North Korea’s detonation of a nuclear device has spurred South Korea to increase its cyberdefenses.
Advertisement
China – North Korea’s most important ally – said North Korea should “avoid taking action” that would make the situation worse. Fraternal relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have become strained in recent years, but China has been reluctant to impose economic restrictions that could destabilize its wayward neighbor and cause turmoil on its border.
South Korea halted the broadcasts later in August when it agreed with the North on a set of tension-easing measures.
The House measure would target banks facilitating North Korea’s nuclear programme and authorise freezing of USA assets of those directly linked to illicit North Korean activities.
The test also alarmed Japan.
China’s approach to North Korea has failed and it is time to end “business as usual” with Pyongyang after its latest nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today.
But the meeting could be an attempt to bolster the perception that Kim has a stable hold on power, said Yang Moo-jin from South Korea’s University of North Korean Studies.
“And the administration has also been in touch with Chinese officials”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a news briefing, adding that U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice had already talked with Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai on the DPRK test.
“We have to face the reality that sanctions alone will not leverage the North Korean policy in the absence of a fundamental change in Chinese policy”, DeThomas said. South Korea’s Defense Ministry couldn’t confirm the reports.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that frontline troops, near 11 sites where loudspeakers started blaring propaganda at noon, were on highest alert.
It may take weeks or longer to confirm or refute the North’s claim that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, which would mark a major and unanticipated advance for its still-limited nuclear arsenal.
Earlier Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, will continue to take part in the Council discussions “in order to promote the denuclearization and non-proliferation of the Korean Peninsula and safeguard the stability in Northeast Asia”.
Wednesday’s test angered both the United States and China, which was not given prior notice, although the US government and weapons experts doubt Pyongyang’s claim that the device it exploded was a hydrogen bomb.
It’s possible North Korea tested a “boosted” weapon, one that uses a small amount of fusion to boost the fission process, but is not a hydrogen bomb.
Advertisement
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. Even a test of an atomic bomb, a less sophisticated and less powerful weapon, would push its scientists and engineers closer to their goal of building a nuclear warhead small enough to place on a missile that can reach the USA mainland.
