* Defectors hear stories of cash rewards for those who return

* Kim could be trying to show that life is tough in the South for defectors

* Some 25,000 North Koreans have fled for South Korea

* Kim's father had punished the families of defectors

SEOUL, Aug 19 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is taking a new approach to defectors who have fled his impoverished and repressive state, promising they will not be harmed if they come home, and even offering cash rewards, according to some in the exile community.

For some who return from South Korea there's even the chance of a stage-managed performance on state television, although what happens to them after their prime time appearances is not known in a state where 200,000 people are imprisoned in gulags and where punishment extends to three generations of a family.

One woman last year apologised at a televised press conference in Pyongyang for betraying her motherland and thanked Kim for bringing her under his "profound loving care" while another dubbed South Korea a "shitty world with no love".

That's in sharp contrast to the approach taken by Kim's father, who during nearly 20 years in power hid the issue and severely punished the families of those who defected, fearing they would undermine the state with their tales of the prosperous South.

North Korean security agents have been visiting families in the reclusive state for at least the past year, telling them it would be safe for their loved ones in the South to come back, several defectors in Seoul told Reuters.

Some said they had even heard of people posing as defectors trying to tempt North Koreans in the South this year with a promise of 50 million South Korean won ($45,000) and an opportunity to appear on television in Pyongyang if they returned.

"My mother said 'if you have money, come back. General Kim Jong-un will treat you well'," said one defector in her 30s who lives in Seoul, recounting a recent telephone conversation with her mother who called her from a North Korean town on the border with China.

"Other defectors are getting that kind of phone call," said the defector, surnamed Lee, who asked that her full name not be used because she feared reprisals against her family in the North.

It is impossible to verify how many of the 25,000 North Koreans who have defected to the South have returned. One high profile case this year involved a fisherman who stole a trawler and returned to the North for the fourth time.

Experts said Kim could be trying to show his people that instead of living happily in South Korea, defectors are miserable, have menial jobs and struggle to fit in - something defectors in Seoul say is not far from the truth.

While offering an olive branch to some defectors, Kim has also made it harder for North Koreans to escape by tightening security along the country's land border with China and defectors and their families still fill the country's prison camps, experts said.

While it's impossible to verify what happens to North Koreans who return, a diplomat in Pyongyang said a group of nine defectors who were sent home after being detained in Laos in May while trying to get to South Korea had not been harmed.

The United Nations had said it feared for the group, which included up to five minors and who like some defectors were trying to reach a South Korean embassy in Southeast Asia after having first travelled through China.

"They actually have been quite well treated since they have been back here," said the diplomat, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of working in Pyongyang. An Amnesty International official also said there had been no reports the nine had been harmed.

"When defectors come back they are not all trucked to prison. What can happen is they are put on TV ... for propaganda," said the diplomat.

Exactly why Kim has taken a different view of defectors is unclear.

Several defectors told Reuters they believed he was trying to put his own spin on the issue because of the growing influence of an increasingly vocal exile community in the South.

The move also comes as pressure over human rights is mounting on Pyongyang with the recent appointment of members to a U.N. commission that will spend a year investigating possible crimes against humanity in North Korea.

Defectors will testify at unprecedented public hearings in Seoul this week as part of that investigation.

Better communications have also opened the way for regular contact between defectors and their families in North Korea - allowing stories of life outside one of the world's most isolated countries to seep back.

For example, defector groups in Seoul estimate that 3,000 phone calls are made each day to the North, routed through Chinese mobile networks along the 1,400 km (870 mile) long land border that China shares with North Korea.

An estimated 70 percent of defectors in South Korea also send cash back to family via Chinese brokers along the border, according to a South Korean research institute.

While the younger Kim - who took power following the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late 2011 - has promised no retribution for returning defectors, he has tightened security at the Tumen and Yalu Rivers along the border with China, experts said.

Last year, the number of defectors entering South Korea fell 44 percent to 1,509 from 2,706 in 2011, South Korean government data shows. In 2010, 2,402 defectors arrived and 2,900 in 2009.

During the first quarter of this year, the monthly average of new defectors was down 15 percent from the previous year.

"Rumours that the regime will annihilate three generations (of one family) or that border guards will shoot to kill if anyone is caught crossing the river have swirled around a lot," said Cho Jung-hyun, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, who regularly interviews defectors.

