• North Korea pledges to boost nuclear capability after UN rebuke

    By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News

    North Korea vowed to boost its nuclear capabilities on Wednesday after the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning its controversial rocket launch last December.

    “The present situation clearly proves that (North Korea) should counter the U.S. hostile policy with strength, not with words,” the country’s foreign ministry warned in a statement.

    North Korea pledged in the statement to bolster its military capabilities and to build up what it called a “nuclear deterrence." 

    It also defended its “independent and legitimate right” to launch satellites and condemned the U.N. resolution as a “wanton violation of the inviolable sovereignty of (North Korea).”

    The U.N. resolution passed on Tuesday called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and cease rocket launches, and came a month after the country, officially known as Democratic People's Republic of Korea, successfully conducted a rocket launch that put a satellite into orbit.

    Pyongyang maintains that the test was purely “for peaceful purposes.”

    U.S. officials disagree, saying the test was the latest attempt to develop multistage ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

    Washington hopes the newest U.N. resolution will help bind world opinion against North Korea’s opaque nuclear program.

    "This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its flagrant violation of its obligations under previous resolutions," American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, told reporters after the vote.

    China’s unusual support for the resolution, the first in four years to expand sanctions against North Korea, suggests Beijing’s patience with its troublesome neighbor may be fraying. 

    But in comments made after the vote, Li Baodong, China's ambassador to the U.N., warned sanctions alone would not resolve the impasse.

    “The policy of the sanction does not work,” he said. “The resolution must be accompanied, supplemented by diplomatic efforts.”

    The new sanctions were categorized under the scope of existing ones, which were expanded to include North Korean government agencies -- most notably the North Korean Space Agency -- and companies.

    In addition, a list of nuclear and ballistic missile technology banned for export to North Korea has been updated.

    Despite the resolution and international concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program, leading North Korea expert Wang Junsheng said it was unlikely that Pyongyang would conduct a nuclear test anytime soon.

    “(North Korea) uses nuclear tests to negotiate with foreign countries but mainly to establish the Kim family's stature within the country,” he said, referring to the country’s ruling family.

    “By successfully launching the satellite last month, there is no need for Kim Jong Un to conduct a nuclear test at this time,” he said. 

    Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s supreme leader, is the son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, who founded the communist state.

    NBC News' Li Le contributed to this report.

    Related:

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offers olive branch to South in rare address

    North Korea missiles could reach US, says South

    Video: South Korea finds debris from North's rocket 

  • As North Korea mourns, its neighbor shrugs

    Adrienne Mong

    All was quiet on the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula on the Kim Jong Il's state funeral took place.

    By Adrienne Mong, NBC News

    SEOUL, South Korea — As one journalist put it, it said how much we all knew about North Korea that for the better part of Wednesday morning, most of the world remained in the dark about just when — if at all  — the state funeral for the country's late leader Kim Jong Il had begun. 

    But finally around 2 p.m in Seoul, a feed of the funeral proceedings began transmitting. We watched online, impressed by the staging and the direction. 

    Thousands of people in olive drab stood under snowfall in front of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace — where Kim Jong Il’s body had been lying in state and where that of his father Kim Il Sung is also housed — as a procession of vehicles drove past, including the hearse led by Kim Jong Il's son and successor, Kim Jong Un.

    Under a dramatic soundtrack and the emotion-laden voice of a North Korean broadcaster, the continuous wailing of mourners could be heard. Cameras pushed into close-ups of rows and rows of men and women in military uniform sobbing. 

    As the procession wound its way through Pyongyang and the snowfall grew heavier, footage of civilians began to appear.  Dressed in thick winter coats, they craned their necks and covered their mouths as they wept.  Those in the front — closest to the cameras —jumped up and down with great emotion.  Occasionally, a row of soldiers appeared expressionless and stoic.

    Wednesday's state funeral for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il capped more than a week of public mourning. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports.

    As the video was broadcast — and despite the "live" banner on some cable stations, it was still unclear whether the footage was being transmitted live or had been recorded earlier until one news agency confirmed it was indeed the former.

    The mood in Seoul was decidedly different.

    'Like father, like son'
    Among a small community of North Koreans who fled their homeland years ago, there was scorn for the man they once called their "Dear Leader" and a touch of hope that his death may usher in long-awaited change.

