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North and South Korean family members separated since the 1950-53 Korean war have met in the first reunion ceremonies for three years. Reunions are being held at North Korea’s Kumgang Mountain resort ...

s Kumgang Mountain resort, with a second wave of reunions to start on Sunday Dozens of elderly North and South Koreans separated for six decades have been reunited during a rare period of detente between the rival Koreas. The reunions are all the more poignant because the participants will part again in a few days, possibly for ever. About 80 South Koreans travelled through snow with their families...

Karen Short says: ‘I would love him to be home but I know my husband and he is well able to face what he’s facing’ ...

Short’s wife Karen says the 75-year-old went to Pyongyang because he wanted to help locals in ‘a dark and difficult place’ ...

s meetings can be a step towards building more amicable ties. But Kang is reluctant to get his hopes up too high. "Of course I'm really worried. I hope everyone involved tries their best to make sure it doesn't get cancelled," he said. He has been disappointed before: Kang's only other chance to meet his son was scuttled in September last year when inter-Korean family reunions were abruptly cancelled...

s divided families. With an average age of 84, they were accompanied by 58 family members for physical and emotional support as they prepared to meet relatives last seen decades before. One 91-year-old made the 90-mile journey from his home north of Seoul by ambulance; 14 others were in wheelchairs. All were to spend the night in the Hanwha resort in the eastern port of Sokcho before heading to the...

Seventy-five-year-old John Short arrested in Pyongyang on Sunday while carrying out missionary work in communist state ...

Sketches submitted by former political prisoner Kim Kwang-il to the UN inquiry into human rights abuses ...

s dossier on North Korea's rights abuses – the main points Sketches of prison abuse submitted to UN North Korea's leadership is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world, crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded. The UN's commission on human...

t enough to get the world to do something. The response is shock, but then a collective shrug In the early 1990s, when I was in my infancy as a reporter, the dominant international story was the war in the Balkans. Several of my peers made their names covering that war and were deeply affected by it. What motivated at least a few of them was not the desire simply to be on the front page or lead the...

politicising' of human rights issues China has rejected a recent UN report accusing North Korea of crimes against humanity, brushing it off as "unreasonable criticism". The scathing 400-page document , which was released on Monday by the UN's Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea, is an unprecedented indictment of the isolated country's leaders, highlighting widespread rape, torture,...

s human rights abuses contains appalling stories of how state brutally enforces 'racial purity' • North Korean crimes 'unparalleled' – UN report Among the desperate and appalling chronicle of horrors presented across 372 pages in the full UN report into rights abuses in North Korea, the chilling testimony of a young woman called Jee Heon, sent to a prison camp after being returned from China, stands...

s leader that he has found evidence of 'systematic, widespread and gross...

s human rights abuses in six main sections, a number of which it concludes are likely to be crimes against humanity. Arbitrary detention and torture While North Korea denies the system of so-called kwanliso secret prison camps even exists, the report says testimony from survivors and guards, coupled with satellite imagery, makes for overwhelming evidence. It estimates that between 80,000 and 120,000...

s Human Rights Council, is due to announce its findings in Geneva on Monday. The Associated Press, quoting officials who had seen the commission's embargoed report, confirmed it found North Korea culpable for offences including crimes against humanity through starvation and extermination, as well as the abduction of people in South Korea and Japan. The report concludes that the evidence gathered by...

Secretary of state says China and US share common goal to ‘achieve a de-nuclearized North Korea’ during 24-hour visit to Beijing Jonathan Kaiman ...

Captain and two others being held but 32 free to go after being cleared of involvement in illicit arms shipment from Cuba ...

s proposal to resume reunions of families separated by the Korean War. The reunion programme has not begun again since it was halted late in 2010, as tensions between the two countries remain high. The two countries had planned to resume the program last September before Pyongyang abruptly scuttled the plan. The dispute centres on North Korea's push to link the reunion's resumption to the restart of...

s north-east in November 2012. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for allegedly trying to topple the regime. Bae, 45, suffers from poor health and was moved to hospital last summer. It is impossible to verify his claims that the press briefing had been held at his request and that he had not been mistreated during his detention. Flanked by two prison guards throughout, Bae admitted he had...

US offers to send envoy to Pyongyang after appearance of missionary in prison uniform ...