North Korea has repaired extensive rain damage at its nuclear test facility and could conduct a detonation on two weeks notice, a U.S. think-tank said Friday, citing satellite imagery analysis.

With the U.N. Security Council debating possible sanctions against the North following the launch earlier this month of a long-range rocket, there has been widespread speculation that Pyongyang may carry out its third nuclear test.

South Korean Marines staged a live-fire exercise Wednesday near the disputed Yellow Sea border with North Korea amid high tensions over a display of front-line Christmas lights.

The exercise involving self-propelled howitzers and a multiple rocket launch system was held on two islands -- Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

North Korea on Monday slammed a display of Christmas lights staged by a South Korean church group near the tense border as an "unacceptable provocation".

The giant display -- featuring thousands of glittering bulbs on a tree-shaped steel tower -- was put up Saturday on a military-controlled hill at Gimpo west of Seoul.

North Korea's recent rocket launch amounted to the test of a ballistic missile capable of carrying a half-tonne payload over 10,000 kilometers, the South Korean Defense Ministry said Sunday.

North Korea launched its three-stage Unha-3 rocket on December 12, insisting it was a purely scientific mission aimed at putting a polar-orbiting satellite in space.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered the development of bigger rockets, state media said Saturday, after Pyongyang sparked international condemnation with a long-range rocket launch.

He gave the order to scientists, technicians and others involved in this month's launch at a banquet on Friday, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

North Korea confirmed Friday that it had arrested a U.S. citizen in November, saying he had admitted to unspecified charges and suggesting he would be formally prosecuted.

The man, identified as Pae Jun-Ho, entered North Korea on November 3 as a tourist, and "committed a crime" against the country, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to rebuke Syria, Iran and North Korea for human rights abuses.

With Syria's conflict worsening by the day, a resolution condemning the Syrian government and its allied militias came as a diplomatic blow for President Bashar Assad.

South Korea appeared to have elected its first female president Wednesday as national TV predicted a clear victory for conservative Park Geun-Hye, daughter of the country's former dictator.

More than three hours after polling stations closed, the KBS, SBS and MBC national broadcasters all declared Park "certain" to secure an historic win over her liberal rival Moon Jae-In.

North Koreans across the country stopped in their tracks at midday Monday to silently honor former ruler Kim Jong Il, whose death one year ago swept his untested 20-something son to power.

Pyongyang construction workers took off their yellow hard hats and bowed at the waist as sirens wailed across the city for three minutes. The son, Kim Jong Un, presided over a solemn ceremony to reopen the sprawling granite mausoleum where his father's embalmed remains will lie in state near those of his grandfather, the nation's founder Kim Il Sung.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un led thousands of officials Sunday in a memorial ceremony for his late father and ex-ruler Kim Jong-Il, days after a successful long-range rocket launch.

The ceremony followed a mass rally two days earlier hailing the launch of the three-stage rocket, a move which was condemned by the U.N. Security Council and seen by many countries as a disguised ballistic missile test.