The first laugh comes before the film has even started. "In loving memory of Kim Jong-il" reads the dedication title. It pretty much sets the tone for The Dictator, a broad, hit-and-miss satire about an Arab tyrant's indulgence of his capricious – and murderous – will.

North Korea sharply escalated the rhetoric against its southern rival, claiming it would soon conduct “special actions” that would reduce South Korea's conservative government to ashes within minutes.

North Korea's military vowed today to launch unspecified "special actions" soon meant to reduce South Korea's conservative government and media companies "to ashes" in less that four minutes, in an escalation of its recent threats. 

North Korea's young leader Kim Jong-un spent more of his childhood being educated under a pseudonym in Switzerland than originally thought, the Swiss press reported yesterday.

Wanted: 23 "missing" poets. Must be from Burkina Faso, Papua New Guinea, Liechtenstein or one of 20 other nations still missing from the roster of a record-breaking poetry event scheduled to form part of this summer's Olympics cultural programme.

North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un, spoke in public for the first time yesterday, choosing the massive ceremony on the centenary of the birth of his grandfather, the "Great Leader", Kim Il-sung, to read from a prepared text vowing to build on the "military-first" policies propounded by his late father, Kim Jong-il.

Has Kim Jong-un been given rope to hang himself or will this failure strengthen his hand?

The dismal failure of North Korea's rocket launch will, and should, be a cause for widespread relief. Whether the launch was intended, as Pyongyang insisted, to put a satellite in orbit marking the centenary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, or designed – as many Western observers believed – to test a long-range missile, or perhaps both, is for the moment an academic question.

The much-anticipated North Korean rocket launch that had threatened to cause a further deterioration in the relationship between the reclusive communist state and its neighbours today ended in failure.

Copycat haircuts, missile testsand mass denial. By Tomiko Newson in Pyongyang

North Korea was today injecting liquid fuel into the rocket it intends to send into space soon.

Warning North Korea from its doorstep, President Barack Obama said Pyongyang risks deepening its isolation in the international community if it proceeds with a planned long-range rocket launch.

Amid new tension with North Korea over a planned rocket launch, President Barack Obama plans to visit the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea at the start of an international trip next week, the White House said.

It is the bright red Korean lettering adorning the top of one of the drab grey buildings that marks out the heavily guarded compound in Warsaw as unusual. "Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung will be with us forever!" it reads.