    "Kim Jong Il made three million people starve to death," said Kim Jung-geum, a reporter and radio announcer with Free North Korea Radio.  She escaped from the North eight years ago and has been living in Seoul for the past six years.

    "Initially I thought, wow, now we can go home. But the feeling didn’t last even a day," said Kim Sung-min, founder of the station —which broadcasts a one-hour shortwave radio program back into the North every day.  

    "It is the third generation leadership," said Kim, who defected from North Korea 11 years ago. "Like father, like son.  There is no hope. There is zero per cent chance of change as Kim Jong Un inheried Kim Jong Il's system."

    Adrienne Mong

    The streets of Seoul suggested it was business as usual in South Korea as Kim Jong Il's state funeral was held.

    His colleague was willing to be a bit more optimistic.  "The dictatorship is over," said Kim Jung-geum quietly.  "A new era will begin with 2012.  I expect that."

    Both of them, however, did agree on one thing.  They remembered when North Korean founder Kim Il Sung died.

    "I was so sad that I skipped two meals," recalled Kim Sung-min, who was serving in the North Korean military in a northern province at the time.  "It was as if the sun had fallen to earth."

    "I cried for Kim Il Sung," said Kim Jung-geum, who was a propaganda teacher at the time.  "We had a food ration system.  People had salaries then.  So I genuinely grieved for his death."

    Among South Koreans there was largely indifference.

    A trio of college students said they were initially worried about the possible ramifications of Kim Jong Il’s death.  "But now I feel a lot better," said Lee Kyung-min, more keen on visiting a nearby museum than thinking about regional security. None of them were interested in the funeral proceedings.

    "It was big news," said Cho Nam-hyun, a reporter for Dong-A Ilbo. "But personally, I think of it just as a head of state who died."

    The indifference doesn't come as a surprise to analysts in South Korea. 

    "We've been living under the gun for the past 60 years," said Dr. Hahm Chaibong, president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.  "You can’t count the number of crises that we've had over the years.  Be it assassinations, commando raids, downing of airplanes, terrorist bombings, and of course more recently nuclear experiments and shelling of islands."

    Hahm also offered a final somber thought.

    "By and large everyone has learned a lesson as far as to what to expect," he said.  "Everybody knows that there isn’t all that much to expect in terms of radical change….  If North Korea is going to change, it's not going to because of something we do in the outside world.  They will be the ones who will be undertaking changes because they think it's necessary and because they decide it's time they do it."

    Follow NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) on Twitter.

  • Remembering North Korea's 'Dear Leader'

    From http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

    By Adrienne Mong

    BEIJING — The news that North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il had died made its way to the Chinese capital mid-Monday morning.  Very soon, police tape surrounded the North Korean embassy, where its national flag was lowered to half-staff.

    State-run newspapers The China Daily and The Global Times posted the news on their websites -- the latter going with a special section dedicated to the eccentric leader of China’s tiny but troublesome northeastern neighbor. 

    Featuring comments by users of Weibo  (the Chinese microblog) and a Kim family tree, the Global Times site was worthy of a Chinese state leader, reflecting the closeness of the two regimes enduring more than half a century.

    The Chinese state-run television CCTV broke into regular programming, about twenty minutes before its daily noontime news broadcast, to run a special report on Kim’s death.  Its Pyongyang news team was the first to get reaction within the isolated state out to the world.  The nine-minute clip shows a variety of North Korean citizens crying, almost all unable to speak to the camera.

    Despite running his country like a cult, impoverishing and starving his own people while building a nuclear arsenal, Kim was more often than not ridiculed for his appearance and his personality.  Twitter users posted memorable moments such as an Economist magazine cover with Kim with bouffant hair in tinted glasses:Greetings, Earthlings.

    We, on the other hand, would like to remember the Dear Leader in action.  After all, the DPRK’s Korean Central News Agency said Kim died while travelling back from a “rural inspection tour.”  What better way to mark his passing away than with a look back at other inspection tours, thanks to this great Tumblr site.

    Updated at 6:41 a.m. ET:

    Like father, like son.

    Within hours of news of the elder Kim’s death, the Tumblr page above spawned a junior: Kim Jong Un looking at things.