The decision to resume the high-decibel broadcasts using massive batteries of speakers on the heavily militarised frontier was taken in response to the North’s latest nuclear test on Wednesday, an official at the presidential Blue House said.
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University student Ri Sol Yong, 22, said, “If we didn’t have powerful nuclear weapons, we would already have been turned into the slaves of the U.S”.
Concern in Japan over potential radiation drifting across the sea from North Korea skyrockets whenever it conducts underground nuclear tests, though none has ever been traced to the country after its three previous ones.
US congressional sources said Republican leaders of the US House of Representatives were considering a vote as soon as next week to broaden sanctions against North Korea by imposing stiffer punishments on foreign companies doing business with Pyongyang.
The event, strongly hyped in the North Korean media, will be watched closely by North Korean elites and North Korea watchers overseas for signs of whether the young Kim – still in his early 30s – will step out of his father’s and grandfather’s shadows and assert his own leadership more boldly.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s message to Pyongyang was clear – “We do not and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear armed state” – but not new.
But, he wrote on the North Korea-focused 38 North website, “The North has now had a nuclear weapons program for more than 20 years”.
Protesters took to the streets in Seoul to denounce North Korea’s reported nuclear testing.
“This test once again violates numerous Security Council resolutions despite the united call by the global community to cease such activities”, Ban said.
“We unequivocally condemn the behaviour of North Korea, which today claimed to have detonated a nuclear weapon”, the minister said in a formal statement that followed.
But experts said the failure of the sanctions regime was not Washington’s fault alone, and pointed to China – the closest thing North Korea still has to an ally.
“If Canada continues to rely on nuclear weapons for its security, can it really credibly argue that others shouldn’t?” asked Beatrice Fihn of The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
“The initial analysis is not consistent with the North Korean claims of a successful hydrogen bomb test”, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a briefing.
Hydrogen bombs use a two-step process of fission and fusion that releases substantially more energy than an atomic bomb.
U.S. Air Force aircraft created to detect the evidence of a nuclear test, such as radioactive particulate matter and blast-related noble gases, could be deployed from a U.S. base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
“A key barometer of how angry the Chinese are will be how much and in what way they try to water down any United Nations resolution”, said Chinoy. North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to flawless a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.
North Korea also said it was capable of miniaturising the H-bomb, in theory allowing it to be placed on a missile and potentially posing a new threat to the U.S. West Coast, South Korea and Japan.
North Korea needs nuclear tests for practical military and political reasons.
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Last month, Kim’s personal Moranbong girl band flew to Beijing to play a series of shows before abruptly canceling the tour and returning to North Korea. To build a credible nuclear program, the North must explode new devices – and more advanced ones – so its scientists can continually improve their designs and technology. “With the H-bomb claim, Kim can now boast of a “‘great achievement’ that even (founding leader) Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il could not realise”, Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University and an expert on North Korea, told AFP.
