World

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The UN Security Council on Friday strongly condemned North Korea for test-firing ballistic missiles and agreed to take “significant measures” in response to the latest series of launches.

The 15-member council issued the toughly-worded condemnation in a unanimous statement drafted by the United States and backed by China, Pyongyang’s main ally.

Council members agreed to “continue to closely monitor the situation and take further significant measures”, said the statement, without elaborating.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

In March, the council adopted the toughest sanctions resolution to date, targeting North Korea’s trade in minerals and tightening banking restrictions.

The council met behind closed doors on Wednesday after North Korea launched a missile from a submarine towards Japan, the latest provocation from Pyongyang.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the missile breached his country’s Air Defence Identification Zone and condemned what he called an “unforgivable, reckless act” and a grave threat to Japan’s security.

The council condemned that launch as well as another on August 2 that for the first time fell in Japanese controlled-waters and two other missile tests on July 9 and 18, saying these were all “in grave violation” of UN resolutions.

North Korea is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology, but Pyongyang has carried out several launches following its fourth nuclear test in January.

The council statement was adopted after several rounds of negotiations with China, which has insisted over recent weeks on the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula.

A previous bid by the council to condemn North Korea for firing a ballistic missile directly into Japanese-controlled waters on August 2 ran aground after China sought changes to the text.

The council was unable to agree after Beijing pressed for language in a statement opposing the THAAD missile defence system that the United States plans to deploy in South Korea.

In Friday’s statement, the council expressed serious concern that North Korea carried out the latest series of missile launches despite repeated appeals to Pyongyang to reverse course.

North Korea leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday boasted that the latest submarine-launched missile test was the “greatest success”, putting the US mainland and the Pacific “within the striking range”.

Council members again demanded that North Korea “refrain from further actions, including nuclear tests, in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions”.

SEOUL — North Korea is making progress on a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system but any deployment of the technology is years away, a US think tank said, as the UN Security Council promised action over Pyongyang’s latest test.

The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said late Friday on its closely-watched website, 38 North, that the success of North Korea’s SLBM test this week suggests the programme may be progressing faster than originally expected.

“However, this does not mean it will be ready next week, next month, or even next year”, it said.

“Rather, the pace and method of the North’s SLBM testing would suggest possible deployment in an initial operational capability by the second half of 2018 at the earliest.” 

The missile, launched from a submerged prototype “Gorae-class” submarine near the northeastern port of Sinpo, flew 500 kilometres towards Japan, marking what weapons analysts called a clear step forward for its nuclear strike ambitions.

The flight distance, which was tracked by South Korea’s military Joint Chiefs of Staff, far exceeded any previous SLBM tests, suggesting significant progress in technical prowess.

A proven SLBM system would take North Korea’s nuclear strike threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean Peninsula and a “second-strike” capability in the event of an attack on its military bases.

Following the test, the UN Security Council agreed on Friday to “take further significant measures” against North Korea, without elaborating.

North Korea is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology, but Pyongyang has carried out several launches following its fourth nuclear test in January.

Despite the North’s successful test this week, the country faces significant technological challenges including building a new class of submarine to carry the missile.

Last month, 38 North reported the North was building up infrastructure to construct new submarines at the Sinpo South Shipyard.

“A new submarine could probably be built within a two to three year timeframe, but the likelihood of building new models without further testing and refinement of the experimental Gorae-class seems low,” it said.

But this is no information about whether actual submarine construction has begun, it added.

AMATRICE, Italy — The death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy reached at least 241 people on Thursday and could rise further after rescue teams worked through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble of flattened towns.

The 6.2 magnitude quake struck a cluster of mountain communities 140km east of Rome early on Wednesday as people slept, destroying hundreds of homes.

The Civil Protection department officially revised the death toll down to 241 from a previous 247 given earlier on Thursday morning.

Officials said they expected to confirm more deaths as the search operation continued. Trucks full of rubble left the area every few minutes, including one in which a dusty doll could be seen lying on top of tonnes of debris.

On Thursday, the sun rose on frightened people who had slept in cars or tents, the earth continuing to tremble under their feet from aftershocks, hundreds of which have struck since the quake. Two registered 5.1 and 5.4, just before dawn.

“I haven’t slept much because I was really afraid,” said 70-year-old Arturo Onesi from the town of Arquata del Tronto, who spent the night in a tent camp for survivors and rescue workers.

The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 220km from the epicentre.

Many of those killed or injured were holidaymakers in the four worst-hit towns — Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto, Arquata del Tronto and Accumoli — where populations increase by up to tenfold in the summer. That makes it harder to track the deaths.