"On the other hand, under what's called "benevolent politics", the regime keeps sending out a message of embracing those who left in tough times without punishment."

Cho said recent arrivals had told him North Korean authorities were more thoroughly examining lists of missing persons to work out which families to put pressure on. Usually when someone defects, their families in North Korea report them as dead or missing.

Pyongyang has held at least six press events since last year with returning defectors that have been broadcast on North Korean state television. The most recent was in June.

All have had the air of choreography familiar to North Korea watchers.

The well-dressed returnees usually sing a song pledging loyalty to Kim and stand up to shout: 'Great Marshal Kim Jong-un, thank you so much!' while pumping the air with their fists.

In one press conference last November, Kim Kwang-hyok called South Korea a "shitty world with no love".

Pak Jong-suk said living in South Korea made her feel like a "miserable slave". Pak was given a new house in Pyongyang, state media said.

South Korea's government has noticed Kim's apparent change of heart and one government official who follows the issue said returning defectors were being used for domestic consumption.

"By airing these press conferences in prime time, North Korea is using defectors for internal propaganda," the official said.

It was unclear how many had gone back under Kim's rule, the official said. He also had no information on purported defectors trying to entice North Koreans to return with promises of cash.

Pressure to return appears to be exerted in other ways, too.

Just over a year ago, one North Korean defector in Seoul, a former state-sanctioned pop singer, began getting mysterious telephone calls in the middle of the night.

The calls lasted for months, with the caller usually saying nothing. He suspected it was North Korean security agents.

"I had nothing to say. It was too terrifying," the defector said. At around the same time, a North Korean security agent visited his parents saying he should return home.

His parents also attended a public lecture in which authorities promised no punishment if defectors went back.

Defectors in Seoul said Pyongyang's new approach tapped into their longing for family as well as the difficulty of adjusting to life in South Korea, a country whose per capita income is around 45 times that of the North.

New defectors get interrogated by the intelligence services to weed out spies before going to a settlement centre south of Seoul for 12 weeks of training and counselling to help them get to grips with South Korea's hyper-competitive high-tech society.

They get subsidies for housing and study, as well as job skills training. But many end up doing jobs shunned by ordinary South Koreans.

Around 20 percent of defectors are unemployed, six to seven times higher than the average for South Koreans, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights said early this year.

Kim Seung-chul, a defector who runs a Seoul radio station that broadcasts news into North Korea, said every defector sympathised with those who returned.

"Defectors all watch these press conferences. We know it's better to live here but the loneliness and hardship makes us feel like wanting to go back," said Kim, 52.

The former North Korean singer, who left his parents and siblings back in the North, said he believed returnees got a house and a job, but were put under watch.

"If they are caught with a small problem while being monitored, then it will be all over," he said. ($1 = 1,112.2750 Korean won) (Additional reporting by Se Young Lee in Seoul and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Dean Yates and David Chance)</s>The North withdrew its 53,000 workers from the complex this month amid spiraling tension between the two Koreas. The North had prevented South Korean workers and supplies from getting in to the zone since April 3.

The two Koreas remain technically at war under a mere truce that ended hostilities in their 1950-53 conflict and North Korea, angry at U.N. sanctions and joint South Korean-U.S. military drills, had in recent weeks threatened both countries with nuclear attack.

South Korean officials said the seven were not at risk. But the delay was another complication in what had been a decade of experiment merging the affluent South's capital and the North's cheap labor as a trial on commercial cooperation.

"As the North has said in their statements about ensuring the safety of the people who will be returning, we do not consider them at risk but we will be closely watching until all of them are back," a South Korean government official said.

The Kaesong project opened in 2004 as part of the so-called sunshine policy of engagement and optimism between the two Koreas, and 123 South Korean companies produced clothing, household goods and motorcycle helmets employing local workers.

The zone was a lucrative source of cash for the North, providing it with almost $90 million a year. South Korean manufacturers have been paying about $130 a month to North Korea for each of the workers they employed.</s>South Korea's Defense Ministry said North Korea had fired one missile on Monday morning and a second one in the afternoon. Both were fired into the sea off North Korea's east coast, a ministry official said.

The launches come hard on the heels of more than two months of threats from North Korea that it would wage a nuclear war against South Korea and the United States if it were attacked.

