U.S. expects China to play “special role” in punishing North Korea

A ministry official told AFP that the North was using helium balloons with timers that cause them to explode and scatter the leaflet packages.

The South Korean won was slightly down near mid-session, having taken its cue recently from weakness in regional currencies such as the yuan.

South Korea, the USA and Japan hope to provide the necessary funding and technology so that those countries can stop materials involved in the production of weapons of mass destruction passing through en route to the North.

South Korea called into question Wednesday a North Korean refugee’s statements on apparently returning to her homeland, accusing Pyongyang of “distorting the facts”. But that effort failed three weeks later as the “Great Successor” sought to burnish his credentials with further “satellite” launches and later another nuclear test. The 2013 push for sanctions, which the Chinese reluctantly accepted, may have slowed North Korea’s progress.

According to several government sources, Gen. Kim Yong-chol, chief of the North’s General Bureau of Reconnaissance, appears to have been chosen as director of the United Front Department (UFD) to fill a post left vacant after director Kim Yang-gon was killed in a vehicle accident last month at the age of 73.

The DPRK and South Korea still haven’t signed a peace treaty after the 1950-53 Korean War.

The barrage of leaflets landed on South Korean territory since the night of January 12, when the North was detected launching plastic balloons, presumably carrying fliers, the South Korean Defense Ministry reported. The border region between the two Koreas was declared a demilitarized zone, but this did not prevent Seoul from occasionally broadcasting their propaganda messages, infuriating Pyongyang.

“South Korea and the US will focus on ways to cooperate in response to North Korea’s nuclear test, including a UN Security Council resolution”.

Several of the messages were directed at Park, the first woman to be elected president of South Korea.

Another leaflet dropped on the South had a cartoon of Ms Park in a red bikini being thrown into a rubbish bin as “human filth”. It has previously referred to her as a prostitute.

The Obama administration tried to talk the North Koreans into denuclearization through a failed 2012 “Leap Day understanding” that sought a North Korean pledge to freeze nuclear and missile testing and come back to the negotiation table.