Hours after the nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council said it would work immediately on significant new measures against North Korea.
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“North Korea may react in an ultra-strong way to this decision by South Korea, viewing it as an act of ruining a national party”, said Cheong Seong Chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute near Seoul by text message, Bloomberg reported.
North Korea, which is extremely sensitive to any criticism of Kim, considers the broadcasts an act of psychological warfare.
When South Korea bombarded its neighbor with broadcasts of propaganda and pop music last August, North Korea massed troops at the border and unleashed artillery fire, in the two countries’ most serious skirmish in some time.
Before the broadcasts began, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has urged China to end “business as usual” with North Korea.
If true, North Korea will be the sixth country after US, Russia, France, China and United Kingdom which carried the successful test of the hydrogen bomb. South Korean officials said they may restart border propaganda broadcasts that Seoul had halted a year ago.
Shortly after this slate of digital assaults, the USA and South Korea pledged in May 2015 to strengthen cybersecurity coordination in an effort to counteract North Korea’s cyber efforts. It gives a bit more sense of the back-and-forth of the conversation, and highlights Japan’s position as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, which is considering additional sanctions against North Korea. “We have to be bigger than the North Koreans… We enjoy a strong, historic relationship, based on common values and support for democracy, the rule of law, human rights and open markets”, Mr Hammond said earlier. Seoul turned off its speakers in August after marathon negotiations with the North. Seoul also limits the entry of some South Koreans to an industrial park in North Korea jointly run by the two Koreas, which has been a valuable cash source for the North.
“The key to resolving the issue is also not on China”, she said. But many experts discounted these claims because they say the blast wasn’t large enough for a hydrogen bomb, which would yield 20 megatons, versus the 6 kilotons estimated in the recent test.
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But the North is already under layers of sanctions imposed following its past missile launches and three nuclear tests, and analysts have questioned what real impact fresh penalties will really have.
