Later Friday, Obama released a statement, which labeled the nuclear test as “a grave threat to regional security and to worldwide peace and stability”.
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“Pyongyang has been making risky provocations, and has only focused on developing nuclear weapons and missiles”.
So far, China has “firmly opposed” the test, Japan “protested adamantly” and the United States warned of “serious consequences” including “new sanctions”. If North Korea’s missile threats are proven imminent, the South Korean military’s Kill Chain system will preemptively identify and strike key enemy facilities before a missile is launched.
“To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state”, Obama said in a statement, in which he singled out Pyongyang as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons this century. “North Korea is taking this opportunity to demonstrate their nuclear capabilities with an eye to the next government”.
“The only thing the Kim Jong Un regime will get from this nuclear test will be more intensified sanctions from the global community and deeper isolation”, the newspaper quoted Park as saying.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he and South Korean President Park talked by telephone and agreed that North Korea’s nuclear test and its recent missile launches show that it now poses a “different level of threat” requiring a new response.
Earnest said the President spoke separately to South Korean and Japanese leaders by phone, reassuring them of “the unbreakable United States commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world”.
North Korea’s weird actions have often grabbed global headlines.
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on the matter Friday, and President Obama warned North Korea that the United States would use “the full spectrum of USA defense capabilities” to defend its allies. The North’s fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.
The 5.0 magnitude seismic event Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea’s weather agency. This is the first time Pyongyang conducted two nuclear tests in the same year after single blasts in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Some 28,500 USA servicemembers are stationed in the South.
USA stocks sold off on Friday, putting the S&P 500 on pace for its worst day in over two months as investor nervousness increased following a nuclear test by North Korea and comments by Federal Reserve officials that hinted at a US interest rate hike.
The nuclear programme has gone alongside a series of ballistic missile launches, the latest of which took place on Monday even as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.
Diplomacy has so far failed.
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North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has always been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for USA administrations. Since the 1950-53 Korean war ended in an armed truce, not a peace treaty, tensions have frequently flared between the Koreas, including an armed standoff a year ago that saw an exchange of artillery fire.
