Pyongyang on Wednesday carried out its fourth nuclear test, angering the worldwide community and raising tensions with neighbouring South Korea.
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North Korea announced last Wednesday that it successfully detonated a hydrogen device at its nuclear test site close to the border with China.
State media published a photo on Monday of leader Kim Jong-Un posing formally with hundreds of scientists, workers and officials who took part in the underground detonation.
The US and Japan deemed North Korea’s actions to be “yet another violation of its obligations and commitments under global law”.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces in South Korea were put on their highest level of alert on Monday in case of any provocation from North Korea.
Scaparrotti was touring the base, which is 55 kilometers south of the capital Seoul, together with South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Lee Sun-jin.
Now Press TV’s correspondent in Japan Albert Siegel says the planned deployment of further strategic assets by the United States in Korea amounts to flexing military muscles in the region.
The United States and other global powers condemned North Korea for testing another bomb, and the United Nations Security Council met in emergency session to consider increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang.
Washington and Seoul are not discussing the restoration of nuclear weapons to South Korea after last week’s atomic test by North Korea, a US official said on Monday, saying this could spark a regional arms race. But it is also indicative of the real fury that the broadcasts, which criticise the country’s revered dictatorship, cause in the North. Experts have strongly questioned Pyongyang’s boast, which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un repeated Sunday.
This is expected to slow production at the South Korean-operated plants, which employ thousands of North Korean workers, potentially forcing them out of work.
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The new measure taking effect Tuesday bans South Korean food vendors at the complex from staying overnight there, which would reduce the number of South Koreans staying overnight at the complex to about 650. That reaches numerous huge force of North Korean soldiers stationed near the border, as well as residents in border towns such as Kaesong, where the Koreas jointly operate an industrial park that has been a valuable cash source for the impoverished North. The officials added that North Korea’s speakers have low output, which leads them to believe that the goal is to cancel out the propaganda messages from the South to prevent them from being heard.
