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The article focuses on North Korea's resumption of dumping trash across the border into South Korea as a form of showing displeasure, with the South Korean military discovering balloons carrying garbage across the Demilitarized Zone.

South Korean officials have detected ''brisk'' activity at a North Korean nuclear test site, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday, citing an unidentified South Korean government official. Last week, the North said it would carry out a second nuclear test and test launch intercontinental ballistic missiles unless the United Nations Security Council apologized for criticizing the country's April 5 rocket launching. The South Korean newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported that the authorities in Seoul were monitoring the movements of personnel and vehicles at a nuclear site in the northeastern county of Kilju, where the North conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. The paper quoted an unidentified South Korean government official as saying that the North was believed to be preparing to conduct a nuclear test soon. The paper did not say how South Korea obtained the intelligence. Officials at the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the National Intelligence Service said they could not confirm the report. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SEOUL, South Korea -- The North Korean military, the world's fourth-largest, has bolstered its special-forces units during the past two years and has deployed a new battle tank, called the Storm, while expanding its tank brigades, the South Korean Defense Ministry said on Thursday in its biennial white paper. The report said the North's overall troop strength had remained the same since 2008, when the active-duty force was estimated at 1.1 million. With a population of 24 million, North Korea has by far the world's largest military in per capita terms. In actual numbers of troops, only China, the United States and India are larger. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spy satellites have detected what looks to be a Taepodong-2 long-range missile at the Musudan-ri launching site near North Korea's northeastern coast, South Korea's leading daily newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported on Thursday. The paper attributed the report to an unidentified diplomatic source. North Korea told international agencies this week that it planned to put a communications satellite into orbit between April 4 and April 8, but that is widely believed to be a cover story to test the Taepodong-2. Once the rocket was installed on the pad, missile experts said, it could be launched within three or four days. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

North Korean guards detained an American journalist near the country's western border with China, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday. However, the South Korean television network YTN said two American reporters were involved. The newspaper, Munwha Ilbo in Seoul, said North Korean soldiers detained a female reporter Tuesday in the border region along the Yalu River dividing China and North Korea. The report cited unnamed diplomatic sources in Seoul. The paper identified her as a reporter named Ming working for a television station in the United States. YTN said two reporters were on the Chinese side of the river that marks the border when North Korean guards ordered them to stop filming the North. When the women refused, the guards crossed into China to arrest them. Both were working for online media, and one was identified as a Californian with the surname Park, YTN reported. No information was available from South Korean or American diplomatic sources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In early April, when North Korea called President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea an ''impostor,'' a ''traitor'' and an ''American running dog,'' the verbal barbs sounded all too familiar to Jin Yong-seon. He has a museum filled with them. In his Remembrance Museum in this former mining town about 90 miles east of Seoul, Mr. Jin is exhibiting 700 samples of what he calls ''paper bombs,'' the leaflets North and South Korea fired at each other from the Korean War to 2000, when reconciliation efforts prompted a cease-fire in the propaganda battle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]