South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se will visit Japan this weekend for the first time since taking office, Tokyo said Wednesday, as the two countries mark 50 years of diplomatic relations despite current strains.

Yun will meet his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida on Sunday to discuss the bilateral relationship, North Korea and other topics, the foreign ministry said.

North Korea on Wednesday repatriated two South Koreans in their 50s who were detained last month for illegally entering the communist state, Seoul's Unification Ministry said.

The two -- a 59-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman -- were reported missing while travelling in northeastern China near the border with North Korea.

North Korea said Monday that it is ready to restart stalled talks with South Korea if Seoul scraps joint military exercises with the United States.

The offer came on the 15th anniversary of a landmark summit between then South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung and North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-Il which saw a joint declaration to spur reconciliation and cooperation.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has hailed the firing of a new anti-ship rocket as "another fresh milestone" in bolstering the country's naval power following the testing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).

Kim watched the test of the "highly intelligent" rockets to be deployed at naval units, Pyongyang's KCNA news agency reported on Monday.

Nuclear armed states continue to upgrade their stockpiles despite an international trend towards disarmament, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported Monday. 

Between 2010 and 2015 the number of warheads fell from 22,600 to 15,850 according to the institute's annual disarmament report which said the U.S. and Russia represented the bulk of the reduction.

A young North Korean soldier walked into South Korea Monday in a rare defection through one of the world's most fortified frontiers, saying he deserted his camp because of habitual beating, military officials said.

The 19-year-old soldier surrendered himself to South Korean border guards around 8:00 am (2300 GMT) after crossing the frontier in Hwacheon, northeast of Seoul, the South's defense ministry said.

A court in Panama jailed two North Koreans for 12 years for trying to smuggle Cuban weapons through the Panama Canal in an incident which raised international suspicions, their attorney said Sunday.

Their convictions came as something of a surprise since a lower court had let the men off after their North Korean cargo ship was found to be carrying Cuban weapons including surface-to-air missile systems and launchers when it was stopped in the Panama Canal in July 2013.

North Korea on Sunday test-fired three short-range missiles into the sea, South Korea's defense  ministry said, weeks after claiming a successful submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test. 

The North fired three KN-01 missiles from a site near its eastern city of Wonsan, a ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Chinese soldiers on Thursday shot dead a man suspected of crossing into the country from North Korea, officials said, the latest of several deadly incidents along the frontier.

A "suspected illegal border-crosser" was shot early in the morning after he "resisted arrest," an official microblog account of Helong county in China's northeast Jilin province said.

Recent satellite imagery suggests North Korea is unlikely to conduct a fresh nuclear test in coming months, according to a U.S. think-tank.

The Stalinist state recently turned up the volume on its hostile rhetoric and boasted of its nuclear and missile capability, claiming it had successfully tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile last month.