North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear weapons test in January, claiming it tested a hydrogen bomb, and fired a long-range rocket over Japanese airspace on February 7 in what was widely condemned as a test of missile technology banned by previous United Nations resolutions.
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A day after North Korea warned of a nuclear attack against the United States which began its largest-ever military exercise with South Korea in the divided peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it will not allow the stability in the region to be disrupted.
South Korea would also discontinue participation in a pilot project that brought Russian coal to South Korea through a North Korean port, Rajin, a foreign ministry told reporters in a joint briefing with other government agencies.
It said the blacklisted people and organizations will be barred from financial dealings with South Korean banks and their assets in the South will be frozen.
Kirby said Washington’s commitment to South Korea’s security was “100 percent” and that North Korea’s posturing only made the exercises, a regular event for decades, all the more important. Any ships that have docked in North Korean ports will be banned from South Korean ports for the following six months.
“We want to try to apply that same rigid standard to North Korea, again, with the aspiration of trying to get them back to talk about denuclearization”, he said.
In the past too, North Korea has condemned the exercise between the two allies as a tactics of invasion, while the US and South Korea have insisted that they are purely for defence.
The rival Koreas’ usual animosity occasionally erupts in bloody skirmishes – 50 South Koreans were killed in attacks in 2010 that Seoul blames on the North – and there is always a worry about an escalation of violence. South Korea earlier halted operations at a jointly run factory park in North Korea, the last major cooperation project between the rivals.
There was no immediate reaction from North Korea to the South Korean allegations of cellphone hacking. The spy agency also said North Korea hacked a company that provides security software that is used by more than 20 million people for online banking and card payment.
North Korea has a track record of waging cyberattacks on South Korea and the United States in recent years, though it has flatly denied any involvement. The figure was a sharp increase from a 2013 South Korean estimate of 3,000 such specialists.
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Last year, South Korea said North Korea has a 6,000-member cyber army dedicated to disrupting the South’s military and government.
