Bangladeshi customs authorities seized nearly 27 kilograms of gold, worth about $1.7 million, from a North Korean diplomat on Friday after he tried to smuggle in the bullion using diplomatic immunity.

Armed police and customs officials at Dhaka airport challenged Son Young Nam, the first secretary of the North Korean embassy in the city, on Thursday night after he arrived on a flight from Singapore.

South Korean police on Friday charged the man behind a shocking knife attack on the U.S. ambassador with attempted murder, while investigating his possible links with North Korea.

Kim Ki-Jong, 55, also faces a separate charge of violence against a foreign envoy after slashing Mark Lippert with a paring knife in an assault that left the US envoy needing 80 stitches to a deep gash on his face, the Yonhap news agency said.

A Canadian pastor who went missing in North Korea is being held by the communist state's authorities, his church and Canadian consular officials said Thursday.

Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim, 60, has not been heard from since January 31, just after he arrived in North Korea via China.

After lifting travel restrictions it imposed because of concerns over the Ebola virus, North Korea says foreigners can now take part in one of its most popular tourist events — the annual Pyongyang marathon, a travel agency said Thursday.

Even though no cases of Ebola had been reported anywhere near North Korea, the country shut out foreign tourists in October with some of the strictest Ebola regulations in the world, including saying that only local runners would be allowed into the marathon in April.

South Korea and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum on nuclear cooperation during a visit by President Park Geun-Hye that began Tuesday, official media said.

The two sides reached a "memorandum of understanding in the field of nuclear cooperation programs," a partnership in research and skills development, the state Saudi Press Agency said.

A Canadian pastor who has reportedly gone missing in North Korea was invited to the capital Pyongyang just before his disappearance, a prominent Seoul activist said Tuesday.

Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim, of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, has not been heard from since January 31, just after he arrived in North Korea via China, according to media reports in Canada and South Korea.

North Korea has reopened its borders to tourists and lifted strict quarantine measures four months after it banned most foreign travel to the country due to fears over the deadly Ebola virus.

Tour agencies specialising in trips to the reclusive nation, said they had been told Tuesday the travel ban was over and they could resume bookings for March.

North Korea may be readying to test fire a medium-range missile to underscore its anger over joint U.S.-South Korea military drills that began this week, a report said Tuesday.

Mobile launchers used for Rodong missiles have been deployed at a North Korean missile base north of Pyongyang, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing military sources.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Monday he is "seriously" worried about the North Korean nuclear program, which has not been subject to international inspections since 2009.

"I remain seriously concerned about the nuclear program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)," said Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

North Korea fired two missiles into the sea and vowed "merciless" retaliation Monday as the U.S. and South Korea kicked off joint military drills denounced by Pyongyang as recklessly confrontational.

The annual exercises always trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided peninsula, and analysts saw the North's missile tests as a prelude to a concerted campaign of saber rattling.