He has, for instance, praised Japan's colonial occupation of Korea from 1910-45 though the Aso mining company from which the family's fortunes derive used Korean slave labour during the second world war.

ECONOMIST: Japan��s history wars erupt again

Since Obama took office, North Korea has fired off both short- and long-range missiles, announced its unilateral withdrawal from the armistice that brought a halt 56 years ago to the Korean War, and conducted its second nuclear test since 2006.

FORBES: Freedom's Edge

He has, for instance, praised Japan's occupation of Korea from 1910-45, even though his family fortune derives from a mining company that used Korean slave labour during the second world war.

ECONOMIST: Japan and its history

California's huge defence and aerospace industry grew first from the second world war, then from the Korean war and the cold war (and, beyond the scope of this book, finally the Vietnam war).

ECONOMIST: The California dream

During the arms race that followed the Korean War, it designed and developed warheads that kept our nuclear capabilities second to none.

WHITEHOUSE: VP Biden: The Path to Nuclear Security

His image as a right-wing chauvinist has only grown with his denials that foreign, notably South Korean, women were coerced into military prostitution during the second world war.

ECONOMIST: Japanese politics: The man who would be dictator? | The

North Korea cut off a telephone hot line to the South and "declared invalid" the Korean War armistice, as the South Korean and U.S. began Monday a second phase of their annual joint winter military exercises.

WSJ: Pressure Rises on Korean Peninsula