A ferry carrying 459 people, mostly high school students, has sunk off South Korea, leaving at least three people dead and nearly 300 missing.

Investigators have traced a co-ordinated cyber attack that paralysed tens of thousands of computers at six South Korean banks and media companies to a Chinese internet protocol address, but it is still unclear who orchestrated the attack, authorities in Seoul said.

Computer networks at two major South Korean banks and three top TV broadcasters went into mass shutdown today, paralysing bank machines across the country and prompting speculation of a cyber attack by North Korea.

South Korea’s troops were on high alert today as the government exchanged threats with rival North Korea following the military skirmish that took tensions on the peninsula to new extremes.

South Korea said today it scrambled F-16 fighter jets and returned fire after North Korea shot dozens of rounds of artillery on to a populated South Korean island near the countries’ western border.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was in China today on a visit to a school - his second appearance in the country this year.

Former US President Jimmy Carter departed on his mission to North Korea that US officials said is aimed at bringing home an imprisoned American.

Military divers plunged into the waters near South Korea’s tense maritime border with North Korea to search for 46 missing marines from a naval ship that sank today, but were hampered by fierce waves and high winds, officials said.

A SOUTH Korean naval ship sank near the disputed maritime border with North Korea yesterday, prompting the South’s military to rush vessels to the site to rescue its sailors and raising fears of an attack by the North.

A number of South Korean sailors died today when their navy ship sank after an explosion off an island near North Korea, reports said.

North Korea reportedly test-launched five short-range missiles in what analysts said was an attempt to improve its bargaining position before possible talks with the US.

NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Il has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, a news report said yesterday, days after fresh images of him looking gaunt spurred speculation that his health was worsening following a reported stroke last year.

North Korea boasted that it has become a “proud nuclear power” and threatened today to harm the US if attacked, as tensions mounted over a possible crackdown on exports of suspected missile parts from the North.

An unidentified armed group kidnapped nine South Korean construction workers and a local person in Nigeria today, the Foreign Ministry said.

A North Korean foreign ministry official told Japanese journalists that the right to test missiles was a matter of national sovereignty, a Japanese TV report in South Korea said.

South Korean fans trying to enter a stadium for a music concert today sparked a stampede, killing at least 11 and injuring 50 others, a city official said.

South Korea said today it will go ahead with its plan to send troops to Iraq despite the abduction of a South Korean man and the televised broadcast of his desperate pleas to stay alive.

Arab satellite TV network Al-Jazeera has aired a video said to be from al-Qaida-linked militants showing a South Korean hostage begging for his life and pleading with his government to withdraw troops from Iraq.

North Korea was maintaining its cloak of silence today over the crash between two North Korean fuel trains that is believed to have killed or injured as many as 3,000 people.

SOME 3,000 people were dead or injured after two trains carrying fuel collided and exploded at a North Korean railway station near the Chinese border yesterday.

NORTH Korea declared a state of emergency and closed down phonelines last night as the paranoid Stalinist state attempted to impose a news blackout after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured in a horror train crash.

North Korea declared a state of emergency tonight after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured when two fuel trains collided and exploded at a station near the Chinese border.

A state of emergency was declared in North Korea after two trains carrying highly inflammable freight collided and exploded, killing or injuring up to 3,000 people.

Thousands of people were reported injured, many killed, when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station, hours after leader Kim Jong Il passed through on his return from a China visit.

More than 130 people are feared dead today after a man started a fire on a subway train in South Korea’s third-largest city.

More than 100 people were feared dead today after a man started a fire on a subway train in South Korea’s third-largest city.

A US military reconnaissance plane has crashed in South Korea, the South Korean Defence Ministry said today.

North and South Korea today agreed to restart top-level talks to get their stalled reconciliation process back on track.

The flight recorder of an Air China plane carrying 166 passengers which crashed has been recovered, Transportation Ministry official Kim Young-woon said.

More than 160 passengers aboard a Chinese plane were feared dead after the aircraft crashed near one of the World Cup host cities in bad weather early today.