China to back sanctions against N. Korea for nuclear test

The Defense Ministry official who took part in the defense meeting added, “There was also a mention of the fact that the countries that receive the most impact from the North Korean nuclear issue are South Korea and 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 worldwide censure.

Park had called on China to work more closely as a partner to Seoul in resolving the North Korea nuclear crisis.

South Korean and Chinese defence ministry officials discussed North Korea’s latest nuclear test on Friday, as pressure intensified on Beijing to take a tougher line with ally Pyongyang.

The isolated state has long sought a peace treaty with the United States, as well as an end to the exercises by South Korea and the United States, which has about 28,500 troops based in South Korea.

“I believe that we can send a strong and clear message to Pyongyang and the global community that we would never respond (to the nuclear test) as if nothing has happened”, Lim was quoted as saying by Seoul’s foreign ministry officials.

This referred to an agreement reached in Beijing by members of the six-party talks on September 19, 2005, on steps toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, considered the first major breakthrough reached by China, Japan, the United States, Russia and the two Koreas.

The North’s H-bomb claims have been met with widespread condemnation and suspicion, but also questions on how to stop the country’s growing nuclear threat.

But the statement then switched back to defiant mode, accusing the United Nations of rushing to “fabricate a resolution on sanctions aimed at such hostile acts as hamstringing our efforts for peaceful economic construction and the improvement of the people’s standard of living”.

But China’s leverage over Pyongyang is mitigated, analysts say, by its overriding fear of a North Korean collapse and the prospect of a reunified, US-allied Korea directly on its border.