The World Council of Churches has urged the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to hold bilateral talks within the context of resumed Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear programme.

A delegation from the World Council of Churches (WCC) visiting Pyongyang, has met with North Korean president Kim Yong-nam. During the meeting it suggested that a significant impetus to solving the nuclear weapons stand-off in the region would be for North Korea and the US to meet.

The head of the World Council of Churches is to lead a delegation to North Korea, in the latest of several recent visits from Christian groups to the communist-ruled State.

Germany's senior Protestant bishop has urged Christians in officially atheist North Korea to obey God "rather than human beings". Issues of nuclear weapons and the division of Korea into north and south face the isolated nation.

A South Korean grouping of churches is urging its member churches and organizations to join a campaign to give North Korean children milk and bread "without any precondition".

Japanese sources claim that North Korea may be planning to launch another missile, a day after US President Barack Obama called the country’s recent actions a “grave threat” to international security.

The secretive hard-line communist regime in North Korea has reacted angrily to global condemnation of its recent nuclear weapons test, declaring that its ‘truce’ with South Korea may be over and that it will not back down.

At a time when the international community is re-kindling the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, the North Korean nuclear test is a source of real concern, says World Council of Churches general secretary Rev Dr Samuel Kobia.

British Parliamentarians have said that the new Obama administration brings with it a golden opportunity for a formal cessation of hostilities and normalisation of relations with North Korea.

While North Korea and the generally unknown Christians there remain isolated on the world stage, British Methodists are among those who have been developing relations and providing assistance.