North’s Twitter account hacked

Seoul: Hackers have apparently disrupted North Korea’s government-run Twitter account. The disruption comes at a time of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The North’s Uriminzokkiri’s Twitter account on Thursday displayed four tweets saying “hacked.” A fifth tweet said “Tango Down” and was followed by a link to Uriminzokkiri’s Flickr page.

Both sites were running on Thursday but carrying content that differed sharply from content typically posted by the regime in Pyongyang, leading viewers to assume the accounts had been hacked.

North Korea opened its Uriminzokkiri Twitter account in 2010 to use the social media to praise its system and leaders.

Cameron backs nuclear deterrent

London: Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday warned that Britain would be left defenceless against the “highly unpredictable and aggressive” North Korean regime if it wound down its Trident nuclear deterrent programme.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Cameron said the recent actions of North Korea coupled with concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme meant it would be “foolish” to scrap the fleet of nuclear missile submarines.

“We need our nuclear deterrent as much today as we did when a previous British government embarked on it over six decades ago... The Soviet Union no longer exists. But the nuclear threat has not gone away,” he wrote. “The highly unpredictable and aggressive regime in North Korea recently conducted its third nuclear test and could already have enough fissile material to produce more than a dozen nuclear weapons.

North at odds over Kaesong zone

Seoul: North Korea’s leaders are at odds over how to handle the Kaesong industrial enclave, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday, citing a source close to the regime.

The military see the complex as a strategic liability, while civilian leaders defend it as a source of income, and a legacy of the previous leader Kim Jong Il, Seoul-based JoongAng Ilbo reported, citing a source identified only as an insider with close contact to the isolated regime’s leaders.

“At a time when we are staging an all-out confrontation with South Korea, it is nonsense for us to continue to see the coming and going of South Korean people, vehicles and cargo across the border,” the source quoted North Korean military officials as saying.

South to buy bunker busters

Seoul: South Korea is to buy Taurus bunker-busting air-to-ground long range missiles for its F-15K strike fighters in a move to boost its strike power amid rising tensions with North Korea, its defence minister told a parliamentary committee on Thursday.

The decision to pick a European supplier is due to Washington’s unwillingness to supply Seoul’s first choice missile, the US made JASSM, a person familiar with the plans later told Reuters and is a rare decision for a military that primarily picks US-made equipment.

The decision comes as South Korea is getting ready to award a tender for 60 fighter jets, in a competition between Lockheed Martin’s Corp’s F-35 stealth fighter, Boeing Co’s F-15 Silent Eagle as well as Europe’s Eurofighter, made by EADS.

South Koreans risk becoming hostages

Paju,South Korea: Hundreds of South Koreans rejected the chance to leave factories in North Korea on Thursday that have become the centre of a bitter standoff between the two countries, running the risk of becoming hostages to keep their plants going.

For those whose commute to work already involved a trip across the world’s most heavily fortified border and into one of its most repressive states, this week’s tensions were another reminder of their precarious livelihoods.

It also showed how South Koreans have become largely inured to threats from their impoverished and bellicose neighbour.

On Wednesday, Pyongyang barred access to the Kaesong Industrial park, where 123 mostly small South Korean firms employ 50,000 North Korean workers to make clothing, shoes and other goods.

“I have four dependents in my family. We didn’t go there for political reasons, we were there to make our living,” said Kwon Bo-sun, a 44-year-old trailer driver who was waiting at the South Korean border town of Paju to see if he would be allowed to truck supplies into the zone.

— Compiled from agencies