The North said Wednesday it had successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb, triggering worldwide concern and anger from countries including the US and Japan, and even its sole major ally China.
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“North Korea acts in a totally irresponsible and provocative way, and I can entirely understand the pressure that the South Koreans feel to respond”, Hammond told reporters on a visit to the USS Ronald Reagan, docked at the Yokosuka Naval Base southwest of Tokyo.
A South Korean soldier stands near the loudspeakers near the border area between South Korea and North Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 8, 2016. South Korea stopped earlier broadcasts in late August after it agreed with Pyongyang in late August on a package of measures aimed at easing animosities.
The ministry also said there had been no government decision on what North Korea needed to do to end the propaganda broadcasts.
According to South Korea’s Defense Ministry, the broadcasts can reach the intended target about 20 kilometers away during the night.
The council last approved sanctions against North Korea three weeks after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test on February 12, 2013.
South Korea had previously said that the broadcasts were just one of many punitive measures Seoul was considering.
South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts as of Friday noon, protesting the North’s fourth nuclear test on Wednesday.
South Korea is preparing to launch the same anti-North propaganda campaign that brought the two to the brink of war previous year. Seoul also began talks with Washington that could see the arrival of nuclear-powered US submarines and warplanes to the Korean Peninsula. Its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, agreed with U.S. President Barack Obama in a telephone call that a firm global response was needed, the White House said.
Hydrogen bomb is a weapon energised by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes in a chain reaction.
The alleged hydrogen bomb test by North Korea has set tongues wagging.
“While keeping up with the moves within the U.N. Security Council as well as the response made by North Korea, we will consider what determined response we can make”, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at his January 7 news conference. There are still many unanswered questions about the nuclear test.
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Experts have said the seismic activity generated by the blast was not large enough for it to have been a full thermonuclear explosion.
