In response, fighter jets proven in combat situations were sent over the Osan air base in South Korea, accompanied by F-15 and F-16 fighters from the US and South Korea, respectively.
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And alarming as North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are, South Korea and the United States don’t really want to deal with the instability and likely massive refugee crisis that would result from a North Korean collapse either. North Korea is capable of detonating another nuclear device anytime at one of its unused tunne.
North Korea has an abundance of uranium reserves and has been working covertly for well over a decade on a project to enrich the material to weapons-grade level, the experts say. The U.N. Security Council is strongly condemning North Korea’s latest nuclear test.
On Friday morning local time, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test – the second such test this year.
“Neither sanctions nor provocations nor pressure can ever bring down the position of the DPRK as a full-fledged nuclear weapons state”, a spokesman for the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee told KCNA reported.
The US Air Force has flown two B-1B strategic bombers over Osan Air Base in South Korea, which is 120km from the border with North Korea.
Two of the powerful USA bombers, joined by US and South Korean fighter jets, flew over Osan Air Base south of Seoul on Tuesday to show United States anger with North Korea’s nuclear weapons test four days earlier.
In August, the United States placed B-1B aircraft at the Air Force Base in Guam to counter North Korean nuclear and missile threats.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (C) shakes hands with Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (L) and South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se before a meeting at the Lotte New York Palace hotel in Manhattan, New York September 29, 2015. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.
North Korea has refused the USA demand that it accept denuclearization as a condition for holding dialogue. The sequenced flights with two US allies were meant to demonstrate how the USA can work with both nations militarily.
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“China has been very clear that they understand the need for a new Security Council resolution in response to the latest nuclear test”. She also urged opposition leaders to support her decision to deploy the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea and rejected proposals to send a special envoy to Pyongyang to initiate talks. “Much more troubling for now is that its recent nuclear and missile successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence and dramatically change regional security dynamics”, he wrote. The yield of the bombs appears to have increased. North Korea was still able to buy oil and sell its coal and iron ore, as long as it was not used to finance the country’s nuclear weapons program – an activity that would be hard to prove.
