The spokesman declined to elaborate, citing intelligence matters, but said the South’s military is on full combat-readiness to respond to “further nuclear tests, ballistic missile launches or land provocation” by the North.
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South Korea’s Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that South Korea and US intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device anytime at the Punggye-ri test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.
Seoul’s defense ministry repeated its claim from last week that the North has an additional tunnel set up at its Punggye-ri site – the location of all five tests since 2006. Reports of another nuclear test being conducted soon after were rife, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
In a statement hailing the “success” of its test on Friday, the North vowed to take “further measures” to increase its nuclear strike force “in quality and in quantity”. The toughest United Nations sanctions in two decades were imposed on the North for its fourth nuclear test in January, but the new test raised a question over whether sanctions can force a change in North Korea.
North Korea’s pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons is one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for the USA and South Korea.
Meanwhile, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that the U.S. had delayed the flight of a B-1B bomber to the Korean Peninsula, scheduled for Monday, due to bad weather. And, in a bid to deter any such attempt by Pyongyang, an official at the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) said that the United States will conduct a bomber flight over South Korea on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
South Korea’s president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North’s biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of “fanatic recklessness” and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un “is spiraling out of control”.
Both countries did join sanctions in March after the North’s January nuclear test.
Yonhap reported that bad weather had delayed the flight of an advanced U.S. B-1B bomber to the Korean peninsula, a show of strength and solidarity with ally Seoul, scheduled for Monday.
Pyongyang was also taking advantage of a window of opportunity in worldwide relations while key players were distracted by their own politics, such as the USA presidential election in November and the South Korean presidential election in December 2017, he added.
The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
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Chinese state-run newspaper The Global Times said in an editorial, meanwhile, that Beijing could not be blamed for North Korea’s actions and instead blamed the US.
