In a statement, the commission stated, “The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission has not found any traces of radionuclides, such as xenon, in its tests of soil, water, and air samples following North Korea’s fifth nuclear test”.
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North Korea’s state-run Korea Central Television tried its hand at a satirical take on the U.S. President Barack Obama and his presidential secretary. In the opening hours of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States tried to kill Saddam Hussein with cruise missiles and bombs from aircraft to no avail.
China shares a long land border with North Korea and is seen as the only country with real power to bring about change in the isolated and belligerent nation.
That deal, known as “Agreed Framework”, however, unravelled with the outbreak of the second nuclear crisis in 2012 after the communist nation was found to have been running a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. It is clear that the next president will have to sharpen Pyongyang’s choice: offer greater benefits for cooperation and promise greater costs for continued defiance.
Pyongyang is ready for a “counterattack against U.S. provocations” including last Tuesday’s flying of two B-1B supersonic bombers over the peninsula in a display of force. Since February, North Korea has fired off more than 30 ballistic missiles with a range of at least 200 km, more than the number fired previously by North Korea, ever. We do not seek to promote conflict – we seek to promote peace. With a sparse set and performers largely clad in military uniforms with cloth tabards over the top, the studio audience laps up lampoons of President Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye, referred to in the programme as “Granny”. But the new South Korea-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, which took effect on November 25 of last year after five years of negotiations ended in the first amendment in 42 years, bars independent uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing by South Korea for non-military purposes.
The show also tried its hand at ridiculing South Korea and describing the country as “corrupted to the root” and where the government “oppresses” its people.
According to Jakarta Post, Korean Ambassador to Indonesia, Taiyoung Cho, during his speech at Korean Cultural Center in Jakarta on Wednesday said: “We believe Indonesia as a friend of South Korea will play a big role in resolving North Korean nuclear issues”.
Further steps must be taken to increase economic sanctions that more severely restrict the regime’s funding sources. The talks began in 2003 involving the US, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, but Pyongyang walked out of the negotiations in 2009. This should be facilitated by the sharing of intelligence, coordinating enforcement operations and distribution of resources donated by partners outside the region.
Soon after the latest North Korean nuclear test, the South Korean government leaked a report detailing its plan to “annihilate” every block of the North Korean capital by, according to the BBC, “conventional weapons”. Current enforcement of sanctions is far too lax.
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Mullen said it would be possible to launch a preemptive strike on the North if it comes “very close” to being capable of attacking the U.S. The strike could in theory destroy North Korean missile launch pads, he said.