The North condemned joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises, that ended in late April, as a rehearsal for an attack on its territory.

"We are conducting intense military exercises to strengthen our defense capacity," North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the body that handles inter-Korean issues, as saying on Monday.

"Our military is conducting these exercises in order to cope with the mounting war measures from the U.S. and South Korea, which is the legitimate right of any sovereign country."

North Korea frequently fires short-range missiles, although the current spate of launches has drawn criticism from South Korea and the United States after the recent threats from the North.

Seoul on Monday condemned the launches for stoking tension in the region while Beijing, the North's sole major ally, called for restraint.

"These launches are its tactic of signaling to the world that the regime is willing to negotiate now, while at the same time saving face," Kim Yeon-su, a professor at Korea National Defense University in Seoul, which is part of the Defense Ministry, said of North Korea.

Kim said that North Korea had an arsenal of hundreds of short- and medium-range missiles.

There appears to be little prospect of talks between North Korea and the United States as Washington insists that Pyongyang needs to abandon its nuclear weapons program, something the isolated and impoverished state has said it will not do.</s>SEOUL, South Korea — An outcast from North Korea's ruling family was killed with a weapon believed to belong to North Korea's chemical arsenal and several North Koreans are wanted for questioning. But with Malaysia deporting the only North Korean it detained in the airport assassination of Kim Jong Nam, many in South Korea see the secretive, dictatorial regime in Pyongyang escaping punishment for another mysterious killing.

The government in Seoul and human rights groups say Pyongyang has for decades acted to silence its perceived enemies, sending assassins after South Korean government officials, North Korean defectors and anti-Pyongyang activists.

And yet North Korea often takes out the targets without leaving evidence that would indisputably prove its involvement, South Koreans say.

When suspicions were expressed, North Korea responded with silence or with wounded indignation. Some of the mysterious deaths suspected of being carried out by North Korea:

Choi (pronounced Chwey) Duk-kun, a South Korean diplomat stationed in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, just north of North Korea, was found dead in front of his apartment in 1996. He had head wounds, but his passport and money were still in his pockets.

South Korea is almost certain North Korea organized a hit job on the diplomat who had been monitoring the North.

The biggest evidence Seoul offers? He was stabbed with a sharp object on his right side, and investigators later found in his bloodstream traces of neostigmine bromide, a chemical that attacks the nervous system and was known to be frequently used by North Korean operatives.

The timing of Choi's death was also suspicious. It came weeks after a North Korean submarine beached on South Korea's east coast. Twenty-two North Koreans were killed by South Korean forces or were later found dead, prompting the North to vow "hundredfold and thousand-fold" retaliation.

Choi's assailants were never caught. North Korea denied involvement and claimed it was framed by Seoul.

North Korea hates South Korean activists, many of them evangelical Christians, who smuggle out defectors and send anti-Pyongyang literature and Bibles into the North across the border from China.

South Korea believes Pyongyang killed at least one of them, Patrick Kim, a 46-year-old pastor who died in August 2011 after collapsing in the Chinese border city of Dandong.

South Korea said Kim was likely attacked by a North Korean agent using a poisoned needle. Investigators detected in Kim's body neostigmine bromide, the same chemical found in the diplomat in Vladivostok.

A day after Kim's attack, Kang (pronounced Gahng) Ho-bin, another South Korean missionary who helped defectors, was stabbed in the back with what officials believed was a poisoned needle in another Chinese city, Yangji.

The assailant wasn't captured. Kang survived the attack, but was killed in 2012 after his car collided with a bus in the Chinese city of Longjing.

There are suspicions that North Korea also assassinated Han Chung Ryeol, a Korean-Chinese pastor who was found dead in the Chinese county of Changbai last year with slash wounds to his neck.

South Korea almost immediately blamed the 1997 death of Lee Han-young, a nephew of one of the former wives of North Korea's second leader, Kim Jong Il, on North Korean agents sent on a revenge mission. But police failed to catch the assailants before they allegedly returned to the North.

Lee died of gunshot wounds after being attacked in front of his apartment near Seoul in 1997. According to his neighbors, Lee after the shooting said, "spy, spy," and held up two fingers, perhaps indicating the number of attackers. Police said a woman purporting to be a magazine reporter called the apartment to ask when Lee would be home before the attack.

