NKorean drone crosses border into SKorea

The incident Wednesday took place hours after South Korean President Park Geun-hye held a nationally televised press conference in which she urged China to help draw up the “strongest sanctions” against North Korea as punishment for the January 6 test. She also called on China, the North’s major ally, to play a “necessary role” in applying strong sanctions against Pyongyang so it does not conduct further tests.

The two countries already approved the 4D operation concept in principle at their annual Security Consultative Meeting in November a year ago and are now working out a detailed plan, spurred by the North’s nuclear test last week.

The House easily passed a bill slapping harsher sanctions on North Korea in response to its most recent nuclear test, and leading senators promise to promptly follow suit. He remembers feeling elated to hear the news that his country had successfully tested such a “big weapon”, he told Reuters.

It is also unclear if North Korea has developed a nuclear device small enough to mount on a missile.

Diplomats at a UN Security Council emergency session last week pledged to swiftly pursue new sanctions.

Kim Jong-Un, the leader of the secretive communist state, hailed the test a “success” and said it was created to protect the region “from the danger of nuclear war caused by the US-led imperialists”, according to the country’s news agency.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), said the U.S. “cannot allow North Korea to continue to be unsafe and frivolous”.

Despite the signs, the North’s announcement is galvanizing South Korean military recruits, Newsis reported.

Beyond the obvious economic logic behind cultivating China-South Korea ties, Park’s administration was hoping that a close relationship with China would give Seoul more leverage to seek Chinese pressure on North Korea.

Beijing is seen as reluctant to clamp down on the North because of fears that a toppled government in Pyongyang would lead to millions of desperate North Koreans flooding across the border to China.

She said the B-52 bomber’s fly-over was an expression of the USA commitment to the defense of South Korea.

North Korean drone flights across the world’s most heavily armed border are rare but have happened before.

“The best partner is one that holds your hand when you’re having a hard time”, Park said at her presidential office.

“I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us, that we simply can not take the business-as-usual approach to this latest provocation”.

Cha expected the crisis triggered by the North’s fourth nuclear test will not worsen, given the scheduled 7th Congress of the North’s Workers’ Party in May. She said that global terror groups like ISIS can always attack Korean people, so the Assembly should pass the act soon.

In the wake of the nuclear test, the two Koreas have settled into a Cold War-era standoff.