Seoul says N Korea scattered million propaganda leaflets

“The discussion we had today was very positive, productive and practical in advancing cooperation among our three countries”, Blinken told reporters at a joint news conference at the Iikura Guesthouse in Minato Ward, Tokyo, after the meeting.

Pyongyang scattered over one million copies of anti-South Korea leaflets through air balloons in part of Seoul and some of the northern region close to the inter-Korean border.

At the congress, Pyongyang is likely to announce policies on matters ranging from economics and politics to defence and relations with rival South Korea.

China has emphasized the need for an “appropriate level” of United Nations measures, while South Korea, the USA and Japan are pushing for stronger and comprehensive sanctions.

Days after Seoul resumed blasting K-pop and derisive messages about Kim Jong-un’s wife across the DMZ in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Pyongyang escalated the propaganda war by raining leaflets on South Korea that compared President Park Geun-hye to a zombie and threatened to “obliterate” the Kim regime’s enemies.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken has urged Beijing to show leadership on the North Korean nuclear issue.

North Korea claimed to test a hydrogen bomb on January 6 although many foreign governments and analysts remain skeptical about the claim.

Tokyo last month agreed to provide ¥1 billion for a fund that will be set up by Seoul for the surviving comfort women, who were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels in the 1930s and 1940s.

Following his talks in Seoul, Blinken will travel to Beijing on Wednesday for talks with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui. The leaflets referred to her as “human filth”. Another leaflet posted posted on the photo-sharing site Imgur showed half of Park’s face photoshopped to look like a skeleton, and described a speech she gave a year ago and other remarks as “insane ramblings of a half-corpse”.

While analysts have for years been wrong in predicting major reforms – or collapse – in North Korea, the fact that the event is taking place for just the seventh time after a decades-long hiatus is a further indication that Kim is transforming the North Korea his father Kim Jong Il ruled through back-channel dealings into a more “normal” state where formal process is ingrained.