Lee had defected through Switzerland in 1982, but Seoul kept his arrival secret until 1996, when his mother also fled the North. He had harshly criticized the country and his dictator uncle.

South Korean officials said that Lee's killing might have also been North Korea's way of sending a message to Hwang Jang-yop, a former North Korean Workers' Party secretary who defected to the South earlier in 1997.

Hwang, who once tutored Kim Jong Il and remains the highest-level North Korean to seek asylum in South Korea, survived what the South said was an assassination attempt by the North in 2010. He died six months after his would-be assailants were arrested, at the age of 87.</s>The announcement by the country's top military body came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction North Korea for a rocket launch in December that breached U.N. rules.

North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.

"We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States," North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA.

North Korea is believed by South Korea and other observers to be "technically ready" for a third nuclear test, and the decision to go ahead rests with leader Kim Jong-un, who pressed ahead with the December rocket launch in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.

China, the one major diplomatic ally of the isolated and impoverished North, agreed to the U.S.-backed resolution and it also supported resolutions in 2006 and 2009 after Pyongyang's two earlier nuclear tests.

Thursday's statement by North Korea represents a huge challenge to Beijing as it undergoes a leadership transition, with Xi Jinping due to take office in March.

China's Foreign Ministry called for calm and restraint and a return to six-party talks, but effectively singled out North Korea, urging the "relevant party" not to take any steps that would raise tensions.

"We hope the relevant party can remain calm and act and speak in a cautious and prudent way and not take any steps which may further worsen the situation," ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular press briefing.

North Korea has rejected proposals to restart the talks aimed at reining in its nuclear capacity. The United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas are the six parties involved.

"After all these years and numerous rounds of six-party talks we can see that China's influence over North Korea is actually very limited. All China can do is try to persuade them not to carry out their threats," said Cai Jian, an expert on Korea at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Analysts said the North could test as early as February as South Korea prepares to install a new, untested president or that it could choose to stage a nuclear explosion to coincide with former ruler Kim Jong-il's Feb 16 birthday.

"North Korea will have felt betrayed by China for agreeing to the latest U.N. resolution and they might be targeting (China) as well (with this statement)," said Lee Seung-yeol, senior research fellow at Ewha Institute of Unification Studies in Seoul.

Washington urged North Korea not to proceed with a third test just as the North's statement was published on Thursday.

"Whether North Korea tests or not is up to North Korea," Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy for North Korean diplomacy, said in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

"We hope they don't do it. We call on them not to do it," Davies said after a meeting with South Korean officials. "This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean peninsula."

The North was banned from developing missile and nuclear technology under sanctions dating from its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

A South Korean military official said the concern now is that Pyongyang could undertake a third nuclear test using highly enriched uranium for the first time, opening a second path to a bomb.

North Korea's 2006 nuclear test using plutonium produced a puny yield equivalent to one kiloton of TNT - compared with 13-18 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb - and U.S. intelligence estimates put the 2009 test's yield at roughly two kilotons

North Korea is estimated to have enough fissile material for about a dozen plutonium warheads, although estimates vary, and intelligence reports suggest that it has been enriching uranium to supplement that stock and give it a second path to the bomb.

According to estimates from the Institute for Science and International Security from late 2012, North Korea could have enough weapons grade uranium for 21-32 nuclear weapons by 2016 if it used one centrifuge at its Yongbyon nuclear plant to enrich uranium to weapons grade.

North Korea has not yet mastered the technology needed to make a nuclear warhead small enough for an intercontinental missile, most observers say, and needs to develop the capacity to shield any warhead from re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

North Korea gave no time-frame for the coming test and often employs harsh rhetoric in response to U.N. and U.S. actions that it sees as hostile.

The bellicose statement on Thursday appeared to dent any remaining hopes that Kim Jong-un, believed to be 30 years old, would pursue a different path from his father, Kim Jong-il, who oversaw the country's military and nuclear programs.

"The UNSC (Security Council) resolution masterminded by the U.S. has brought its hostile policy towards the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) to its most dangerous stage," the commission was quoted as saying.</s>North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is taking a new approach to defectors who have fled his impoverished and repressive state, promising they will not be harmed if they come home, and even offering cash rewards, according to some in the exile community.

