A U.S. 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. The flight from the U.S. base in Guam would now take place on Tuesday, a U.S. Forces in Korea official told Reuters, declining to identify the type of aircraft involved.
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According to BBC’s Korea correspondent, Steve Evans, there is growing criticism within South Korea that its attempt at slowing down the North in its nuclear program is utterly failing in preventing Kim Jong-un from furthering its alarming experiments.
A South Korean army’s K1 tank moves during an annual exercise in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016.
“The assessment by South Korean and United States intelligence is that the North is always ready for an additional nuclear test in the Punggye-ri area (the area where it has carried out its previous tests)”, said defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun.
In a statement hailing the “success” of its test on Friday, the North vowed to take further measures to increase its nuclear strike force “in quality and in quantity”.
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.
Citing unidentified government sources, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported signs that the North had finished test preparations in one previously unused tunnel at Punggy-ri. Yonhap did not elaborate.
The South Korean defense ministry has also presented the “Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation” to the national assembly, “aimed at wiping a certain section of Pyongyang completely off the map”, Yonhap quoted a military source as saying.
Under the 32-year-old, who took over control of the isolated state after the death of his father Kim Jong Il in 2011, North Korea has sped up its nuclear weapons programme despite United Nations economics sanctions being tightened in March.
South Korea is also discussing plans to resume propaganda broadcasts on the border from sometime in November, he added.
“The U.S. stands resolutely with the Republic of Korea and continues its ironclad support”, Christopher Bush, a spokesman at the U.S. military command in South Korea.
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Even if China wanted to rein in North Korea, analysts say it’s not clear that it could. Diplomacy has so far failed. Regional disarmament-for-aid talks on the North’s nuclear ambitions have not been held since late 2008.
