SEOUL, May 22 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday dispatched a top military official to China as a special envoy, the country's state media said. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Choe Ryong-hae, the director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, had left Pyongyang for China. It did not elaborate on details of the visit or the itinerary other than saying he was being sent by Kim.

SEOUL, May 21 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected a military unit, a state media outlet said Tuesday following three successive days of short-range projectile launches from the country's east coast. The North has fired a total of six short-range projectiles into the East Sea since Saturday, aggravating inter-Korean tensions. Seoul presumed the projectiles to be short-range missiles or rockets. Kim inspected Unit 405 of the Korean People's Army, the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Tuesday without providing the date of the inspection.

North Korean said Sunday that it has no plans to use a U.S. citizen recently sentenced to 15 years of hard labor as a bargaining chip with the United States, according to the country's official media. A spokesman for the country's Foreign Ministry also said that Pyongyang will not be inviting any U.S. figures to visit the country in order to resolve the situation surrounding the American, Kenneth Bae, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea's Supreme Court has sentenced a U.S. citizen to 15 years of compulsory labor for "committing hostile acts" against the country, its official media reported Thursday. The Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Beijing, said the sentence was handed down to Pae Jun Ho, a Korean-American who has been held in North Korea for nearly half a year. He was tried by the court on April 30, it said.