A “serial” North Korean defector has given a substantial U.S. and South Korean military presence the slip, stealing a 9-ton fishing trawler to return to the impoverished North, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.

North Korea's leaders are at odds over how to handle the Kaesong industrial enclave, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday, citing a source close to the regime.

North Korea blocked access to a key joint industrial zone with South Korea on Wednesday — a sharp escalation in a military crisis that Washington blamed on Pyongyang's “reckless” behavior.

North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material.

North Korea said Tuesday it will escalate production of nuclear weapons material, including restarting a long-shuttered plutonium reactor, in what outsiders see as Pyongyang's latest attempt to extract U.S. concessions by raising fears of war.

South Korea's new president on Monday promised a strong military response to any North Korean provocation after Pyongyang announced that the two countries were now in a state of war.

The United States sent F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea on Sunday to join military drills aimed at underscoring the U.S. commitment to defend Seoul in the face of an intensifying campaign of threats from North Korea.

North Korea named former premier Pak Pong Ju, a key confidant of the leadership dynasty who was sacked in 2007 for failing to implement economic reforms, as its cabinet chief on Monday in a move that would further cement the ruling family's grip on power.

North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test and continued military threats have sparked calls for Seoul to take a tougher stance against the secluded regime including enhanced nuclear deterrence.

North Korea vowed Sunday to strengthen its nuclear weapons, a day after announcing it is in a “state of war” with South Korea, and said it would never trade its atomic deterrent for aid.