By KWANG-TAE KIM, The Associated Press
10:11 a.m. August 16, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Il held talks with the head of South Korea’s Hyundai Group, the North’s state media reported Sunday, in a rare meeting that could warm prospects for a resumption of stalled cross-border projects.

Meanwhile, North Korea warned the United States and South Korea of “merciless retaliation” over sanctions imposed on the communist country, and nuclear attacks in response to any atomic provocation.

Kim and Hyun Jeong-eun, Hyundai’s chairwoman, had a “cordial talk,” on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency reported in a brief dispatch from Pyongyang, though it provided few details.

Just days earlier, the North freed a Hyundai worker whom it had detained for months. Pyongyang accused the worker of denouncing North Korea’s government.

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Before he becomes a forgotten footnote in Aung San Suu Kyi’s biography, it’s worth pausing to consider the price John Yettaw is about to pay for his unauthorized nighttime swim. On Aug. 11, Yettaw, 53, was sentenced to seven years in a Burmese prison for donning a pair of flippers and paddling across a lake to the Rangoon home of Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy dissident and Nobel laureate. (Suu Kyi received an additional 18 months of house arrest for violating the terms of her sentence by sheltering the Missouri native.) Seven years is a stiffer sentence than many had expected for Yettaw, who is said to suffer mental problems. Even worse: four of those years will consist of “hard labor” — a punishment whose severity shouldn’t go underrated.

Disciplining wrongdoers with arduous physical activity stretches as least as far back as the ancient Greeks — and it’s always really sucked. Homer’s Odyssey recalls the plight of Sisyphus, the Corinthian King consigned to nudging a boulder up a hill for all eternity; according to the gods’ twisted decree, when he neared the top of the hill, the rock would come tumbling down. Rehabilitation in 19th century England took a page from the Greeks’ prescription for soul-crushing drudgery: inmates would be forced to trek endlessly on treadmills, pass their days turning purposeless cranks for thousands of revolutions at a time, or shuttle cannonballs back and forth in an activity known as the “shot drill.” Among those subjected to forced labor in British prisons was scribe Oscar Wilde, who toiled for two years on charges of public indecency.

In the first half of the 20th century, both Hitler’s Nazis and Stalin’s Soviets used forced labor to build up their infrastructure. From 1918 to 1956, between 15 and 30 million people are estimated to have died toiling in the notorious Soviet gulag from exhaustion, illness and malnutrition brought on by 14-hour days felling trees, digging in the frigid Siberian tundra or mining coal. Often the labor was as fruitless as the punishments devised by the British. In the early 1930s, more than 100,000 prisoners toiled to construct a canal between the White and Baltic Seas — which turned out to be too narrow and shallow to service most vessels.

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Clinton had already left for the North but had not yet arrived in Pyongyang, Yonhap said in a report from Washington quoting a source familiar with the issue.

“As soon as he arrives, he will be entering negotiations with the North for the release of the female journalists,” the source was quoted as saying.

South Korean Foreign Ministry officials declined to comment, saying any announcement would come from Washington or Pyongyang.

The journalists were sentenced last month to 12 years’ hard labor by the North after they were arrested at the border with China in March, accused of illegal entry and being “bent on slander.”

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, were arrested when working on a story near the border between North Korea and China.

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The North Korean dictator made just his second public appearance on Wednesday since he reportedly suffered a stroke last August, looking gaunt and with dramatically less hair than he had in April, when the 67-year-old Dear Leader presided over a parliamentary meeting in Pyongyang that saw him re-elected.

Speculation on Kim’s health has skyrocketed since his latest appearance to honor his late father and the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung. A source close to Kim’s extended family has said that the leader is in the last months of his life.

“He does not have all that much longer to live and my sources say the doctors’ diagnosis is that he will die before the end of the year,” Waseda University Professor Toshimitsu Shigemura told the Daily Telegraph. “He is still being treated for the main problem, which is complications arising from diabetes, and it had been expected that he could die as soon as this summer.”

Click here for photos of Kim through the years.

But Kim’s failing health won’t likely lead to more erratic actions from the North Korean dictator, particularly as he continues to groom his youngest son, Kim Jon Un, as his successor, experts told FOXNews.com.

“Kim Jong Il would feel he’d let down his father’s legacy if he went out with a real bang and launched a nuclear attack,” said Charles Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s too much at risk for his legacy and regime. If he does that, we know his number. We would retaliate.”

Ferguson, who visited North Korea in 2000 while working for the State Department, said Kim’s death could lead to “intense saber rattling” in the region, and he suggested that South Korea and Japan might feel the need to develop their own nuclear weapon programs.

“We could have an arms race,” he said. “A real worst-case scenario would be a collapse of the regime and you’d have thousands if not millions of refugees going into South Korea.”

Harlan Ullman, a distinguished senior fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, said he expects Kim will exit quietly when the time comes.

“My sense is that Kim is probably not going to have any kind of explosive farewell,” Ullman told FOXNews.com. “What would an explosive going-away party be? Is it in their best interest?”

