North Korea announces hydrogen bomb test

lily wrote:It is something that visitors/guests etc should NEVER do in muslim countries.

Kim Jong-un: North Korea is a responsible nuclear state
Kim Jong-un says his country will not use nuclear arms unless its sovereignty is infringed on by others.

Speaking at the National Workers Party Congress in Pyongyang, Kim also said that North Korea may be willing to normalise ties with states that had been hostile towards it. [KCNA/via Reuters]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said his country will not use nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is infringed on by others, state media reported.

Speaking spoke in Pyongyang on Saturday to thousands of delegates gathered for the first Workers' Party congress in more than 35 years.

"As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes," the KCNA news agency quoted him as saying.

"And it will faithfully fulfil its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearisation."

Kim also said North Korea may be willing to normalise ties with states that had been hostile towards it - generally understood to mean the US and South Korea

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from the South Korean capital, Seoul, noted that Kim's latest comments were different from defiant statements made in recent weeks and months.

"The idea that North Korea would launch a preemptive nuclear strike has never been really likely, given the military response that would entail from the US," Fawcett said, "However, Kim's latest remarks do mark a shift in tone."

North Korea Expels BBC Journalist, Complains of Coverage

By The Associated Press

PYONGYANG, North Korea — May 9, 2016, 1:36 AM ET

North Korea on Monday was expelling a BBC journalist it had detained days earlier for allegedly "insulting the dignity" of the authoritarian country, which has invited scores of foreign media for its ongoing ruling party congress.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes had been scheduled to leave Friday after accompanying a group of Nobel laureates on a North Korea trip. Instead, he was stopped at the airport, detained and questioned.

O Ryong Il, secretary-general of the North's National Peace Committee, said the journalist's news coverage distorted facts and "spoke ill of the system and the leadership of the country." He said Wingfield-Hayes wrote an apology, was being expelled Monday and would never be admitted into the country again.

The BBC says Wingfield-Hayes was detained Friday along with producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard, and that all were taken to the Pyongyang airport.

More than 100 foreign journalists are in the capital for North Korea's first party congress in 36 years, though they have been prevented from actually covering the proceedings and the more than 3,400 delegates. Officials have kept the foreign media busy with trips around Pyongyang to show them the places it most wants them to see — a maternity hospital with seemingly state-of-the-art equipment, a wire-making factory where managers say salaries and production are both going up, and the humble birthplace of national founder Kim Il Sung, which has been converted into a sort of museum-park with a large "funfair" right next door.