“South Korean DVDs, MP3s, cell phones, tablets are all now available in North Korea”.
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“We are seeing what we think is pretty strong intervention”, said a bank dealer in Seoul.
“I think the ROK is going to support more concerted efforts to get the news into North Korea”, he said. North Korea fired a few artillery rounds during an apparent military drill near a frontline island today, a military spokesman from the South said, as tensions run high following nuclear and missile tests by Pyongyang. But it recovered to trade just 0.3 percent down at 1,231.0 per dollar as of 0301 GMT.
The allies are expected to begin large-scale annual military drills in early March, which the North calls preparations for war and routinely vows to retaliate. “We urge the United States and North Korea to sit down and have communications and negotiations, to explore ways to resolve each other’s reasonable concerns and finally reach the goal we all want reached”.
Won Yoo Chul, the floor leader of President Park Geun-hye’s Saenuri Party, told Parliament on Monday that the time has come for South Korea to start considering the pursuit of its own nuclear weapons program, echoing some media outlets.
Meanwhile, seismologists have warned that North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests could trigger the eruption of Mount Paektu, a volcano found only 115 kilometres from the site where four weapons have been detonated.
“If we give up securing our own nuclear deterrent for fear of worldwide opposition and depend unilaterally on the United States, we will become nothing but a chess piece manipulated by big powers”, said Mr Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute, south of Seoul.
Gardner said the bill sends a clear message to the world that America “will not tolerate patterns of belligerence”. Earlier this month, North Korea launched a long-range rocket.
U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday signed a bill to strengthen U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea into law, while South Korea has said it will completely suspend operations at the joint industrial zone in North Korea’s border city of Kaesong.
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The expanded sanctions are created to deny North Korea the money it needs to develop miniaturized nuclear warheads and the long-range missiles needed to deliver them.
