However, Pyongyang has dismissed the US’ threats and continued to blame the States for North Korea’s need for nuclear weapons.
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With ripples from North Korea’s latest nuclear test continuing to spread throughout the region, speculation surfaced Monday that the communist state may be gearing up to detonate another fission device in defiance of global condemnation.
The UN Security Council had on Friday agreed to start work on new punitive measures – even though five sets of UN sanctions since the first nuclear test have failed to halt the North’s nuclear drive.
“North Korea has a tunnel where it can conduct an additional nuclear test”. Yonhap did not elaborate.
Spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun declined to give more information beyond saying a potential test could take place in an unused tunnel at the Punggy-ri site where North Korean has previously carried out tests in its effort to develop nuclear warheads that can fit on a missile.
Seoul, Washington and their allies have pledged to apply more pressure and sanctions on Pyongyang after its latest nuclear test.
Yonhap said Sunday that the plan would turn areas in Pyongyang, where the North’s war commanders were likely to hide, into ashes and “eliminate those places from the map permanently”.
But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Monday that Carter was “being too modest”.
A South Korean activist tramples on a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un during a protest at the country’s latest nuclear test in Seoul, South Korea, on September 12.
Yonhap reported that a planned USA military B-1B bomber flight to the Korean peninsula had been scheduled for Monday but was delayed because of bad weather.
North Korea’s propaganda machine, for its part, has kept up its typical anti-Seoul threats and crude insults against Park, calling her “hideous confrontation manic” and “the Korean nation’s biggest trouble-maker”.
The worldwide community is said to be considering its response, with the United States saying it is considering imposing sanctions alongside those imposed by the UN Security Council, Japan and South Korea. Park said Monday the “danger of war” and a possibility of North Korean provocations could loom on the Korean Peninsula.
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Meanwhile, Kyodo News reported that North Korea’s foreign minister arrived in Beijing on Monday. The United States, Britain and France pushed for the 15-member body to impose new sanctions.
