South Korea vows to seek strong sanctions on North

“That’s why I was shocked that the president made no mention of North Korea’s recent nuclear test during his speech”.

There is widespread scepticism over the H-bomb claim, but whatever the North detonated underground is likely to push the country closer towards a fully functional nuclear arsenal, which it still is not thought to have.

Since Friday, South Korea has been blasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda and K-pop songs from huge speakers along the border.

Kim, the United States’ special representative for North Korea policy, made the remarks in Seoul after talks with Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea’s special envoy for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, and Kimihiro Ishikane, director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau. Her military announced it has found hundreds of anti-Seoul leaflets near the western portion of the Koreas’ border, which the defence ministry believes were floated over by the North’s military.

The diplomat said all 15 Security Council members agree that North Korea should be denuclearized, and this will be reflected in a new resolution.

The WEF said in a statement Wednesday that an invitation had been extended to North Korea in the autumn “in view of positive signs coming out of the country”. In response, North Korea started broadcasting its own messages critical of Park across the DMZ, although military officials said the speakers were too weak for the messages to be clearly heard, according to local reports.

“I have the expectation that China will play a more aggressive role to live up to its strong will and public stance”, Park said. She has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping six times, most recently as the only leader of a US ally to attend a Chinese military parade in September.

North Korea said last week it had tested a powerful hydrogen bomb but the United States and various experts doubt that, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of an atomic bomb, in 2013.

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.

But whatever the nature of the device, it was North Korea’s fourth nuclear test since 2006, and further evidence of Pyongyang’s intention to continue developing its nuclear weapons capability in the face of global censure.

In this October 10, 2015, file photo, a drone is paraded in Pyongyang, North Korea.

On the 11th, a Daily NK reporter spoke with a source located in Yanggang Province, who said that news of the purportedly successful hydrogen bomb test is spewing from state-run media outlets but meeting with largely apathetic or irritated reactions from the target audience.

South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye answers questions during a press conference in Seoul, on J …

This is the typical response from China, and it serves to implicitly validate North Korea’s claim that its nuclear program is necessary due a persistent security threat posed by the United States and South Korea (see also this op-ed run by China’s state news agency, titled “U.S. hostility behind DPRK’s nuclear brinkmanship”).