SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea's top nuclear envoy arrived in Beijing on Tuesday as Pyongyang said it was willing to step up talks with China on resuming stalled disarmament-for-aid talks. The apparent shift by North Korea toward returning to six-party talks came a day after the North's leader, Kim Jong-il, pledged again to remove nuclear weapons from the ...

SEOUL (Reuters) - A senior Chinese official met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Monday and a top U.N. political envoy was slated to arrive a day later in a new push to get the reclusive state to return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks. Chinese Communist Party international affairs chief Wang Jiarui met Kim and conveyed a verbal message from ...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired artillery toward a disputed sea border with its southern neighbor for the third straight day on Friday in a move seen by the South's president as a ploy by Pyongyang to put pressure on regional powers. President Lee Myung-bak also said the North's troubled economy was reeling under U.N. sanctions to punish ...