A visitor looks at a display illustrating the damage a 1MT class nuclear weapon would cause if detonated in Seoul, at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. Sounds of the propaganda programs reach as far as 24 kilometers into North Korea. The official line here, at any rate, is that North Korea caught everyone off guard.
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“The initial analysis is not consistent with the claim the regime has made of a successful hydrogen bomb test”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
Commentary, news and weather from around the world are mixed in with such K-pop hits as “Let us love each other” and South Korean boy band BIGBANG’s megahit “Bang Bang Bang”.
The location of the quake, near a known North Korean nuclear test site, and its seismic characteristics led experts to quickly conclude that North Korea had probably conducted a fourth nuclear test. Pyongyang then announced it had done so.
The broadcasts are certain to draw a furious response from North Korea, which considers them a declaration of war because it is extremely sensitive to any outside criticism of the authoritarian leadership of Kim.
Hours after Seoul resumed high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the border it shares with the secretive state, Philip Hammond warned against “rising to the bait”. The US is highly unlikely to restore the tactical nuclear missiles it removed from South Korea in 1991, experts said.
South Korea’s defense ministry is not available for immediate comments.
Performers on the propaganda playlist Seoul began blasting across the border Friday include a female K-pop band that rose to fame when its members fell multiple times on stage, and a middle-aged singer who rose from obscurity last year with a song about living for 100 years.
The official said that the broadcasts are based on facts but to attract the attention of young North Korean soldiers, the latest South Korean girl group hits are also included.
But it is the detection of airborne radioactive particles that will give clues as to the type of device that was set off and whether it was a hydrogen bomb, which is more powerful than an atomic bomb and would mark a technological advance for North Korea.
North Korea may also have been emboldened by Obama’s inaction after Iran violated a United Nations resolution by conducting two ballistic missile tests.
China – North Korea’s most important ally – said North Korea should “avoid taking action” that would make the situation worse.
Yonhap said the military had increased its cyber defense agents deployment. Officials refused to elaborate, but the assets likely are B-52 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters and nuclear-powered submarines.
During his telephone conversation with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Wang Yi underscored China’s firm stand on promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, and the safeguarding of regional peace and stability.
The U.N. Security Council has pledged new sanctions against North Korea after its purported hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday.
“My greatest concern is not so much whether or not they actually tested a hydrogen bomb, but rather that they tested at all”, Siegfried Hecker, the former Los Alamos Laboratory director, said in an interview published yesterday in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
“Nothing is more foolish than dropping a hunting gun before herds of ferocious wolves”, the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s official mouthpiece, said in a recent statement.
“Any agreement between the two Koreas should be honored”, Jeong said.
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Hydrogen bombs use a two-step process of fission and fusion that releases substantially more energy than an atomic bomb.