One Spaniard, five Romanians, and a number of other foreigners, some of them care-givers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.

Aerial video taken by drones showed swathes of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, completely flattened. The town, known across Italy and beyond for a local pasta dish, had been filling up for the 50th edition of a popular food festival this weekend.

The mayor said the bodies of 15-20 tourists were believed to be under the rubble of the Hotel Roma, which he said had about 32 guests when it collapsed on Wednesday morning.

Girl found alive

About 270 people injured in Wednesday’s quake were hospitalised, the Civil Protection department said, adding that about 5,000 people, including police, firefighters, army troops and volunteers, were involved in post-quake operations.

Rescuers working with emergency lighting in the darkness saved a 10-year-old girl, pulling her alive from the rubble where she had lain for about 15 hours.

Many other children were not so lucky. A family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when a church bell tower toppled into their house in nearby Accumoli.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Cabinet was meeting on Thursday to decide emergency measures to help the affected communities.

“Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction,” he told reporters late on Wednesday.

The death toll appeared likely to rival or surpass that from the last major earthquake to strike Italy, which killed more than 300 people in the central city of L’Aquila in 2009.

While hopes of finding more people alive diminished by the hour, firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari recalled that survivors were found in L’Aquila up to 72 hours after that quake.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighbouring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The country’s most deadly earthquake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

KABUL — Twelve people, including seven students, were killed in an attack on the American University in Kabul that sent hundreds of students fleeing in panic, police said on Thursday, before the assault ended when two gunmen were shot dead.

The attack began at around 6:30pm on Wednesday with a large explosion that officials said was a car bomb followed by gunfire, as suspected militants battled into the complex where foreign staff and pupils were working.

Elite Afghan forces surrounded the walled compound and eventually worked their way inside, according to a senior interior ministry official.

Sporadic gunfire could be heard through the night and, before dawn, police said the operation had concluded after they killed at least two attackers.

There was no claim of responsibility for an attack in which Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said seven students, three policemen and two security guards were killed, the second incident involving the university this month.

President Ashraf Ghani called the assault “a cowardly attempt to hinder progress and development in Afghanistan”.

“Attacking educational institutions and public places and targeting civilians will not only fail to shake our determination, but will further strengthen it to fight and eradicate terror,” he said in a statement.

Islamist militant groups, mainly the Afghan Taliban and a local offshoot of the Daesh terror group, have claimed a string of recent bomb attacks aimed at destabilising Afghanistan and toppling the Western-backed government of Ghani.

One Ugandan man ­— a faculty member — was among the wounded, according to a list at the Kabul emergency hospital.

In a statement, the university said it was working with authorities to make sure everyone was accounted for.

“My number one priority at this point is the safety and security of all faculty staff, and students,” said Mark A. English, the university president.

Fraidoon Obaidi, chief of the Kabul police Criminal Investigation Department, told Reuters that police had evacuated between 700 and 750 students from the university, which is popular with the children of Afghanistan’s elite.

Desperate escapes

Terrified students recounted barricading themselves in classrooms or jumping from windows to escape.

“Many students jumped from the second floor, some broke their legs and some hurt their head trying to escape,” Abdullah Fahimi, a student who escaped, told Reuters. He injured his ankle making the leap.

“We were in the class when we heard a loud explosion followed by gunfire. It was very close. Some students were crying, others were screaming,” he said.

Others said they scrambled towards an emergency exit, scaled walls and jumped to safety.

The university buildings are protected by armed guards and watchtowers but the gunmen still got in.

Edrees Nawabi, another student at the university, said he had long been concerned about campus security.

“We were scared but also we wanted to be educated,” he said.

It was the second time this month that the university or its staff had been targeted.

Two teachers, an American and an Australian, were abducted at gunpoint from a road near the university on August 7. They are missing.

The American University of Afghanistan has about 1,700 students and advertises itself as the country’s only not-for-profit, “non-partisan”, co-educational university. It opened in 2006 and caters to full-time and part-time students.

Taliban insurgents control large swaths of Afghanistan, and the security forces are struggling to contain them, especially in the provinces of Helmand to the south and Kunduz to the north.

NATO ended its combat mission in December 2014 but thousands of foreign troops remain to train and assist Afghan forces, while several thousand other US soldiers are engaged in a separate mission focusing on Al Qaeda and Daesh.

The United States said it was closely monitoring the situation in Kabul following the university attack and that forces from the US-led coalition were involved in the response in an advise-and-assist role.

State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the US Embassy was working to account for all of its personnel and to locate and assist any US citizens affected.

KIEV — Tanks rumbled across Kiev on Tuesday as Ukraine marked 25 years of independence with a show of force against an increasingly assertive Russia and a war simmering in the pro-Kremlin separatist east.

