Latest North Korea sub missile test a ‘catastrophic failure’

It would require the president to sanction those engaging in transactions with North Korea related to weapons of mass destruction, arms, luxury goods, money laundering, counterfeiting and human-rights abuses.

The UN Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea’s most recent nuclear test.

The leaflets reportedly described South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye and her government as “mad dogs”. It did not say whether the South Koreans hit the object.

Her comments echoed those last week of US Secretary of State John Kerry who had urged China to take a tougher line with North Korea, warning in a call to his Beijing counterpart that it could not be “business as usual”.

“Sanctions are useless unless they cause pain and bring about changes in North Korea”, Park told a select group of reporters at her New Year’s news conference.

Sung Kim, the USA special envoy for North Korea, iterated similar sentiments after meeting with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on Wednesday.

The ministry added that the shots did not hit the drone, and that it promptly returned to the northern side of the border after encountering the warning. 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.

“The worldwide community’s countermeasures against North Korea’s last nuclear test must differ from the past”, Mr Park told an annual press conference.

The South’s Yonhap News Agency reported that South Korean forces fired about 20 machinegun rounds at the suspected North Korean drone. Two other North Korea sanctions-related bills – both with secondary boycott terms – are now bogged down in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Which means the six-party talks members will cooperate on ways to promote adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution, which will impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.

“Although (it) appears to eject successfully… we think that a catastrophic failure occurred at ignition”, said Catherine Dill, a research associate at the centre.

“Nuclear-free world must begin with the Korean Peninsula”.

The DPRK leaflets also criticized South Korean President Park Geun-hye and the hostile policy of the United States toward the DPRK, while threatening strike against the loudspeakers.

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.

North Korea has recently made the headlines after it claimed to have carried out hydrogen bomb test. The announcement raised concerns over the security of the region.

“The most powerful threat to totalitarianism is the power of truth”, she said. Such leafleting, however, by the North is still rare, though South Korean activists occasionally send anti-Pyongyang leaflets in balloons across the border.