North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reacted sharply to the start of joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea. He says the severe regional security environment will require Pyongyang to rapidly arm itself with nuclear weapons.

South Korea’s birth rate has dropped throughout much of the past decade, spelling trouble for the military as regional threats and global conflicts simmer.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to rapidly expand its nuclear armament and called U.S.-South Korea military exercises an "obvious expression of their will to provoke war," state media KCNA reported on Tuesday.

In a revelation that should concern every security leader, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) recently disclosed that over 300 companies, including tech giants and at least one defense contractor, unknowingly hired North Korean operatives posing as remote IT workers.

Six elderly men who served lengthy jail terms for spying against South Korea have asked to be sent to the North, a Seoul unification official told Agence France-Presse Tuesday, decades after their release.

SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who has been seeking to improve strained relations with Pyongyang, ordered on Monday his cabinet to prepare a partial step-by-step implementation of existing agreements with North Korea.

Vladimir Putin praised North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine as “heroic” in a letter to Kim Jong-un, North Korean state media reported Friday.