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North Korea has followed the South in resuming loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across their heavily militarised border, Seoul’s defence ministry said on Monday.

Tens of thousands of South Korean and US troops Monday began a military exercise simulating an all-out North Korean attack, as Pyongyang matched Seoul in resuming a loudspeaker propaganda campaign across their heavily-fortified border.

Seventy years after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, Pope Francis on Sunday (August 9) described the bomb as a “lasting warning to humanity”.

But he failed to clarify their perpetrators and victims while making only an indirect “apology”, by vowing to inherit previous governments’ positions.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Saturday that the Friday speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressing deep remorse for Japan’s wartime actions had fallen short of Seoul’s expectations.

North Korea has denied any involvement in the mine blasts and threatened “indiscriminate” strikes against South Korean border units unless the broadcasts were halted immediately.

The rival Koreas have resumed cross-border propaganda warfare as North Korea matched South Korea’s loudspeaker campaign with broadcasts of its own that reportedly included criticism of Seoul and praises for Pyongyang.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe failed to grasp the nettle when he delivered a much-touted address on the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of the Second World War.

A Japanese journalist cited in a Washington Post report described the remarks as “unprecedented”, and it has been suggested that the emperor has shown a subtle opposition to Abe’s “aggressive form of pacifism” when it comes to commenting on the...

The visits by the Japanese ministers to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war dead, including 14 Class A criminals convicted by the Allies in trials that followed World War II, came a day after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a much-anticipated speech marking the...

Nikesh Arora, president of SoftBank, has said he will buy a breathtaking Y60 billion ($US483 million) worth of shares in the Japanese telecoms and internet group, in a sign of his commitment to the company as the handpicked successor to billionaire Masayoshi Son.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, when Japanese Emperor Hirohito surrendered to the allied forces. A two paragraph story told of the sinking of the US naval cruiser Indianapolis by the Japanese, shortly before their surrender.

On Saturday, Abe sent a ritual cash offering to Yasukuni Shrine for war dead but did not visit the shrine, seen in China and South Korea as a symbol of Tokyo’s wartime militarism.

South Korea on Monday ordered border propaganda operations against North Korea to resume for the first time in 11 years, in retaliation for landmine blasts that maimed two of its soldiers during a frontier patrol.

In a 25-minute speech which was broadcast live on Friday, the nationalist Abe acknowledged Japan inflicted “immeasurable damage and suffering” on innocent people during its invasion and occupation of East Asia during and before World War Two.