Yun said during the meeting that the two allies will maintain a solid, strong joint defense readiness, while closely cooperating between foreign and defense authorities of the two countries.
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North Korea said earlier it had carried out a successful miniaturised hydrogen bomb test which put it in “the rank of advanced nuclear states”.
The nuclear test is the fourth by the isolated country, which is under USA and United Nations sanctions for its nuclear and missile programmes.
The hydrogen bomb is in fact already the global standard for the five nations with the greatest nuclear capabilities: the U.S., Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China.
The United Nations Security Council, which has imposed a series of sanctions against North Korea for its previous tests, immediately set an emergency meeting for Wednesday to consider how to react to Pyongyang’s latest claim.
Russian Federation and the U.S. share 93 per cent of all nuclear warheads, but they have been asked to reduce the number of weapons they have under the new START treaty (Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms).
“In addition, South Korea and the USA boosted the operations of their surveillance assets in order to better monitor North Korea’s military movements”, Kim noted.
Lim Seong-nam, a vice minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the North’s behavior “violates UN Security Council Resolutions and challenges global peace and security”.
North Korea previously carried out tests on nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
“That the bomb can become compact is the characteristic, and so this means North Korea has the U.S.in mind in making this H-bomb announcement”, says Tatsujiro Suzuki, professor at the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at Nagasaki University. Based on the seismic activity generated he estimated the bomb produced 40 kilotons of power, significantly more than the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.
Terumi Tanaka, head of Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Federation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, has been working to ban nuclear weapons for years and was stunned by reports of the H-bomb test.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also condemned North Korea and promised a firm response that will include pressing for harsher sanctions at the U.N. Security council.
