Government of North Korea

Twenty nations agreed on Tuesday to consider tougher sanctions to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Pyongyang it could trigger a military response if it did not chose negotiations, Reuters reported. 

North Korea agreed on Friday to hold official talks with the South next week, the first in more than two years, hours after the United States and South Korea delayed a military exercise amid a standoff over the North's nuclear and missile programs, reported Reuters.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned North Korea on Tuesday against staging another missile test and said Washington would not take any talks between North and South Korea seriously if they did not do something to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his New Year's Day speech on Monday called on his country to accelerate mass production of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

The United States has sanctioned two North Korean officials known for their role behind North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's missile program, according to a notice posted to the U.S. Treasury Department's website on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

The men, Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol, are known as two of the three people behind Kim's banned rocket program.

South Korean guards fired up to 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a soldier who had defected yesterday, Yonhap news agency said, after officials in the South confirmed the latest defection across the heavily militarized border.

The Japanese government approved a new package of unilateral sanctions against North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile program. According to the Kyodo Agency, this decision was taken at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

The administration of then US President Bill Clinton believed that the US military and South Korea's forces would win a conflict on the Korean Peninsula, but also understood the number of casualties would be enormous.

North Korea says a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula has become a matter of when, not if, as it continued to lash out at a massive joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea involving hundreds of advanced warplanes.

US B-1B bombers have been flying over the Korean Peninsula this morning, within the framework of the large scale military exercise conducted jointly with the South Korean army. They joined the F-22 Raptor bomber group that was deployed in South Korea on Monday. Plane bombs have begun training hits on a polygon near the border with the DPRK, reports sega.