Activists launch leaflets into North Korea after nuclear test

There are also anecdotal reports that North Korea continues to use front companies in Hong Kong and China to acquire sensitive technologies for its nuclear and missile programs.

“You name the kind of conventional weapon, also drugs, bootleg liquor, counterfeit currency, prostitution; you name the ugly trade, and North Korea seems to be heavily in it and they need that income”, says Cyr.

North Korea is one of the few countries in the world still practising “self-sufficiency” or autarky (Juche) and is coupled with militarism (Songun).

While the scope of Pyongyang’s nuclear activities is impossible to know for sure, a new assessment by weapons experts estimates that, in addition to the North’s existing plutonium stockpile, increased uranium production could give the DPRK as many as 20 nuclear bombs by the end of the year.

“It is pretty clear that North Korean related organizations are operating in China”, says William Newcomb, Visiting Scholar at the United States Korea Institute inWashington DC and former UNSC panel member who helped impose sanctions on North Korea.

The United States sent a message to Pyongyang by flying two B-1 bombers over South Korea on Tuesday, even as US envoy Sung Kim declared America’s intention to “secure the strongest possible resolution that includes new sanctions as quickly as possible” from the U.N. Security Council.

Last week’s nuclear test, the North’s fifth, was its most powerful to date.

Pyongyang’s most impressive missile test was a launch Monday in rapid succession of three intermediate-range missiles toward Japan.

Pyongyang’s warning to its rivals on Thursday comes days after the U.S. Air Force flew two B-1 supersonic bombers over South Korea and President Park Geun-hye called for the removal of the Kim Jong Un regime in the event of a nuclear attack.

“The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”, said Kim Ki Nam, North Korea’s vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). During a plenary session of the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee immediately after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on Sep.

“Our nuclear scientists conducted a nuclear test explosion of a newly developed nuclear warhead at the the nuclear test site in the north of the country”, said a presenter on the official North Korean television. Yet it is hard to imagine what more China would sign up to.

“I believe that they are right now pushing ahead to complete their nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them and that they will soon call for talks”.

South Korea, the USA and their allies have promised to apply more pressure and sanctions after the test, the second this year.