In a meeting with his nuclear scientists in Pyongyang on Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said the talk of sanctions and movement of strategic weapons was “bringing dark clouds of a nuclear war” to the peninsula. After an 11-year break, South Korea re-started them last August in response to border land mines maiming two South Korean soldiers.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry has also urged China to take a tougher line against North Korea.
“I think it was the same for people around me who were also too busy worrying about their next meal to care about whether or not there had been a nuclear test”, she said.
North Korea says it tested a powerful hydrogen bomb even though arms experts say the tremors resembled those seen in previous atomic blasts.
China, the closest thing North Korea has to a friend, has previously used its veto power to ensure that multilateral sanctions are not so severe as to cause its fragile neighbor to collapse, although Beijing did allow a significant expansion of sanctions after Pyongyang’s 2013 nuclear test.
South Korea warned North Korea on Wednesday that the United States and its allies were working on sanctions to inflict “bone-numbing pain” after its latest nuclear test, and called on China to do its part to rein in its isolated neighbour.
Park said Seoul and Beijing were discussing a draft UN Security Council resolution on North Korea, noting that Beijing has stated repeatedly that it would not tolerate the North’s nuclear programme.
No country feels North Korea’s latest uncertainty more acutely than its southern neighbor.
But it fuelled already heightened tensions on the frontier, where the South has been blasting high-decibel propaganda broadcasts into the North as punishment for last week’s nuclear test.
Now imagine a scenario in which North Korea, tired of its monetary exertions, decides to rake in some profit on the worldwide nuclear black-market by trading in technology, know-how, or fissile material. South Korean military announced Wednesday it has found hundreds of anti-South Korea leaflets n…
Cutting off North Korea’s access to cash also makes it hard for Pyongyang to pay its army and police forces, said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Yonhap news agency reported that the South fired 20 rounds from machine guns at a drone.
It will likely face new USA sanctions and possible new United Nations sanctions, and has taken over headlines for the past week.
This is because what North Korea once saw as a bargaining chip with the U.S. – its nuclear weapons – has now become a central symbol of regime survival, making it that much harder to negotiate its dismantlement. But in a telephone conversation with his South Korean counterpart Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made it clear that Beijing supports dialogue to resolve the nuclear standoff.
In a show of strength on Sunday, a nuclear-capable US B-52 bomber – flanked by South Korean F-15 fighter jets and US F-16 planes – flew over Osan Air Base, about 70km south of the inter-Korean border.
“Knock out the gang of Park Geun-hye who aggravated North-South relations by resuming anti-North psychological warfare broadcasts”, another said.
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South Korean President Park Geun-hye addresses to the nation at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016.