For some who return from South Korea there's even the chance of a stage-managed performance on state television, although what happens to them after their prime time appearances is not known in a state where 200,000 people are imprisoned in gulags and where punishment extends to three generations of a family.

One woman last year apologised at a televised press conference in Pyongyang for betraying her motherland and thanked Kim for bringing her under his "profound loving care" while another dubbed South Korea a "shitty world with no love".

That's in sharp contrast to the approach taken by Kim's father, who during nearly 20 years in power hid the issue and severely punished the families of those who defected, fearing they would undermine the state with their tales of the prosperous South.

North Korean security agents have been visiting families in the reclusive state for at least the past year, telling them it would be safe for their loved ones in the South to come back, several defectors in Seoul told Reuters.

Some said they had even heard of people posing as defectors trying to tempt North Koreans in the South this year with a promise of 50 million South Korean won ($45,000) and an opportunity to appear on television in Pyongyang if they returned.

"My mother said 'if you have money, come back. General Kim Jong-un will treat you well'," said one defector in her 30s who lives in Seoul, recounting a recent telephone conversation with her mother who called her from a North Korean town on the border with China.

"Other defectors are getting that kind of phone call," said the defector, surnamed Lee, who asked that her full name not be used because she feared reprisals against her family in the North.

It is impossible to verify how many of the 25,000 North Koreans who have defected to the South have returned. One high profile case this year involved a fisherman who stole a trawler and returned to the North for the fourth time.

Experts said Kim could be trying to show his people that instead of living happily in South Korea, defectors are miserable, have menial jobs and struggle to fit in - something defectors in Seoul say is not far from the truth.

While offering an olive branch to some defectors, Kim has also made it harder for North Koreans to escape by tightening security along the country's land border with China and defectors and their families still fill the country's prison camps, experts said.

While it's impossible to verify what happens to North Koreans who return, a diplomat in Pyongyang said a group of nine defectors who were sent home after being detained in Laos in May while trying to get to South Korea had not been harmed.

The United Nations had said it feared for the group, which included up to five minors and who like some defectors were trying to reach a South Korean embassy in Southeast Asia after having first travelled through China.

"They actually have been quite well treated since they have been back here," said the diplomat, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of working in Pyongyang. An Amnesty International official also said there had been no reports the nine had been harmed.

"When defectors come back they are not all trucked to prison. What can happen is they are put on TV ... for propaganda," said the diplomat.

Exactly why Kim has taken a different view of defectors is unclear.

Several defectors told Reuters they believed he was trying to put his own spin on the issue because of the growing influence of an increasingly vocal exile community in the South.

The move also comes as pressure over human rights is mounting on Pyongyang with the recent appointment of members to a U.N. commission that will spend a year investigating possible crimes against humanity in North Korea.

Defectors will testify at unprecedented public hearings in Seoul this week as part of that investigation.

Better communications have also opened the way for regular contact between defectors and their families in North Korea - allowing stories of life outside one of the world's most isolated countries to seep back.

For example, defector groups in Seoul estimate that 3,000 phone calls are made each day to the North, routed through Chinese mobile networks along the 1,400 km (870 mile) long land border that China shares with North Korea.

An estimated 70 percent of defectors in South Korea also send cash back to family via Chinese brokers along the border, according to a South Korean research institute.

While the younger Kim - who took power following the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late 2011 - has promised no retribution for returning defectors, he has tightened security at the Tumen and Yalu Rivers along the border with China, experts said.

Last year, the number of defectors entering South Korea fell 44 percent to 1,509 from 2,706 in 2011, South Korean government data shows. In 2010, 2,402 defectors arrived and 2,900 in 2009.

During the first quarter of this year, the monthly average of new defectors was down 15 percent from the previous year.

"Rumours that the regime will annihilate three generations (of one family) or that border guards will shoot to kill if anyone is caught crossing the river have swirled around a lot," said Cho Jung-hyun, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, who regularly interviews defectors.

"On the other hand, under what's called "benevolent politics", the regime keeps sending out a message of embracing those who left in tough times without punishment."

Cho said recent arrivals had told him North Korean authorities were more thoroughly examining lists of missing persons to work out which families to put pressure on. Usually when someone defects, their families in North Korea report them as dead or missing.

Pyongyang has held at least six press events since last year with returning defectors that have been broadcast on North Korean state television. The most recent was in June.

