The UN Security Council has agreed to start work at once on a new series of sanctions on North Korea after its fifth nuclear test drew global condemnation.
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The Security Council met at the request of Japan, South Korea and the United States to agree on a response, despite resistance from Pyongyang’s ally China to calls for tougher measures.
“It is believed that the North’s nuclear capability is becoming more advanced to a considerable level, and at a faster pace”, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung Se told senior ministry officials, calling for “more and stronger sanctions”.
Such an approach is a tall order given growing levels of mistrust between the USA and China, but North Korea has always represented the best chance to build a tangible track record of regional security cooperation between Washington and Beijing.
Another source cited by Yonhap said Seoul recently set up a special unit in charge of targeting North Korea’s top military leadership and “launching retaliatory attacks on them”.
Clearly, North Korea is becoming more aggressive-and it’s time the United States took further action, despite China’s resistance.
Kimball from the Arms Control Association said North Korea has not yet demonstrated the ability to launch a medium- or long-range missile that can re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and is still years away from having an intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead that can hit the continental U.S.
The campaign said Friday the fifth test is yet another effect of Clinton’s failure in North Korea policy as secretary of state.
The misplaced, but easily sold, fears of the “North Korean missile threat” and the “Iran missile threat” allows the Pentagon to install “defensive” missile systems in South Korea and Eastern Europe which actually amount to offensive systems targeting Beijing and Moscow (by making first strikes against China and Russian Federation more feasible).
He also suggested the United States may launch its own unilateral sanctions in response to “the provocative and unacceptable behavior by the North Koreans”.
Another KCNA report on Sunday said North Koreans were “delighted” by the nuclear test.
Whether the North’s announcement of its test is simply the same mixture of boast, threat and propaganda that characterizes much of what North Korea chooses to show in its tightly controlled state media, or a major nuclear advancement, the picture that the North paints for the world may be as important as what actually happened. Such a strategy would create an opportunity to avoid the immeasurable costs of a second Korean war and lay the ground work for controlled regime transformation through economic development backed by global assistance, at the sacrifice of Kim Jong-un’s nuclear aspirations.
After its fourth test in March, sanctions were toughened to include North Korea’s mineral trade and stricter banking restrictions. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.
The seismic activity, with a magnitude of 5.3, was detected near Punggye-ri, Kilju County, which is the same location as four other tests, the most recent of which was in January.
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While the South has no nuclear weapons of its own, it threatened to optimize the use of its conventional weapon arsenal. Already, some have expressed impatience with the months-old sanctions and advocated a return to the decades-long attempts at diplomacy that failed to achieve denuclearization. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.
