North, South Korea launch deputy-ministerial talks

North and South Korea on Friday were set to hold the talks at a North Korean border town in their latest step to improve ties after they walked away from a military standoff in August.

But experts are not ruling out the possibility that Kim may be developing this particular weapon.

North Korea has turned into a “powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a hydrogen bomb”, leader Kim Jong-un claimed Thursday.

The United States on Tuesday sanctioned North Korea’s Strategic Rocket Force and blacklisted six individuals, two banks and three shipping firms thought to be involved in arms trade for “engaging in activities that have materially contributed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery”.

Also on Thursday, the UN Security Council held its second meeting on human rights in North Korea, despite the objections of four countries including China, its main diplomatic and economic backer.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference in Beijing that China has consistently upheld achieving denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, safe-guarding peace and stability there and resolving issues through dialogue and reconciliation. According to the Washington Post, the International Atomic Energy Agency believes North Korea is strengthening its nuclear program, but it hasn’t been allowed inside the country inspect anything.

South Korea has allegedly called for the DPRK to agree upon regular reunions of the separated Korean families through the inter-governmental talks.

We all knew that a hydrogen bomb produces a much stronger blast than the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

The rivals, technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, had all but cut ties since early 2010, when a South Korean navy ship was sunk by a torpedo that Seoul said was sacked from a North Korean submarine.

Although human rights are not typically a subject discussed at the UNSC, the debate on the DPRK was expanded to include this topic a year ago as the UN General Assembly urged the Council to consider referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after a UN Commission of Inquiry detailed wide-ranging abuses in the hermit Asian state.

The North has threatened to ruin its important ally, America, in a sea of fires and the South.

“I think it’s unlikely that they have an H-bomb at the moment, but I don’t expect them to keep testing basic devices indefinitely, either”, said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

The North’s first two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 were of plutonium devices, while the third was believed – though not confirmed – to have used uranium as its fissile material.