Beijing  - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on Friday held his first meeting with a foreign guest since he reportedly suffered a stroke in August by welcoming a top Chinese Communist Party official, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

Kim met with Wang Jiarui, head of the international department of the party's Central Committee, in Pyongyang, Xinhua said, without giving details about the discussion or Kim's health.

Seoul, Jan. 19: The military establishment in North Korea has admitted over the weekend that it had "weaponised" enough plutonium for roughly four to six nuclear bombs.

The New York Times quoted scholar Selig Harrison as saying that North Korean officials had revealed this fact to him, certifying what US intelligence officials have already said that North Korea had harvested enough fuel for six or more bombs.

Seoul - North Korea's military Saturday threatened military conflict with South Korea, in the first public statement by the general staff of the North Korean People's Army in ten years.

The message, read by a military spokesman on North Korean television, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency.

It said that South Korean President Lee Myung Bak and his "puppet military warhawks" would force North Korea's military forces "to take a strong military retaliatory step to wipe them out."

New York, Jan 8 : A group of former prostitutes in South Korea have accused some of their country's former leaders of encouraging them to have sex with American soldiers who protected their country from North Korea, The New York Times has reported.

They have also accused past South Korean Governments, and the United States military, of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s through the 1980s, working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free for American troops.

Seoul  - North Koreans are watching South Korean-made film and TV drama DVDs in growing numbers, challenging the iron-fisted media control that has effectively isolated 23 million North Koreans from the outside world.

North Korea observers in Seoul estimate that a trickle of the media influx into the otherwise isolated North Koreans has become a stream, despite harsh penalties for those who violate censorship rules.

Seoul  - Communist North Korea plans to hold elections for its parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, on March 8, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday.

Elections to the assembly, which serves only to rubber-stamp decisions by the North Korean Worker's Party, are overdue, as the last five-year term expired in 2008. The elections are regarded a formality as candidates are hand-picked by the Korean leaders.