N KOREA LATEST - FAT SPOON BANGER EXECUTES HIS UNCLE

The Latest: North Korea's FM presses US for peace treaty
October 02, 2015
UNITED NATIONS (AP)

North Korea is offering what it calls "dramatic improvement" in the Korean peninsula's security situation if the United States acts to replace the armistice there with a peace treaty.

Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong's speech on Thursday to the U.N. General Assembly contained no surprises and very little of the icy rhetoric the nuclear-armed but isolated nation often uses in its statements to the world.

Ri told the gathering of world leaders that North Korea is willing to hold "constructive dialogue" to prevent further conflict with South Korea if the U.S. can come up with the signing of a peace treaty. He called the offer "the best option we can afford."

The two Koreas remain technically at war because the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Koreans sent abroad into 'forced labour', says UN

As many as 50,000 North Koreans have been sent abroad to work in conditions that amount to "forced labour", a UN investigator has said.

Marzuki Darusman said workers earn very little, are underfed and are sometimes forced to work up to 20-hour days.

Employers pay "significantly higher amounts" directly to the North Korean government, he said in his report.

The majority of the workers are in China and Russia, mainly in the mining, textile and construction industries.

But Mr Darusman, the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, also listed countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe,

He said the companies who hire North Korean workers "become complicit in an unacceptable system of forced labour".

The workers are providing a source of hard currency to a country in a "really tight financial and economic situation".

He estimated that North Korea was earning $1.2bn-$2.3bn (£790m-£1.5bn) from the foreign worker system every year.

Since 2006, North Korea has been under international sanction for its nuclear weapons tests resulting in a shortage of foreign currency.

bb1 wrote:....And the workers can't leg it because their relatives at home would be punished.

SEOUL, South Korea October 30, 2015 (AP) — North Korea's ruling party said Friday it will hold its biggest convention in decades next May.

North Koreans gather at a monument built 10 years ago to honor the founding of the Workers' Party of North Korea, in Pyongyang, North Korea.

North Korea's ruling party says it will hold its biggest convention in decades next May. The Workers' Party said Friday, Oct. 30, 2015 its 7th congress will be convened as it's faced with "the heavy yet sacred task" of build a thriving nation. But it didn't elaborate on what the party's highest-level body will determine.

The Workers' Party said in a dispatch carried by state media that it has decided to hold its 7th congress as the North is faced with "the heavy yet sacred task" of building a "thriving" nation. It didn't elaborate on what it will discuss.

Analyst Cheong Seong-chang of the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will likely use the congress to reshuffle party officials, bolster his grip and present major state policies.

Since taking power after the death of his dictator father in late 2011, Kim has been struggling to revive his country's moribund economy and grappling with an international standoff over the North's nuclear and missile programs. He rules the country with a slew of high-profile posts, including the first secretary of the Workers' Party.

The Workers' Party last held its congress in 1980, when Kim's father Kim Jong Il made his political debut with an appearance that confirmed he was in line to succeed his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung. Other previous congresses elected top party officials, adopted party regulations and discussed major state policies, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.

North and South Korea remain divided along the world's most heavily fortified border since their 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.