According to NK News, a specialist website focused on North Korea, “this is the first time the North has explicitly used United States and South Korea-related satire in its comedy”.
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It also urged the North to immediately and unconditionally abandon its nuclear and missile programs and called on China to exercise its leverage over the North, including through aggressive enforcement of U.N. Security Council sanctions.
On the morning of September 9, North Korea executed its fifth nuclear test and announced that the country has a weapon light and small enough to be placed atop a ballistic missile.
“They’re producing more nuclear material – best estimates are now that they may have enough material for up to 21 nuclear warheads and the capability to produce about 6 new warheads a year”.
“The latest test also emphasises the urgency for those states that have not yet done so‚ particularly those that possess nuclear weapons‚ to join the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty so as to facilitate its entry into force without any further delay”.
This time, Japan, the United States and South Korea are seeking a total ban on petroleum exports to North Korea, including those used for private-sector purposes. North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong-ho is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the UN General Assembly on September 24th.
China is in a bind over what to do about North Korea’s stepped-up nuclear and missile tests, even though it is annoyed with its ally and has started talks with other UN Security Council members on a new sanctions resolution against Pyongyang.
The Sept. 9 blast was in defiance of United Nations sanctions that were tightened in March.
Meeting in NY, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the three countries have condemned what he called the “provocative, reckless behavior of the DPRK”.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said that the US alliances and a “forward-looking” relationship between Japan and South Korea were needed for regional peace and stability in Asia’s “tough” security environment.
But doubts remain in Japan, the United States and South Korea about how serious Beijing is about implementing such measures.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida held the meeting in NY on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, as the U.N. Security Council is working on new sanctions to penalize Pyongyang.
“We must make North Korea understand that repeated provocations will isolate them from the global community and that there can be no bright future for them at all”, Kishida said.
Pyongyang has made it clear, however, that it has no intention of backing down in the face of worldwide criticism and an anticipated ratcheting up of the existing sanctions imposed on the regime, even when an ally like China joins those sanctions. In 2009 the group split and North Korea resumed nuclear tests.
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But Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University and an authority on the North Korean leadership, believes there may be an element of bluff in the statements emerging from Pyongyang.
