But China has blamed the US and South Korea for ratcheting up tensions.
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Friday is North Korea’s national day and the nuclear test also comes just after U.S. President Barack Obama left Asia after attending global summits in China and Laos.
The ministry plans to strictly implement sanctions namely banning entry of smuggled North Korean goods to South Korea and continuing to halt all North Korea exchanges by private institutions. It came hours after the isolated communist regime said it had tested its largest nuclear warhead yet – and designed it to sit atop a ballistic missile. North Korea’s state TV said the test was “examined and confirmed“. President Barack Obama spoke with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The UN has imposed the strongest sanctions against North Korea to date, so now we’ll have to see what South Korea and the worldwide community will bring out again this time. “The U.S. will be made to clearly see how the DPRK rises imposingly out of chains of sanctions, blockade and pressure”. President Park Geun-hye called Kim Jong Un’s regime “fanatically reckless”. “That would enable North Korea to “produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”.
Another resident of Seoul, Kim Moon-kyeong, says “North Korea’s nuclear provocation is such a silly act”.
Obama said the test was “a grave threat to regional security and to worldwide peace and stability” and “follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches”.
Satellite images had shown new activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in recent weeks, according to North Korea monitoring site 38North. It described that quake as “artificial”. In the past, the reclusive nation has marked major anniversaries with weapons tests or other provocative actions.
“No one should be surprised that North Korea continues to conduct nuclear tests to enhance the capabilities of its growing arsenal”.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said North Korea’s actions were a threat to Japan and the country would consider further sanctions.
“The real issues are can they improve these weapons from basic atomic bombs to hydrogen weapons?” “It looked bigger than what we would call miniaturised, but they wanted to show us that it would fit into an ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) nosecone”. “The answer on both counts right now is probably ‘No, ‘” Kelly said in email exchange Friday.
About 28,000 USA troops are stationed in South Korea, which technically remains at war with its neighbor to the north.
Japan, which is within range of the North’s missiles and hosts tens of thousands of US troops, called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that Pyongyang has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the US mainland.
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Pyongyang has carried out a series of nuclear and ballistic missile attempts since the turn of the year with mixed results – causing tough new sanctions to be imposed by the UN Security council.