All have had the air of choreography familiar to North Korea watchers.

The well-dressed returnees usually sing a song pledging loyalty to Kim and stand up to shout: 'Great Marshal Kim Jong-un, thank you so much!' while pumping the air with their fists.

In one press conference last November, Kim Kwang-hyok called South Korea a "shitty world with no love".

Pak Jong-suk said living in South Korea made her feel like a "miserable slave". Pak was given a new house in Pyongyang, state media said.

South Korea's government has noticed Kim's apparent change of heart and one government official who follows the issue said returning defectors were being used for domestic consumption.

"By airing these press conferences in prime time, North Korea is using defectors for internal propaganda," the official said.

It was unclear how many had gone back under Kim's rule, the official said. He also had no information on purported defectors trying to entice North Koreans to return with promises of cash.

Pressure to return appears to be exerted in other ways, too.

Just over a year ago, one North Korean defector in Seoul, a former state-sanctioned pop singer, began getting mysterious telephone calls in the middle of the night.

The calls lasted for months, with the caller usually saying nothing. He suspected it was North Korean security agents.

"I had nothing to say. It was too terrifying," the defector said. At around the same time, a North Korean security agent visited his parents saying he should return home.

His parents also attended a public lecture in which authorities promised no punishment if defectors went back.

Defectors in Seoul said Pyongyang's new approach tapped into their longing for family as well as the difficulty of adjusting to life in South Korea, a country whose per capita income is around 45 times that of the North.

New defectors get interrogated by the intelligence services to weed out spies before going to a settlement centre south of Seoul for 12 weeks of training and counselling to help them get to grips with South Korea's hyper-competitive high-tech society.

They get subsidies for housing and study, as well as job skills training. But many end up doing jobs shunned by ordinary South Koreans.

Around 20 percent of defectors are unemployed, six to seven times higher than the average for South Koreans, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights said early this year.

Kim Seung-chul, a defector who runs a Seoul radio station that broadcasts news into North Korea, said every defector sympathised with those who returned.

"Defectors all watch these press conferences. We know it's better to live here but the loneliness and hardship makes us feel like wanting to go back," said Kim, 52.

The former North Korean singer, who left his parents and siblings back in the North, said he believed returnees got a house and a job, but were put under watch.

"If they are caught with a small problem while being monitored, then it will be all over," he said. ($1 = 1,112.2750 Korean won)</s>In a third straight day of fiery rhetoric, the North directed its verbal onslaught at its neighbour on Friday, saying: "'Sanctions' mean a war and a declaration of war against us."

The reclusive North this week declared a boycott of all dialogue aimed at ending its nuclear programme and vowed to conduct more rocket and nuclear tests after the U.N. Security Council censured it for a December long-range missile launch.

"If the puppet group of traitors takes a direct part in the U.N. 'sanctions,' the DPRK will take strong physical counter-measures against it," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, referring to the South.

The committee is the North's front for dealings with the South. The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Speaking in Beijing, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Glyn Davies said he found North Korea's rhetoric "troubling and counterproductive," and that he and his Chinese counterparts had agreed a new nuclear test would be harmful.

"We will judge North Korea by its actions, not its words. These types of inflammatory statements by North Korea do nothing to contribute to peace and stability on the peninsula," he said.

"What North Korea has done through its actions, in particular through the launch on December 12 of a rocket in contravention of Security Council resolutions, is they have made it that much more difficult to contemplate getting back to a diplomatic process."

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged North Korea's young leader Kim Jong-un to choose a different path, rather than "continue to waste what little money the country has on missile technologies and things while his people go hungry."

The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea's December rocket launch on Tuesday and expanded existing U.N. sanctions.

On Thursday, the United States slapped economic sanctions on two North Korean bank officials and a Hong Kong trading company that it accused of supporting Pyongyang's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The company, Leader (Hong Kong) International Trading Ltd, was separately blacklisted by the United Nations on Wednesday.

Seoul has said it will look at whether there are any further sanctions that it can implement alongside the United States, but said the focus for now is to follow Security Council resolutions.

The resolution said the council "deplores the violations" by North Korea of its previous resolutions, which banned Pyongyang from conducting further ballistic missile and nuclear tests and from importing materials and technology for those programmes. It does not impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.