Thousands of soldiers saluted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the same square where a pro-EU revolution in 2014 ousted a Moscow-backed leader and left former master Russia fuming.

Poroshenko used Wednesday’s event to take a dig at Russian President Vladimir Putin for famously calling the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.

“We were the ones who created what Putin later called the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe’,” Poroshenko declared in a speech to the nation as hundreds of Ukrainian blue and yellow flags fluttered in the damp wind.

“Looking back at more than two years of war, we can confidently say that our enemy failed to achieve a single goal — it was not able to bring Ukraine to its knees.”

 More than 9,500 people have died and two million forced from their homes in fighting between government forces and pro-Russian militias in two major industrial regions in the east that rebels now partially control.

Ukraine also lost its strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea when it was annexed by Russia on Putin’s orders in March 2014, shortly before the uprising in the east began.

Putin’s actions plunged the Kremlin’s relations with the West to a post-Cold War low that has complicated global attempts to find solutions to raging crises like the Syrian war.

But Russia has only ramped up its campaign to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad and this month escalated tensions with Ukraine by accusing it of plotting an incursion into Crimea.

Putin has repeatedly denied involvement in the separatist conflict and described Russians captured or spotted in the war zone as off duty soldiers and volunteers who were “following the call of their heart”.

ACCUMOLI, Italy — A powerful earthquake rattled a remote area of central Italy on Wednesday, leaving at least 120 people dead and scenes of carnage in mountain villages.

With 368 people injured and an unknown number trapped under rubble, the figure of dead and wounded was expected to rise in the wake of the pre-dawn quake, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned.

“This is not a final toll,” he said. 

Hundreds of people were to spend a chilly night in hastily-assembled tents with the risk of aftershocks making it far too risky for them to return home.

Scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the quake, which had a magnitude of between 6 and 6.2.

It hit a remote area straddling Umbria, Marche and Lazio at a time of year when second home owners and other visitors swell the numbers staying there. Many of the victims were from Rome.

The devastated area is just north of L’Aquila, the city where some 300 people died in another quake in 2009.

More than half of the deaths occurred in and around the villages of Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto.

Guido Bordo, 69, lost his sister and her husband after they were trapped inside their holiday house in the hamlet of Illica, near Accumoli.

Anguish 

“There’s no sound from them, we only heard their cats,” he told AFP before the deaths were confirmed.

“I wasn’t here. As soon as the quake happened, I rushed here. They managed to pull my sister’s children out, they’re in hospital now,” he added, wringing his hands in anguish.

Sergio Camosi escaped in his underwear with his wife and daughter just before his house caved in.

“We ran down the stairs but the door was blocked by stones so we had to climb out the window,” he said tearfully.

Among the victims was a nine-month-old baby girl whose parents survived, an 18-month-old toddler and two other young children who died with their parents in Accumoli.

Two boys aged four and seven were saved by their quick-thinking grandmother, who ushered them under a bed as soon as the shaking began, according to reports. She also survived but lost her husband.

And there were sobs in Illica when two sisters were reunited with their poodle, Lello, pulled alive from their abandoned house.

Bodies in playground 

It was Italy’s most powerful earthquake since the 2009 disaster in L’Aquila.

“Half the village has disappeared,” said Amatrice Mayor Sergio Pirozzi, surveying a town centre that looked as if had been subjected to a bombing raid.

Pope Francis interrupted his weekly audience in St Peter’s Square to express his shock.

“To hear the mayor of Amatrice say his village no longer exists and knowing that there are children among the victims, is very upsetting for me,” he said.

Civil Protection Chief Fabrizio Curcio classed the quake as “severe”. The shocks were strong enough to be felt 150 kilometres away in Rome, where authorities ordered structural tests on the Colosseum.

Some of the worst damage was suffered in Pescara del Tronto, a hamlet near Arquata in the Marche region where the bodies of the dead were laid out in a children’s play park.

With residents advised not to go back into their homes, temporary campsites were being established in Amatrice and Accumoli as authorities looked to find emergency accommodation for more than 2,000 people.

Amatrice is a hilltop beauty spot famed as the home of amatriciana, one of Italy’s favourite pasta sauces, and is a popular destination for Romans seeking cool mountain air at the height of the summer.

It was packed with visitors when the quake struck at 3:36am (0136 GMT).

Three minutes later the clock on the village’s 13th-century tower stopped.

Out of the blue 

The first quake measured 6.2, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which said it occurred at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres. 

It measured 6 according to Italian monitors, who put the depth at only four km. A 5.4-magnitude aftershock followed an hour later.

