For Josh Smith's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
South Korea and North Korea have continued to pour resources into modernizing their militaries despite a frenzy of diplomacy since 2018, creating tension that has sharpened as talks have stalled. Military buildups on both sides of the heavily fortified border have come to the forefront ...
A decade after leaving her family behind to flee North Korea, the defector was overwhelmed with excitement when she spoke to her 22-year-old son on the phone for the first time in May after he too escaped into China. While speaking to him again on ...
North Korea's second missile test on Thursday signals it is serious about developing new, short-range weapons that could be used early and effectively in any war with South Korea and the United States, analysts studying images of the latest launches say. Last week, North Korean ...
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time this week at a symbolic summit hoping to project himself as a serious world player but likely to come away without a relief from crushing sanctions ...
Perhaps none of the communist legacies shared by Vietnam and North Korea highlighted during Kim Jong Un's "goodwill visit" to Hanoi is stranger than the embalmed leaders on display in their capitals — and the secretive team of Russian technicians who keep the bodies ...
The failure of U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to secure even a limited deal at their second nuclear summit means any breakthrough now depends on working-level talks that have made little progress since last year. The sudden collapse of ...
It's the stuff of an Indiana Jones movie: supernatural kings, ancient tombs, and government-backed archaeologists striving to harness the power of legend for a greater cause. On a divided Korean Peninsula, tales of King Dangun — the mythical founder of the first Korean kingdom more ...
Shutting down North Korea's nuclear test site is trickier than it might seem. A botched tunnel collapse could spread radioactive debris. Nuclear material might be buried, but accessible enough to be dug up and reused in a weapon. And even if all the testing tunnels ...
Absent from the recent summit between the leaders of North and South Korea was Pyongyang's human rights record, and the issue appears to have faded from U.S. President Donald Trump's public agenda as he prepares for his own meeting with Kim Jong Un. Rights activists ...
State media calls North Korea's nuclear weapons a "treasured sword of justice." Pyongyang has released commemorative stamps and built monuments in honor of its ballistic missile tests, while nuclear and rocket scientists have been named national heroes. For Kim Jong Un, fully giving up nuclear weapons ...
