The announcement from the Kim Jong-un government marked the second time this year the North has conducted a nuclear test and raised fears the country is a step closer to developing a nuclear-armed missile that could strike North America.
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Carter said the worldwide community should redouble pressure on North Korea after the test, on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s founding, and singled out China’s influence.
North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear program as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified.
North Korea has continued to improve its nuclear and missile capabilities, but it has yet to pair the two successfully. “But what North Korea is aiming for is to put them on an intercontinental ballistic missile”, she said.
Firstly a bomb targeted in the sea area between South Korea and Japan and now the announcement of nuclear weapon test, North Korea’s recent actions are shocking the word while the leaders in Hangzhou taking the G-20 summit. Its propaganda lauds the protection that the Kim family has provided from the “hostile” Americans.
Facing a hostile alliance of U.S., South Korean and Japanese forces, North Korea’s “security environment is very much like what China faced in the 1960s and 1970s”, said an article on the military channel on Sina, one of China’s top Internet portals.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye called Kim Jong Un’s regime “fanatically reckless”.
Since early 2014, Pyongyang has also noticeably stepped up its missile testing, launching a variety of vehicles, including some long-range missiles.
Pyongyang first attempted a submarine-based missile launch last year and again at the end of April this year.
There was further pressure on the US equity market after Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, a historically dovish policymaker, said the USA central bank faced increasing risks if it waited too much longer to raise interest rates.
“To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state”.
“Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country’s northern nuclear test site”, a North Korean TV announcer said.
In January, North Korea claimed to have conducted a hydrogen bomb test, but many foreign governments and experts were skeptical about the claim. And can they marry them to a missile so that they can deliver them? “This has definitely put on a higher level the DPRK’s technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets”. The test occurred Friday morning local time and triggered a magnitude 5.3 seismic event.
Beyond crippling North Korea financially, other options include diplomatic ostracism: Katharine Moon, Brookings Institution’s SK-Korea Foundation Chair, has floated throwing North Korea out of the United Nations altogether, and written that nations with diplomatic ties with Pyongyang ought to pull their ambassadors. “They aren’t a backward state any more”, Lewis said.
“The President indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences”, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told ABC News. He noted USA plans to deploy new, more capable missile defenses in South Korea.
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South Korea’s Park, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders that Obama also attended, said Kim was showing “maniacal recklessness” in completely ignoring the world’s call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.