Italy is often shaken by earthquakes, usually centred on the mountainous spine of the boot-shaped country.

In 2009, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck close to the university city of L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region and left more than 300 people dead.

That disaster led to lengthy recriminations over lax building controls and the failure of authorities to warn residents that a quake could be imminent.

David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at Britain’s Open University, said Wednesday’s quake had been similar to the 2009 one.

“Both occurred at a shallow depth, which exacerbates the shaking at the surface,” he said.

“Unlike the L’Aquila quake, which was preceded by swarms of smaller quakes and led to claims — unjustified in my view — that the eventual big quake should have been predicted, this one appears to have struck out of the blue.”

RIGA — US Vice President Joe Biden told Baltic leaders on Tuesday not to take seriously comments by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that called into question the US commitment to protect NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression.

On a trip to Latvia, Biden suggested Trump, who has never held elected office, did not understand NATO’s mutual defence guarantee, known as Article Five.

“I want to make it absolutely clear to all the people in Baltic states: we have pledged our sacred honour, the United States of America... to the NATO treaty and Article Five,” Biden, a Democrat, said in the Latvian capital.

“The fact that you occasionally hear something from a presidential candidate in the other party, it’s... nothing that should be taken seriously,” Biden said.

Biden’s visit comes amid heightened tensions with Russia in the region and some nervousness among allies about Trump, who has suggested he might abandon NATO’s pledge to defend all alliance members automatically if elected.

Both Democrats and Republicans supported the NATO pledge, said Biden, who made his remarks during an appearance with the leaders of all three Baltic states in Riga.

“There is continued overwhelming bipartisan commitment in the United States of America in both political parties to maintain our commitment to NATO,” he said.

Trump is running against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has also affirmed her commitment to NATO. Clinton is ahead in polls.

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the three Baltic states which regained independence in the early 1990s a half century after being annexed by the Soviet Union, see themselves on the frontline of any potential conflict with Russia.

NATO leaders agreed last month to deploy military forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland for the first time and increase air and sea patrols to reassure allies in the region worried about the threat from Moscow.

“It is important for us that we are ready, all parties, to confirm our strategic partnership... and we are sure that no matter what changes will be after the elections in [the] United States, their commitments... to NATO, to [the] Baltic region, will stay,” said Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, speaking after Biden.

Russia often depicts NATO as an aggressor whose members are moving troops and military hardware further into former Soviet territory, which it regards as its sphere of influence.

On Wednesday, Biden travels to Turkey where he will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim before visiting Sweden to discuss Europe’s asylum crisis.

TOKYO — Foreign ministers from Japan, China and South Korea began a two-day meeting on Tuesday with their countries at odds over territorial disputes, a US missile defence system and perennial regional problem North Korea.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, China’s Wang Yi and South Korea’s Yun Byung-se met for dinner at a Tokyo hotel before the start of formal talks on Wednesday.

The three shook hands and smiled for the cameras without making any remarks.

The talks are the first since March last year and come ahead of a Group of 20 summit in China early next month.

“It is extremely important for the foreign ministers of the three countries that play major roles in the region to gather together and exchange opinions frankly,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters earlier.

Sino-Japanese tensions over a territorial dispute have risen this month, while China and South Korea have sparred over the planned deployment in the latter country of a US anti-missile system. 

The Tokyo-Seoul relationship is also prone to periodic tension due to the legacy of Japan’s harsh colonisation of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45.

Japan and China are locked in a long-running dispute over uninhabited islets in the East China Sea called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

Tokyo has lodged more than two dozen protests through diplomatic channels since August 5, saying there have been about 30 intrusions by Chinese vessels into its territorial waters.

“We will deliver Japan’s thinking directly and clearly,” a foreign ministry official said regarding the dispute with China. “It is important for us to send our message firmly.” 

The visit is the first by a Chinese foreign minister to Japan since Xi Jinping became president in March 2013.

Separately, China has complained about the planned deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system in South Korea, arguing the missile shield damages its own security interests and will heighten regional tension.

South Korea, wary of offending China, had wavered about the installation but went ahead in the face of North Korea’s continued missile development.

North Korea is likely to be a key topic at the meeting, though finding common ground will be difficult

Japan and South Korea regularly condemn Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile development, and feel frustrated by what they see as a lack of pressure on the country by the North’s economic lifeline China. 

Bilateral meetings between Kishida and his Chinese and South Korean counterparts are also scheduled.

The three-way meeting is expected to be followed later this year by a summit. The leaders met in November last year in South Korea.

“I strongly hope that the meeting will create big momentum” for a successful summit, said Japan’s Suga.

