in Seoul ruled that her academic freedom must be protected. She has since faced civil and criminal complaints from nine South Korean women who said they were forced to work at the brothels during the war. She also called Ms. Park a ?pro-Japanese traitor,? according to South Korean news reports. But on Wednesday, Ms. Park won the criminal case.

But this resort is beyond the imagining of most of the North Korea`s dirt-poor people. The International Olympic Committee received no bid from North Korea to host the Winter Games and even if they had, it would have been beyond the North`s capabilities. Only four slopes were open when NBC News visited, but that had more to do with the blizzard than anything else. A full ski outfit with gear costs several months worth of wages for even the most affluent local customer. Chairlifts take parties of excited schoolchildren from chalets and the resort`s main hotel ? which offers first, second or third-class rooms.

Trump?s defense secretary plans to visit Japan and South Korea next week and concerns about North Korea are expected to top his agenda. A 38 North Korea report last week said operations at the reactor had been suspended since late 2015. Washington?s 38 North project, which monitors North Korea, said previous analysis from 18 January showed signs that North Korea was preparing to restart the reactor at Yongbyon, having unloaded spent fuel rods for reprocessing to produce additional plutonium for its nuclear weapons stockpile. North Korea has maintained its nuclear and missile programs in violation of repeated rounds of international sanctions. New commercial satellite imagery suggests North Korea has resumed operation of a reactor at its main nuclear site that is used to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons program, a US thinktank said on Friday.

The defection of Thae , North Korea`s erstwhile deputy ambassador to the U.K., with his wife and children last August was one of the most high-profile cases in recent years. "The traditional structures of the North Korean system are crumbling," Thae Yong Ho said at a press conference in Seoul, according to the New York Times . "Thae called on foreign powers to continue sanctions against North Korea, and argued that the dissemination of outside information would be the best way to spark a rebellion within the North. He also said the elites were becoming disillusioned with Kim Jong Un, and predicted that " more defections of my colleagues will take place, since North Korea is already on a slippery slope. His words come on the heels of a video , released by the country`s state-run television station, depicting the North Korean leader watching a missile test launch.

[Lotte Group has become the target of a boycott in China after THAAD move. " He stressed that China`s Lotte boycott is only a matter of time. We see it as an act of harming the friendship of China and South Korea. He added that the destructive power will be immense if the boycott is carried out, and that Lotte Group should take full responsibility for the future situation. But the THAAD deployment is totally against this justification.