The United States had wanted to punish North Korea for the rocket launch with a Security Council resolution that imposed entirely new sanctions against Pyongyang, but Beijing rejected that option. China agreed to U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

Nuland declined to speculate whether the United States thinks the U.N. steps would change North Korea's behaviour.

"What's been important to us is strong unity among the six-party talks countries; strong unity in the region about a positive course forward; and the fact that there will be consequences if they keep making bad choices," she said.

Long-dormant six-nation talks brought together the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas in negotiations to try to induce Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear arms quest in exchange for economic aid and diplomatic normalization.

North Korea's rhetoric this week amounted to some of the angriest outbursts against the outside world coming under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who took over after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late 2011.

On Thursday, the North said it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test, directing its ire at the United States, a country it called its "sworn enemy".

U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the comments were worrying.

"We are very concerned with North Korea's continuing provocative behaviour," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

"We are fully prepared ... to deal with any kind of provocation from the North Koreans. But I hope in the end that they determine that it is better to make a choice to become part of the international family."

North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.

South Korea and others who have been closely observing activities at the North's known nuclear test grounds believe Pyongyang is technically ready to go ahead with its third atomic test and awaiting the political decision of its leader.

The North's committee also declared on Friday that a landmark agreement it signed with the South in 1992 on eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula was invalid, repeating its long-standing accusation that Seoul was colluding with Washington.

The foreign ministry of China, the North's sole remaining major diplomatic and economic benefactor, repeated its call for calm on the Korean peninsula at its daily briefing earlier on Friday.

"The current situation on the Korea peninsula is complicated and sensitive," spokesman Hong Lei said.

"We hope all relevant parties can see the big picture, maintain calm and restraint, further maintain contact and dialogue, and improve relations, while not taking actions to further complicate and escalate the situation," Hong said.

But unusually prickly comments in Chinese state media on Friday hinted at Beijing's exasperation.

"It seems that North Korea does not appreciate China's efforts," said the Global Times in an editorial, a sister publication of the official People's Daily.

"Just let North Korea be 'angry' ... China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there. This should be the baseline of China's position."</s>The four-nation Women's East Asian Cup, which also features China and Japan, sees South Korea face their bitter rivals from the North at Seoul's World Cup stadium on Sunday.

The tournament takes place with the two Koreas engaged in rare talks aimed at restarting a jointly run industrial project in Kaesong, which closed in April as relations between Seoul and Pyongyang plummeted.

The closure of the park, a money-spinner for the impoverished North, came after North Korea threatened strikes with nuclear and other missiles against the South and the United States after the United Nations imposed toughened sanctions on the North for its third nuclear test in February.

While most other aspects of cross-border cooperation have been frozen, sport seems to be one area in which the North has found some common ground with its neighbour.

Jeon Young-sun, professor at the Institute of the Humanities for Unification from Konkuk University, said some significance could be attached to the visit of the women's team but the relationship had to improve before progress could be made.

"It (the visit) can be considered meaningful but in the middle of a lull in South-North Korea relations, politics are likely to impact sports, not the other way," Jeon told Reuters.

Sporting relations between the two Koreas have veered from cosy to ice cool in recent years, the high point being their joint march under a 'unification flag' at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

The two Koreas also fielded a joint team for the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships but examples of such rapprochement are rare.

At last year's London Olympics, the North Korean women's soccer team walked off the pitch in disgust after the South Korea flag was incorrectly displayed on a giant screen at Glasgow's Hampden Park stadium.

The game was delayed for over an hour after images of the North Korea players were displayed beside the South Korea flag and London Olympics organisers had to issue an apology.

Soccer has been a familiar battleground for political tensions to be played out.

The North did not even attempt to qualify for the 2002 World Cup, which was being co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, while matches between the two teams during 2010 World Cup qualifiers were a constant headache for the game's governing body FIFA.

Games scheduled for Pyongyang had to be moved to Shanghai after the North refused to allow the South Korean national anthem to be played in Kim Il-sung Stadium, or for the South's flag to be flown.

Kwak Moon-wan, the head of a North Korean defectors' football club in Seoul, said there was little hope that sport could be used as a vehicle to close the ideological gap.

"It would be very significant if North Korea were to let South Koreans play on its soil and let them fly their flag and play their national anthem," said Kwak, who fled the North and settled in Seoul in 2003.

