South Korea is accusing rival North Korea of floating propaganda leaflets via a river in the first such incident.
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The announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has already drawn protests from China that it would destabilize regional security.
He adds that North Korea’s decision on conducting another nuclear test will “entirely hinge on the United States’s attitude”.
“It is not aimed at any other party other than North Korea and the threat it poses and this defensive weapons system is neither designed nor capable of threatening China’s security interests”, Reuters quoted a US official as saying.
Activist Kwon Na-hyun said a 28-year-old North Korean woman who had been living in China’s Liaoning Province was arrested on Monday and taken to the border with North Korea.
It invited Pyongyang-based ambassadors from such nations as Laos and Cambodia to information sessions in response to USA sanctions on Kim and criticism by Asia-Europe Meeting leaders over North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.
Woo Jung-yeop, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said that it there were stronger ties between China and North Korea it would further bolster defence alliances between the US, South Korea and Japan – something that China certainly did not want to happen.
Top diplomats came with different agendas to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting, which culminated in the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) on Tuesday, closing with ministers unable to agree on a unified annual chairman’s statement.
Some analysts say North Korea has developed a handful of crude nuclear devices and is working toward building a warhead small enough to mount on a long-range missile capable of reaching the continental U.S. However, South Korean defense officials say the North has neither such a miniaturized warhead nor a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile.
The planned deployment of the system makes Korea “the center of a new cold war”, said Archbishop Peter Lee Ki-heon, president of the Episcopal Commission for Reconciliation, and Bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik, president of the Commission for Justice and Peace, according to an AsiaNews report.
The strife between Beijing and Seoul comes as North Korea tested three missiles last week over waters to the east of the peninsula, displaying its ability to strike anywhere in Korea.
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Ri said North Korea was a responsible nuclear state and would not use its atomic arms unless threatened, repeating its stated position.
