Japan, US, S. Korea to work for strong warning to N. Korea

Whether successful or not, the test has allowed North Korea to move yet another step closer to the possibility of propelling a nuclear missile toward the United States or any other country in the World.

“I think the testing program, which enrages the rest of the world, actually is perceived in North Korea as a sign of Kim Jong Un’s strength”, Hill said.

China, which borders North Korea, has been cautious about imposing even harsher sanctions on Pyongyang.

“The emails had subjects such as ‘(Office of National Security) requesting to plan to counter North Korea’s 4 nuclear test” and “This is the Office of Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs and National Security, ‘” South Korean police told the Chosun Ilbo.

It is likely both officials would take the opportunity to persuade China, a permanent member of the Security Council, to consider tougher sanctions against North Korea.

China is North Korea’s main economic and diplomatic backer, although relations between the Cold War allies have cooled in recent years.

In short, while the North Koreans have been thinking big – claiming to have built a hydrogen bomb, a boast that experts dismiss as wildly exaggerated – the Energy Department and the Pentagon have been readying a line of weapons that heads in the opposite direction.

As a traditional ally of North Korea, China has voiced its firm opposition to North Korea’s nuclear program but is apparently against strongly punishing its neighbor.

The North Korean object turned around after the South fired, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. In articles and editorials that day, the newspaper declared that the statue’s erection on a public road by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Jeongdaehyeop) was originally against the law, but that Park had not made the decision to issue a government order for its removal.

But whatever the nature of the device, it was North Korea’s fourth nuclear test since 2006, and further evidence of Pyongyang’s intention to continue developing its nuclear weapons capability in the face of worldwide censure. What is seldom said is that this failure is the result of the failure of the United States to make full use of its financial power. The question to ask is: Do we still trust the U.S. to be talking of deterrence in 2016 after North Korea has carried out four nuclear bomb tests?

Blinken said that Pyongyang should look to the example of Iran. The United States must sustain that pressure until Pyongyang’s denuclearization is verified and its vast gulags are shut down.

Pyongyang’s latest provocation should not be treated as just the latest in a series of flagrant violations of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. Additionally, North Korea routinely issues ominous threats, but regularly fails to follow through. It demands, for once, a policy worthy of the name.