Ishikane and Chung also agreed to cooperate closely in response to North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles needed to launch them.
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The U.S. special representative for North Korean policy, Sung Kim, who is visiting Seoul, said Monday that North Korea “should refrain from all provocative actions, including missile tests, which are clearly in violation of Security Council resolutions”.
The test was aimed at testing the structural safety and the thrust of the newly developed rocket engine and gauging the working specification of heat separation system, Xinhua quoted KCNA as saying.
The project had been suspended by South Korea as part of its sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations early this month.
President Park Geun-hye ordered the government to strengthen the level of vigilance across the country, an official said Thursday, as North Korea has ratcheted up its threats against its southern neighbor. Those missiles would be easier to destroy before launch if there were concerns of an attack.
“Our current understanding is that they are pushing ahead with solid fuel development”, he said.
J apan and South Korea held talks on Tuesday in a bid to resolve the stalled implementation of a landmark agreement which appeared to have settled a decades-long dispute over Tokyo’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during the Second World War.
Pyongyang’s claim indicates it is continuing to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at a rapid pace in defiance of United Nations sanctions, and amid assessment by the South’s officials that it could conduct a new nuclear test at any time.
The latest purported advancement would be a concern because solid-fuel-based missiles don’t require hours of fueling with liquids and can potentially be launched from mobile carriers.
Analysts are mostly concerned about a possible test of a missile known as the KN-08, which is estimated to have a range of several thousand miles but has yet to be test-fired.
North Korea views its young leader as the country’s “supreme dignity” that its people must protect, even at the cost of their lives.
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Its nuclear test site remained active, undergoing maintenance on existing tunnels as well as clean-up following the January test, according to 38 North, a project of the U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. That rocket put a satellite into space.
