A spokesman for North Korea's Supreme Court said Thursday a Korean American man sentenced to 15 years of hard labor last week was engaged in a variety of propaganda activities in China to topple the Pyongyang government and that he was denied counsel in his trial held behind closed doors.

Washington is "fully committed" to protecting Japan, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday, days after Pyongyang threatened the Japanese capital would be "consumed in nuclear flames". "The United States is fully committed to the defence of Japan," Kerry told a joint press conference in Tokyo with Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, ahead of a widely anticipated missile launch by North Korea. Kerry's comments came after the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Friday that any attempt by Japan to shoot down a North Korean missile would result in war.

About 2,000 South Korean email accounts were registered with a North Korean propaganda website, according to the list of email accounts released by an anonymous hacker on Friday, raising speculations over whether to punish the email users for violating the National Security Law banning contact with North Korean materials. The list of 9,001 users, which the hacker "Anonymous" claimed it got from hacking the website of Uriminzokkiri, includes about 2,000 local email accounts serviced by Internet portal sites Daum, Naver and Nate as well as universities, media firms and local electronic

North Korea has produced another video showing the United States under attack, this time with the White House and the US Capitol literally in the crosshairs. The four-minute video titled "Firestorms will rain on the Headquarters of War" (http://y2u.be/DyapeCiOl9A) was posted Monday on the YouTube channel of the North's official website, Uriminzokkiri, which distributes news and propaganda from the state media.