North Korea called South Korean President Park Geun-Hye a "political prostitute" Friday as it denounced her call at the U.N. General Assembly for Pyongyang to improve its human rights record and abandon nuclear weapons.

In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) said Park's speech in New York on Wednesday amounted to the malign rantings of a "psychopath" and "confrontation maniac."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry denounced human rights abuses in North Korea on Tuesday and called on Pyongyang to shut down its penal colonies riddled with "barbarity and inhumanity."

"You should close those camps, you should shut this evil system down," Kerry said at an event on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly attended by a North Korean who escaped the gulag he was born in.

The United States said Tuesday it halting the use of anti-personnel mines apart from in the tense No Man's Land between the Koreas, a step closer to compliance with a global convention.

On the 20th anniversary of then president Bill Clinton's pledge to back the eventual elimination such weapons, Barack Obama's administration said it was "aligning its policy" on anti-personnel landmines (APLs) with the Ottawa Convention.

North Korea on Saturday threatened to attack South Korean activists if they launch anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border while the South hosts the Asian Games.

A group of South Korean activists plans to launch 200,000 leaflets slung from gas-filled balloons into the North from a site near the border on Sunday.

A U.S. citizen jailed this month in North Korea wanted to be imprisoned so he could reveal the human rights situation inside, the North's state media said Saturday.

Matthew Miller allegedly ripped up his tourist visa and demanded asylum at Pyongyang's airport in April, and was sentenced to six years' hard labor by the country's Supreme Court last Sunday.

The South Korean navy fired warning shots Friday to end a brief incursion by a North Korean patrol boat across the sensitive maritime border, Seoul's defence ministry said.

South Korean border guards arrested an American man who they believe was attempting to swim across the border into rival North Korea, a South Korean defense official said Wednesday.

The man was arrested Tuesday night at a river near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, part of a restricted military area, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to office policy. He said investigators are questioning the man about the purpose of his apparent attempt to enter North Korea but gave no further details.

North Korea's reporters at the Asian Games will have to file stories using fax because their web access is restricted in South Korea, an official said Tuesday.

Seoul's Ministry of Unification said North Korean media would not be given special access to their country's websites, which are blocked in South Korea.

North Korea has sent a rare message to the South Korean president's office, demanding an end to anti-Pyongyang leaflet launches into the North, officials said Tuesday.

A South Korean fisherman Monday found a suspected North Korean drone in his net near a frontline island south of the rivals' disputed sea border, military officials said.

The wreckage, without a wing, engine or camera, was recovered when it got caught in his net off Baengnyeong island, a South Korean defense ministry spokesman said.