The scheduled bomber flight comes two months after Washington and Seoul announced that they would deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) advanced missile defense system in the South in order to counter the threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea.
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One military source claimed every part of the North Korean capital would be “completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells”.
The envoy will arrive in Seoul later on Monday and hold talks with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Hong-Kyun, on Tuesday morning.
South Korea’s defence ministry said there was no change in its policy barring nuclear weapons.
Ri left Pyongyang to attend a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement countries in Venezuela and later the U.N. General Assembly, the Associated Press reported from Pyongyang without citing a source.
The UN Security Council said it would begin work on a new resolution to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
“In addition to action in the Security Council, both the US and Japan, together with the Republic of Korea, will be looking at unilateral measures, as well as bilateral measures, as well as possible trilateral cooperation”, he said, referring to South Korea by its official name.
The United Nations is working on levying further sanctions on North Korea after the Friday test, which the country has scoffed at.
But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Monday that Carter was “being too modest”.
North Korea said on Sunday a push for further sanctions following its latest nuclear test was “laughable”, and vowed to continue to strengthen its nuclear power.
Punggye-ri, near the northeastern coast, is the site of all five of the North’s nuclear explosions.
The UN Security Council has denounced North Korea’s nuclear test and US, France and Britain have pushed for new sanctions to be imposed on the country. It said the United States was “the root cause” of the issue.
It has also experimented with submarine-launched ballistic missiles – potentially meaning it could sneak up on Britain or the USA and fire an apocalypse rocket from the water.
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A South Korean army’s K1 tank moves during an annual exercise in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016.
