House approves harsher sanctions on North Korea

As well as working with the United Nations to adopt the “strongest” resolution to penalise North Korea, Seoul would also discuss additional “punitive sanctions” with the United States and its allies, Park said.

US foreign policy’s top priority, he said, must be dealing with threats from “failing states” in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the terror networks that have grown in that part of the world.

When Park viewed China’s largest-ever military parade in Beijing in September 2015 from a prominent spot near President Xi Jinping, some observers said the South had replaced the North as China’s favorite Korea.

“I think it was the same for people around me who were also too busy worrying about their next meal to care about whether or not there had been a nuclear test”, she said. “Until now, China has repeatedly declared that it won’t allow a nuclear-armed North Korea”.

Despite much worldwide skepticism about whether Pyongyang had actually exploded a hydrogen bomb rather than a less powerful atomic bomb, the test sparked global outcry, including from China, which is a huge supplier of energy and aid to North Korea.

On January 6, Pyongyang claimed it had carried out a hydrogen bomb test. Seoul started anti-North propaganda broadcasting through loudspeakers over the border in response, APA reports quoting Sputnik. Media reported that it was a drone.

South Korea on Wednesday fired warning shots after an unidentified object from North Korea was seen flying close to the rivals’ border, the South’s military said. China may be concerned about a massive flow of refugees from North Korea across its own border and to South Korea if the North Korean government, led by Kim Jong Un, were toppled.

 The two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. are the six parties to a diplomatic process over North Korea that has been suspended since late 2008, when the North announced its intention to restart its nuclear weapons programme. It’s the South’s response to the North’s nuclear test last week.

North Korea has in recent years touted its drone program, a relatively new addition to its arsenal.

Her stance was backed hours later by a meeting in Seoul of the US, Japanese and South Korean special envoys on North Korea.

The broadcasts – a high-decibel mix of K-pop and anti-North messages – are a red rag to Pyongyang, which had threatened artillery strikes on the loudspeaker units when they were used during a cross-border crisis previous year. 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.

“An additional North Korean provocation can take place any time”, Park said, adding that Seoul and Washington were discussing the transfer of further United States “strategic assets” to the peninsula.

Still, South Korea has another card to play in its attempts to persuade China to take a tougher stance: dangling the deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system as a negative incentive. But in a telephone conversation with his South Korean counterpart last Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made it clear that Beijing supports dialogue to resolve the nuclear standoff.