South Korea has said last week’s nuclear test – the country’s fifth – was a 10-kilotonne bomb, which is nearly double the six-kilotonne nuke it tested back in January.
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A USA special envoy for the isolated state, Sung Kim, will travel to Seoul on Monday after discussing cooperation among neighbouring countries in Tokyo in the wake of the North’s latest nuclear test.
Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified Seoul government sources, reported Monday there were signs the North had finished test preparations in an unused tunnel.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that South Korea and USA intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device anytime at its main Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where the five previous atomic explosions took place.
Critics, however, say China hasn’t done enough to tighten economic pressure on North Korea as punishment for its nuclear tests, which the Chinese government has publicly opposed. Yonhap did not elaborate.
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.
Bad weather Monday delayed for at least 24 hours a USA plan to send warplanes from Guam to South Korea, as it has done after past provocations by North Korea.
South Korea’s military put the force of Friday’s blast at 10 kilotonnes, but a U.S. expert said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested a yield of 20 to 30 kilotonnes.
South Korea’s military on Friday revealed it has retaliation plans involving precision-strike missiles and special operations forces for direct attacks on the North’s leadership in the case of a North Korean nuclear attack.
At a US-South Korea defense meeting Monday in Seoul, South Korean Deputy Defense Minister for Policy Yoo Jeh-seung said the biggest threat to the alliance between those two nations is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un who considers nuclear weapons “tools of survival for the regime”. “In other words, the North’s capital city will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map”, the source said, following the latest attempt by the North to showcase its nuclear capabilities.
BEIJING (AP) – China responded Monday to calls that it needs to do more to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program by saying that American officials were truly to blame for inciting conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
The Hermit Kingdom has test launched ballistic missiles capable of reaching South Korea, Japan and the United States territory of Guam this year. Diplomacy has so far failed.
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The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
