North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has expressed gratitude for Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer of assistance with rain damage recovery, saying that he will seek Russia's help when necessary, the North's official news agency said on Sunday.
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin made two significant overseas visits, first to North Korea where he signed a landmark security treaty with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and then to Vietnam, one of Asia’s fastest growing economies and one of the most diplomatically active countries in the 21st century.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister Kim Yo-jong on Monday denounced South Korea's resumption of live-fire artillery drills near the border as "suicidal hysteria" and warned of possible military actions against such acts.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to mobilise all means to deal a "death-blow" to the country's enemy without hesitation should it opt for military confrontation with North Korea, state media said on Thursday.
"There are also issues of preventing the birth rate from falling and well nurturing children," he said at the fifth National Meeting of Mothers that opened on Sunday in Pyongyang.
The moves included re-entering areas of the North that it had withdrawn from as part of inter-Korean projects, restoring guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone that forms the border, and stepping up exercises.
The two zones are sites of long-shuttered joint inter-Korean projects: Southern tourists visited the scenic Mount Kumgang until a North Korean soldier in 2008 shot dead a woman who strayed off the path.
On Tuesday, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.
The liaison office was opened in September 2018, days before the South's President Moon Jae-in flew to Pyongyang for his third summit with Kim.
Kim Yo Jong said that "the right to taking the next action against the enemy will be entrusted to the General Staff of our army.
