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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected typhoon-hit farmlands, state media said on Friday, after tropical storm Khanun swept over the Korean Peninsula last week amid mounting concerns over a food crisis in the reclusive country.

Kim praised the military's efforts to salvage crops and said the troops were mobilised because they cannot lose a patch of farmland "to the natural rampage on the agricultural front directly related with the people's living," news agency KCNA reported.

The North has suffered serious food shortages in recent decades, including famine in the 1990s, often as a result of natural disasters. International experts have warned that border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic worsened matters.

"He made sure that helicopters and light transport aircrafts of air force units ... were mobilised as a step to improve the growth of crops in flooded fields, and personally organised and commanded the work for spraying pesticides," the report said.

Khanun, which was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm, made landfall on the Korean peninsula last week, prompting South Korean authorities to evacuate more than 14,000 people and close schools in flood-hit areas. (Reuters)

The mayor of Taipei will visit Shanghai at the end of this month for an annual city forum, his office said on Friday, a trip that will take place against the backdrop of frozen ties between the Taiwanese and Chinese governments.

While China has refused to speak to Taiwan's government since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, believing she is a separatist, city-to-city exchanges had continued until interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, Tsai's administration has cautiously been trying to reopen less sensitive people-to-people links since it lifted pandemic-related border controls late last year, aiming to engender goodwill with China, and a group of Shanghai officials made a low-key visit to Taipei in February.

Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an, from the main opposition party the Kuomintang, which traditionally favours close relations with China, will go to Shanghai on Aug. 29-31 for the Taipei-Shanghai City Forum, which was first held in 2010.

The Taipei city government said Chiang, a rising Kuomintang star, would lead the delegation to the forum, the theme of which this year is "new trends, new development".

The Kuomintang has pushed to resume contacts with China since pandemic controls were lifted, saying that dialogue was needed now more than ever given the tensions over Taiwan.

China, which claims the island as its territory, has been carrying out military activities near Taiwan, including regularly sending fighter jets into the air space around it.

"When the situation across the Taiwan Strait is tense, we have a need even more for communication and exchanges, and the two cities forum can be that kind of platform," Chiang told reporters in Taipei.

Taiwan's ex-President Ma Ying-jeou, who remains a senior Kuomintang member, in March became the first sitting or former Taiwanese leader to visit mainland China since the Communist revolution in 1949, saying he hoped to bring about peace and improve relations. (Reuters)

The chief of the United Nations humanitarian relief agency has urged Myanmar's ruling military to allow greater access to 18 million people in need of aid, describing the situation as critical as a post-coup conflict intensifies.

Returning from a three-day trip that included a meeting with top general Min Aung Hlaing, Martin Griffiths said a funding shortage was also complicating efforts to reach the third of Myanmar's population that was in need of assistance.

Myanmar has been locked in crisis since the military wrested back control after a decade of unprecedented reform under quasi-civilian governments.

The military's bloody crackdown on dissent led to the formation of an armed resistance movement that has battled security forces around the country, with clashes displacing more than a million people.

"Successive crises in Myanmar have left one third of the population in need of humanitarian aid," Griffiths said in a statement.

"They expect more and better from their leaders and from the international community."

The U.N. agency said fighting and natural disasters since the 2021 coup had led to a five-fold increase in the number of displaced people, from 380,000 to 1.9 million.

Griffiths said humanitarian relief organisations were struggling with insufficient resources and urged international donors to do more, with just 22% of the annual funding requirements received by mid-year.

He said he pressed the junta to expand access and expressed concern about civilians and restrictions and bureaucracy preventing aid groups from helping them.

The junta has a testy relationship with the United Nations after numerous investigations that have accused the military of atrocities against civilians, which it has rejected.

The U.N. Human Rights report in June said the lack of aid access may amount to war crimes, while a team of U.N. investigators last week said war crimes were "increasingly frequent and brazen".

State media reports on the visit said the international community "should seek accurate information on Myanmar's situation". (Reuters)

At a Camp David summit on Friday, the United States, South Korea and Japan will pledge to consult each other in moments of crisis, officials said, a commitment designed to deepen three-way military ties as the U.S. seeks to rally its allies to counter China's rising influence.

The commitment, which falls short of a formal alliance, will be the centerpiece of U.S. President Joe Biden's first Camp David summit for foreign leaders and represents a significant move for Seoul and Tokyo, which have a long history of mutual acrimony and distrust.

Biden is welcoming South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the mountainside presidential retreat on Friday, where they are expected to have several hours to strategize over how to manage tensions in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

The summit is expected to produce a series of joint statements, including commitments to establish a crisis hotline, work together on emerging technologies and to meet annually.

The event is also freighted with symbolism: with Washington's encouragement, Tokyo and Seoul are navigating their way past disputes dating to Japan's 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

Those disputes are among the reasons the leaders would not now consider a mutual-defense pact along the lines of what the United States has separately with both South Korea and Japan, according to U.S. officials who declined to be identified while previewing the summit.

"What we have seen over the last couple of months is a breathtaking kind of diplomacy, that has been led by courageous leaders in both Japan and South Korea," said Kurt Campbell, Biden's coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs.

"They have sometimes gone against the advice of their own counselors and staff and taken steps that elevate the Japan-South Korea relationship into a new plane," Campbell said.

CHINA VIEWS SUMMIT WARILY

No specific action by the trio in Camp David is expected to sharply increase tensions with China, though Beijing has warned that U.S. efforts to strengthen ties with South Korea and Japan could "increase tension and confrontation in the region."

While South Korea, Japan and the United States want to avoid provoking Beijing, China believes Washington is trying to isolate it diplomatically and encircle it militarily.

A senior U.S. official said at a briefing on the summit that the U.S. was not "centrally focused" on messaging to China, but the behavior of North Korea, China and Russia has "created incentives" for the allies to cooperate.

Tensions in the South China Sea have flared between U.S. ally the Philippines and China over a grounded warship that serves as a Philippine military outpost in the strategic waterway, a major global trade route.

Biden, an 80-year-old Democrat seeking another four-year term in the 2024 presidential election, faces a likely opponent in Republican former President Donald Trump, who has voiced skepticism about whether Washington benefits from its traditional military and economic alliances.

South Korea has legislative elections next year and Japan must hold one before October 2025, and what analysts see as a still fragile rapprochement between the two nations remains controversial among the countries' voters.

The White House, conscious of the electoral clock, wants to make the progress between South Korea and Japan hard to reverse, including by establishing routine cooperation on military exercises, ballistic missile defense, the economy, and scientific and technological research. (Reuters)