North Korea said Saturday it would not submit to United States nuclear “blackmail”, a day after shocking the world with its fifth and largest nuclear test.
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The RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded US think tank, said in a 2010 report that the detonation of a 10-kilton nuclear weapon in the South Korean capital of Seoul could cause more than 200,000 deaths and would easily overwhelm doctors and beds in hospitals throughout the country.
Obama reaffirmed, as he has done repeatedly following North Korean ballistic missile launches, the USA commitment to “take necessary steps to defend our allies in the region”, namely South Korea and Japan.
“We will be working very closely in the Security Council and beyond to come up with the strongest possible measure against North Korea’s latest actions”, said Kim.
Talks between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, facilitated by the United Nations, are “moving smoothly and well”, Ban said, and he’s hoping that an agreement on reunifying the divided Mediterranean island may happen before his term ends.
The UN Security Council agreed on Friday immediately to begin work on a new series of sanctions.
“We believe new sanctions are indispensable”, French Ambassador Francois Delattre said. “We should look for ways that would allow us to resume them”, Lavrov said.
Gardner’s legislation on North Korean sanctions goes beyond just focusing on its nuclear weapons program.
The council’s statement noted the “gravity of this violation” and Pyongyang’s “flagrant disregard” for previous United Nations resolutions, and pledged to take “further significant measures” in response.
“Vietnam is seriously concerned about the nuclear test carried out by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday”, said Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Le Hai Binh on Saturday.
After the meeting, China’s Ambassador Liu Jieyi sidestepped questions about Beijing’s support for sanctions. “North Korea is seeking to ideal its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strikes”. “On the contrary, it is poison that is slowly suffocating the country”. Gardner said the USA should speed up that deployment.
The plan, known as “Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation” (KMPR), was revealed after the Defense Ministry briefed the National Assembly last week on the subject, Yonhap said.
South Korea’s main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea now has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North’s efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.
Pyongyang’s state media said Friday the nuclear test had realised the goal of being able to fit a miniaturised warhead on a rocket.
Its continued testing in defiance of sanctions presents a challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the US presidential election in November, and a headache to be inherited by whoever wins.
Earlier this year, the US and South Korea reached an agreement to deploy a new high-altitude missile defense system in South Korea.
North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has always been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for USA administrations. But he added, “given the consequences of getting it wrong, it is prudent for a military planner to plan for the worst”.
Friday’s test came only eight months after the previous one and was nearly twice as powerful, at an estimated 10 kilotons.
He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield. The nuclear bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotonnes.
South Korea’s military put the force of the blast at 10 kilo tonnes, which would still be the North’s most powerful nuclear blast to date.
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“The important thing is, that five tests in, they now have a lot of nuclear test experience”.
