From East-Asia-Intel.com (subscription):
The Dair el Zor raid in Syria on Sept. 6 was not against a nuclear facility but a major arms depot… “Dair el Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea,” the newsletter reported. “The […]

Excerpts from the 26 September Department of State Daily Press Briefing on sanctions being placed on a state owned North Korean company for missile technology transfer (not Syria), and possible effects on the Six-Party Talks. Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey is responding to questions:
QUESTION: Yeah, North Korea. I know that you touched on this yesterday, […]

Excerpts from the 25 September Department of State Daily Press Briefing on the election of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and new sanctions on North Korean company producing missiles. Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey is responding to questions:
QUESTION: A new Japanese cabinet was formed today under the LDP leader Yasuo Fukuda and what are U.S. expectations […]

Update: Via the Nomad, an interesting theory on Syria’s relatively mild protests to Israels attack:
Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge […]

According to Richard Halloran, the shutting down of Yongbyon may be a bit of a wooden nickel:
The nuclear power plant that North Korea has agreed to shut down in return for oil and other concessions is in such poor operating condition that Pyongyang may not be unhappy to give it up, according to informants […]

ROK envoy Chun Yung-woo is confident that at least the first steps – North Korea shutting down the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon – will go according to plan.
North Korea is fully prepared to shut down its nuclear facilities and allow inspections, a South Korean official said in New York, where envoys from Pyongyang and […]

WaPo reports:
The Bush administration is backing away from its long-held assertions that North Korea has an active clandestine program to enrich uranium, leading some experts to believe that the original U.S. intelligence that started the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions may have been flawed.
The chief intelligence officer for North Korea, Joseph R. DeTrani, told […]

Kim Man-bok, head of the National Intelligence Service, reported to a closed-door National Assembly session that North Korea has a highly-enriched uranium (HEU) nuclear program:
South Korea’s intelligence agency said Tuesday it believes North Korea is running a clandestine uranium-enriching program, an allegation that has been surfacing as a key source of contention on a […]

Bill Clinton was president in 1994 when the Agreed Framework between the U.S. and North Korea (PDF) was concluded. It was in all likelihood the best deal Clinton (actually Carter) or anyone else could get at the time, and I do not fault him for it. It probably averted a second Korean War.
No, Clinton’s […]

This just goes to show what North Korea has already proved before; to “shut down and seal” something is not permanent, no matter what the paper says or who signed it. While the statement below perhaps falls short of reneging, it is backtracking and definitely leaves the door open for a full exit when […]