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday he expects talks with China on a long-simmering territorial dispute to start possibly this year, and urged Beijing to allow Filipinos to fish at a disputed shoal.

Duterte told reporters he preferred to engage China in a diplomatic dialogue rather than take a more aggressive stance that could anger Chinese officials into calling off possible talks.

Former President Fidel Ramos, a key political backer of Duterte, met Chinese intermediaries recently to pave the way for the talks, to be held in Beijing.

An international arbitration tribunal ruled last month that China’s massive territorial claims in the South China Sea based on historical grounds were invalid under a 1982 UN treaty, in a major setback for Beijing, which has ignored the decision.

Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, initiated the arbitration case against China. Duterte, however, has not pressed for Chinese compliance and does not plan to raise the decision at an annual summit of Southeast Asian leaders with their Chinese counterpart in Laos next month.

“It’s better to continually engage China in a diplomatic dialogue rather than anger whoever the officials there and they cut completely,” Duterte said, adding that possible talks on maritime and security issues would be undermined if ties are strained.

“China should be hearing us out now, about time that you lift the bans on tourists and allow the Filipinos to fish there,” Duterte said, referring to past Chinese restrictions on tourism and on access for Filipino fishermen to Chinese-controlled Scarborough Shoal, which Beijing seized in 2012.

Aside from China and the Philippines, four other governments are contesting ownership of parts of the South China Sea, a busy passageway for shipping. The region is also believed to sit atop sizable deposits of gas and oil.

SEOUL — South Korea and the United States kicked off large-scale military exercises on Monday, triggering condemnation and threats of a pre-emptive nuclear strike from North Korea.

The two-week annual Ulchi Freedom drill, which plays out a scenario of full-scale invasion by the nuclear-armed North, is largely computer-simulated but still involves around 50,000 Korean and 25,000 US soldiers.

The exercise always triggers a rise in tensions on the divided Korean peninsula, and this year it coincides with particularly volatile cross-border relations following a series of high-profile defections. 

Seoul and Washington insist the joint military drills are purely defensive in nature, but Pyongyang views them as wilfully provocative.

The North Korean foreign ministry on Monday condemned Ulchi Freedom as an “unpardonable criminal act” that could bring the peninsula to “the brink of war”.

The Korean People’s Army (KPA), meanwhile, threatened a military response to what it described as a rehearsal for a surprise nuclear attack and invasion of the North.

North Korea’s frontline units were “fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved”, said a spokesman for the KPA general staff.

Nuclear strike’ 

The slightest violation of North Korea’s territorial sovereignty would result in the source of the provocation being turned “into a heap of ashes through Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike”, the spokesman said.

Pyongyang has made similar threats in the past, and actual retaliation for South Korea-US military drills has largely been restricted to firing ballistic missiles into the sea.

The North’s main ally China voiced its opposition to Ulchi Freedom, with a commentary published by the official Xinhua news agency saying it would only make Pyongyang “more aggressive” at an already sensitive time.

As the drill began, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said a recent spate of headline-grabbing defections from North Korea signalled political turmoil in Pyongyang that could cause the leadership there to lash out against the South.

“It is increasingly possible that North Korea may undertake various terror attacks and provocations... to block internal unrest, prevent further defections and create confusion in our society,” Park told a meeting of her National Security Council.

On Sunday the unification ministry in Seoul urged all citizens to be on guard against possible North Korean assassination attempts on defectors and anti-Pyongyang activists in the South.

Park said the South’s military was on high alert and would “vigorously strike back” in the event of any hostile action.

 Communications cut 

Analysts say there is a genuine risk of an unintended incident escalating into a military clash, given the current absence of direct communication between the two Koreas.

As tensions rose in the wake of North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January, Pyongyang shut down the two existing hotlines with South Korea — one used by the military and one for government-to-government communications.

And last month it severed its only direct communications link with the United States when it closed the so-called “New York channel” which had previously served as a key point of contact between North Korean and US diplomats at the United Nations.

The January nuclear test heightened North Korea’s isolation as the international community, backed by the North’s main diplomatic protector China, imposed substantially upgraded economic sanctions.

Pyongyang has remained defiant, and there are concerns that the leadership will order a show of force in the wake of the recent defections.

Last week North Korea’s deputy ambassador to Britain, Thae Yong-ho, defected to the South — a rare and damaging loss of diplomatic face for Pyongyang and a major PR victory for Seoul.

The North’s official KCNA news agency described Thae as “human scum” and said he had fled to avoid criminal charges including embezzling funds and raping a minor.

Thae’s move fuelled Pyongyang’s fury at the defection in April of a dozen North Korean overseas restaurant workers, whom it insists were kidnapped by South Korean intelligence.