North Korea

| ASIA TODAY

Today's news: Covid-19 dismissed, North Korea decorates streets with (fake) flowers to celebrate Kim Il Sung; Recently released Vietnamese political prisoner Phan Kim Khanh denounces labour exploitation in prisons; Tomorrow evening, daylight saving time also strikes in Lebanon; in parks and public places in Russia, civil defence films are broadcast with warnings in case of a nuclear attack; In Uttar Pradesh Hindu radicals prevent Muslims from praying for Ramadan.


Today's headlines: Thai activists sue government over use of spyware and surveillance equipment; more than 41,000 victims in earthquake in Turkey and Syria; Iran's National Library suspends a group of female members for not wearing the hijab properly; Colombo bans single-use plastic; In Hong Kong mandatory weekly programmes on radio and TV to promote 'Chinese identity'; Delhi freezes arms contracts with Moscow.

| 15/02/2023
| ASIA TODAY
by Guido Alberto Casanova

Five pro-reunification South Koreans are accused of working with North Korea to destabilise the South. Investigators claim they communicated through coded messages. Left-wing groups reject this, saying that the accused were simply engaged in public protests, and that the government is only trying to throw mud at the opposition.

 

| 02/02/2023
| SOUTH KOREA – NORTH KOREA

Today's headlines: Thai court sentences a man to 28 years in prison for lese majesty; at least 162 victims in Afghanistan of the exceptional cold wave; Tokyo announces Spring downgrade of Covid-19 to a common respiratory infection; India launches its first vaccine in the form of a nasal spray; Seoul and Pyongyang violate armistice by encroaching on hostile territory; warning Russia faces a medicine shortage by 2023. 

| 27/01/2023
| ASIA TODAY

Today's headlines: Pyongyang imposes a five-day lockdown for cases of unspecified 'respiratory illness'; Hanoi wants to open up the arms market to foreign companies; A cold wave hits north-east Asia halting transport halted and leaving one victim in Japan; Russia classifies the Andrei Sakharov foundation as an 'undesirable organisation'. 

| 25/01/2023
| ASIA TODAY

He fled Pyongyang to South Korea at the time of the war and encountered Christianity as an old man through his daughter. At age 90, he began inking verses on traditional Korean paper and has made 700 posters of this artistic expression. He speaks to the local Catholic weekly magazine of his story of feeling God's word in his fingers. 

| 22/01/2023
| ECCLESIA IN ASIA

Pyongyang returns to the top of the list of the most dangerous countries for Christians drawn up by the international NGO. India is the country with the highest number of recorded arrests: as many as 1750 in one year. The expansion of the 'China model' in the subordination of religious freedom to 'stability and security' is worrying. In the world 1 believer in Jesus out of every 7 lives in a country where discrimination is high; 5,621 were killed in twelve months.

| 18/01/2023
| ASIA
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