Ullman — one of the theorists behind the “shock and awe” military strategy used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq — said Kim’s primary focus prior to his death will likely be to shore up support for his son.

Kim Jong Un may initially take an “honorary role,” Ullman said, and be groomed over time to replace his father.

Whatever path the son takes, Ullman said it’s unlikely it will follow a volatile exit by his father. The notion of a dangerous “last hurrah” should not be seriously entertained, he said.

“I don’t think [Kim Jong Il] is looking to start World War III,” Ullman said. “They’d lose. They’d do a hell of a lot of damage to South Korea, but at the end of the day, the regime would be gone and I think they realize that. Kim is more rational than we believe, even though he has an entirely different value system than what we understand.”

North Korea conducted several banned ballistic missile tests last weekend, stoking international ire following the country’s second nuclear test in late May, which led to severe U.N. sanctions.

“Looking at the events of the last several months, you could say that he’s already concluded that the end is in sight and we may be seeing the ‘going out with a bang phenomenon’ right now,” said Bob Joseph, a senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. “This may be the bang.”

Steve Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, said the “mysterious, enigmatic and irrational” leader has already finalized his legacy in some ways by his defiant actions during the past few months.

“He’s been trying to get the attention of the West to show them that he’s not scared, and he’s achieved that,” Emerson told FOXNews.com. “In his mind, the U.S. is a paper tiger.”

Still, Kim’s unpredictable health could fuel the fire in some ways, he said.

“Since he controls for all we know the button on the trigger, the less lucid he becomes, obviously the less stable he is and the more irrational he becomes,” Emerson said. “His state of mind could be a lot less lucid.”

Fox News- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531533,00.html?test=latestnews

By JAE-SOON CHANG
Associated Press Writer

North Korea reminded the U.S. on Monday that it has nuclear weapons and warned it will strike back if attacked, as a U.S. destroyer continued to trail a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying illicit weapons.
The Kang Nam, previously involved in weapons shipments, is the first vessel monitored under new U.N. sanctions adopted after the North’s nuclear test last month. It could become a test case for interception of North Korean ships at sea – something Pyongyang has said it would consider an act of war.

President Barack Obama said the U.S. is ready to cope with “any contingencies” amid reports the North appears to be preparing for a long-range missile test planned sometime around July 4, the Independence Day holiday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered additional protections for Hawaii as a precaution.

The U.N. sanctions – punishment for an underground nuclear test North Korea conducted May 25 – firm up an earlier arms embargo against North Korea and authorize ship searches in an attempt to thwart the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions.

The Kang Nam appeared headed to Myanmar via Singapore, the South Korean news network YTN reported Sunday, citing an unidentified intelligence source in South Korea.

Myanmar’s military government, which faces an arms embargo from the United States and the European Union, reportedly has bought weapons from the North in the past.

On Monday, North Korea’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper called it “nonsense” to say the country is a threat to the U.S. The paper also warned it is prepared to strike back if attacked.

“As long as our country has become a proud nuclear power, the U.S. should take a correct look at whom it is dealing with,” its said in commentary. “It would be a grave mistake for the U.S. to think it can remain unhurt if it ignites the fuse of war on the Korean peninsula.”

The Rodong Sinmun also denounced Obama’s recent pledge to defend and protect South Korea – even promising to keep Seoul “under the U.S. nuclear umbrella” – as an attempt to attack the North with atomic bombs.

North Korea calls its nuclear program a deterrent against the U.S., which Pyongyang accuses of plotting an attack. The U.S., which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, has said it has no such intentions and no nuclear weapons on the peninsula.

But Obama said the U.S. is prepared for any North Korean provocation.

“This administration – and our military – is fully prepared for any contingencies,” Obama said Friday during an interview with CBS News’ “The Early Show” to be broadcast Monday.

“I don’t want to speculate on hypotheticals,” Obama said. “But I want … to give assurances to the American people that the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted in terms of what might happen.”

Washington is considering sending former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to China to persuade Beijing to enforce the U.N. sanctions against the North, Seoul’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Monday, citing an unidentified high-level diplomatic source.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the report.

China is the North’s biggest source of food, fuel and diplomatic support, and analysts have said the success of the U.N. sanctions depends on how aggressively Beijing implements them.

The Kang Nam left a North Korean port Wednesday and was being tracked by an American destroyer, two U.S. officials said Thursday. One official said it was uncertain what the ship was carrying but that it had been involved in weapons shipments before. Both spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence.

A senior U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday that the Japan-based USS John S. McCain was relatively close to the North Korean vessel but had no orders to intercept it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Japanese Defense Ministry said Monday it did not have firsthand information about the two ships’ whereabouts.

The U.S. ship, a guided missile destroyer, is named after the grandfather and father of U.S. Sen. John McCain.

Sen. McCain said Sunday that the U.S. should board the Kang Nam even without North Korean permission if hard evidence shows it is carrying missiles or other cargo in violation of U.N. resolutions.

“I think we should board it. It’s going to contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations that pose a direct threat to the United States,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”