Some 900 serving in the South’s army and 150 Marines have applied to postpone their discharge as tensions remain high on the Korean peninsula, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reports.
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There was a legislation passed unanimously by the House of Representatives in the United States on Tuesday to further increase sanctions on North Korea.
CNN’s interview with Kim Dong-chul, who claims he was arrested for espionage, comes days after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, which angered China and the United States.
Park said past broadcasts helped frontline North Korean soldiers learn the truth about Pyongyang’s authoritarian rule and defect to South Korea. She did not give specifics.
The country is already under a wide array of global sanctions, and diplomats have said U.N. Security Council members were expected to discuss the possibility of adding to those.
North Korea has in recent years touted its drone program, a relatively new addition to its arsenal. It strongly condemned the test as a “clear violation” of previous United Nations sanctions resolutions.
“President Park’s message should be read as showing Seoul’s firmness on resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, even by bringing up the matter that Beijing is uncomfortable with”, Lee Jung-nam, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at Korea University told NK News.
“I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us, that we simply can not take the business-as-usual approach to this latest provocation”. They say the regime has finally blown it once again after the repetitive talks about the nuclear test. People in the markets also argue, ‘The government should have spent the money on food supplies.
“This is the surest and most effective mean of psychological warfare against North Korea” now, Park said in a nationally televised address.
The nuclear test still has analysts perplexed.
The tone of Kim’s comments, which sought to glorify him and justify the test, is typical of state media propaganda. North Korea may be more likely to sign onto the treaty if China has done so. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China’s efforts towards a denuclearised Korean peninsula would continue.
Experts have concluded that the allegedly successful launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea was heavily edited. That South Korea is the 13th-largest economy in the world deserves mention, too.
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Former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker, one of the world’s top experts on North Korea’s nuclear program, said last week he did not believe it tested “a real hydrogen bomb”, and that “North Korea is still a long way off from being able to strike the us mainland”.