"But until that happens, sports can't be used for diplomacy between here and there."

While some have expressed hope that the two Olympic teams could march together when the Winter Games come to South Korea's Pyeongchang in 2018, a Korean Olympic Committee official told Reuters that possibility remained a distant one.

"This is the first time North Korean athletes are visiting South Korea since inter-Korean relations went sour earlier this year, but unfortunately there is nothing going on as to forming a joint team or marching together at an international competition," he said.

"In order for that to happen, we first need to have a bond of sympathy or a feeling of brotherhood but given the current political standoff, it is unlikely."

The women's East Asian Cup wraps up on July 27. A men's tournament is being held at the same time but North Korea did not qualify for the finals.</s>As Barack Obama was leaving office, he told Donald Trump that North Korea would likely be his most urgent problem as president, according to an investigation by the New York Times.

North Korea has successfully launched hundreds of short- and mid-range missiles, but it has not yet launched a long-range missile that might threaten the US. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, however, recently said the country will soon test intercontinental missiles, though it’s hard to say if he’s bluffing,

Under the Obama administration, the US increased cyber and electronic attacks on North Korea’s missile tests. According to The Times, some say this strategy has been effective, pointing to the large number of its missiles that have in recent years begun to “explode, veer off course, disintegrate in midair and plunge into the sea.” Others are more skeptical of the US’s success in sabotaging North Korea’s missile program, arguing that other factors, such as manufacturing errors and incompetence, could be responsible for the failed missiles.

According to the Times, the Trump administration considers everything to be “on the table” when it comes to dealing with North Korea. Some of those options include escalating cyber and electronic interference, negotiating with North Korea, asking the Chinese to restrict trade and support to North Korea, and preemptively attacking the North Korean launch sites (something the Obama administration considered).

The Trump administration is also reportedly considering putting American nuclear weapons back into South Korea (from which they were withdrawn about 25 years ago).

None of these options is perfect. Some experts argue that interfering with an enemy’s launch capabilities through cyberwarfare, for instance, could encourage Russia and China to do the same to American missiles. Reinstating nuclear weapons in South Korea could accelerate an arms race with North Korea.

After Kim first announced North Korea was preparing to test an intercontinental missile, Trump tweeted that “It won’t happen!” which was interpreted by some to mean he would take an aggressive approach toward the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear ambitions.</s>The Ministry of Unification announced Sunday that it would pay up to 1 billion won ($860,000) -- eclipsing the previous maximum of 250 million won.

A bill outlining the changes is set to be submitted and would offer substantial financial rewards for those able to provide intelligence and knowledge, which could enhance South Korea's security, according to the ministry.

The bill will be considered in the National Assembly between February 28 and March 9, a Unification Ministry official said.

The move comes at a time of simmering tension over South Korea's controversial THAAD missile system, which came a step closer to reality last week. The THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, is designed to shoot down short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, such as those North Korea claims to own. South Korea reached an agreement with Lotte international over an approved land swap last week, according to an official with the country's defense ministry. The deal between international conglomerate Lotte and the South Korean government will allow the THAAD system to be deployed on the military's preferred site. The US and the South Korea are planning to deploy the system by the end of this year During his recent trip to South Korea, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis said his country was determined to defend South Korea against the "evolving North Korean threat." But speaking at a news conference last week, China's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang said it would "severely disrupt regional strategic balance." "The Chinese side has stressed repeatedly that we understand the legitimate concerns of relevant parties in safeguarding their security, however one country's security cannot be pursued at the expense of (anothers)," he said. Both North Korea and China have repeatedly stated they are strongly against the deployment of THAAD. On February 3, North Korea accused the US and South Korea of pushing the Korean peninsula to the "brink of nuclear war" with the deployment. In a statement, the rogue state alleged the THAAD system was part of an offensive strategy "for a preemptive attack on the North." But Mattis said Pyongyang's aggressive behavior is why THAAD was necessary. Meanwhile China has consistently opposed the missile system's deployment, saying it could jeopardize their "legitimate national security interests," according to Foreign Minister Wang Yi. John Delury, associate professor of international studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, previously told CNN that Beijing was doing "everything in its power to prevent the deployment of the defense system."
South Korea announces it will be raising its US$217,000 cash reward for classified information from North Korea by defectors to $860,000.