N. Korea will never fully give up nuclear weapons: top defector

North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons, a top defector said ahead of leader Kim Jong Un’s landmark summit with US President Donald Trump next month.

The current whirlwind of diplomacy and negotiations will not end with “a sincere and complete disarmament” but with “a reduced North Korean nuclear threat”, said Thae Yong-ho, who fled his post as the North’s deputy ambassador to Britain in August 2016.

“In the end, North Korea will remain ‘a nuclear power packaged as a non-nuclear state’,” Thae told the South’s Newsis news agency.

US to relocate 30,000 marines to counter China in S. China Sea: report

A signalman directs a US Marines Landing Craft Air Cushion hovercraft during an amphibious landing operation on Sept. 5, 2015. (Photo/CFP)

 

In the face of China’s growing presence in the South China Sea, the United States Marine Corps is moving ahead with plans to eventually place nearly 15% of the service’s personnel in Hawaii and beyond, reports Duowei News, a US-based Chinese political news outlet.