South Korea’s spy agency said yesterday it has solved the mystery of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s six-week public absence, which set off a frenzy of speculation around the world.

Former US basketball star Dennis Rodman led an auditorium of North Koreans in singing Happy Birthday to their leader yesterday.

It’s definitely a novel way to spend a week off. Today FM broadcaster Matt Cooper is in North Korea as part of documentary crew covering a basketball game stuffed with former NBA stars, and coinciding with the birthday of leader Kim Jong-un.

An international media frenzy over reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s uncle had been executed by throwing him to a pack of dogs appears to have originated as satire on a Chinese microblogging website.

The uncle of North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un was eaten alive by 120 starving dogs after being stripped naked and locked in a cage, it has been reported.

North Korea seems so very alien, so very out of kilter with what passes for normal in the rest of the world, that it is difficult to imagine what life is like for the almost 25m souls who reside there.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has described his once-powerful uncle and mentor, whom he purged and executed, as “factionalist filth” in a new year message in which he boasted of a surge of internal strength.

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman is flying to North Korea to help train the national basketball team and renew his friendship with the North’s young leader Kim Jong Un.

THERE is a chink of light and it is not an oncoming train. It is at least an irony and perhaps a pun that Ireland exited the bailout on Gaudete Sunday.

North Korea said today that it executed Kim Jong Un’s uncle as a traitor for trying to seize supreme power, a stunning end for the leader’s former mentor, long considered the country’s No 2.

North Korean state media says Kim Jong Un’s uncle has been executed, calling the leader’s former mentor “worse than a dog”.

Kim Jong Un’s uncle has been executed, with the state media calling the leader’s former mentor “worse than a dog”.

North Korea announced it had sacked leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle, long considered the country’s second-in-command, saying corruption, drug use, gambling, womanising and generally leading a “dissolute and depraved life” had caused Pyongyang’s highest-profile fall from grace since Kim took power two years ago.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans lined the snowy streets of Pyongyang today, wailing and clutching their chests as a black hearse carrying late leader Kim Jong Il’s body wound its way through the capital for a final farewell.

North Korea’s next leader led a funeral procession for his father Kim Jong Il through Pyongyang’s snow-covered streets.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il made his youngest son a four-star general today in a major promotion seen as confirmation that he is to become the country’s next leader.

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’s Kim Jong Il has officially named his heavy-drinking, English-speaking 26-year-old son as the next leader.