Korea announces start of anti-North propaganda broadcasts

“Today in my conversation with the Chinese I made it clear that has not worked and we can not continue business as usual”.

Jeff Baden, Obama’s former top Asia adviser and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank, said the test could have as much, or possibly more, to do with China as the United States.

However, it said the call had been delayed due to China’s “internal scheduling”, citing an unnamed official.

The broadcasts are meant to raise questions in North Korean minds about the infallibility of the country’s ruling Kim family.

In Seoul, the government also took unilateral action by announcing the resumption of high-decibel propaganda broadcasts into the North – a tactic that had prompted Pyongyang to threaten military strikes when it was last employed during a cross-border crisis previous year.

Cheong Seong-chang, director of unification strategy at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said Pyongyang was likely to protest Seoul’s move strongly, with possible military provocations.

“It is simply rising to the bait”.

The loudspeakers can send sound as far as 24 km at night and about 10 km in the daytime.

BBC reports that the broadcasts are set to start again on Friday, which happens to be the 33rd birthday of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Abe hinted Tokyo may tighten its unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang, saying, “We will respond to North Korea in a firm and resolute way, including by considering our country’s own measures”.

“The North’s fourth nuclear test is a wanton violation of its global obligations…and a grave violation of the inter-Korea agreement on August 25”, an official at the presidential Blue House said.

Kerry also said he and Wang agreed to work closely together to determine the steps that we can take to address increasing concerns about the nuclear test.

For the North, the broadcasts are seen as a threat to morale and a direct attack on the regime’s carefully constructed alternative reality that says the South is much worse off than the North while still bent on its destruction. “Exclusively depending on Beijing’s pressure to force the North to give up its nuclear plan is an illusion”, it said in an editorial.

The underground explosion angered China, which was not given prior notice although it is North Korea’s main ally, pointing to a strain in their ties.

Gains from the lifting of sanctions and the relative trinkets offered in grand bargain proposals would make for an unfair exchange for denuclearisation in the eyes of the North Korean leadership. “Not for one day”, Mr Kerry told reporters. A congressional source said it was expected as soon as Monday.

The statement further underscored that North Korea will act as a “responsible nuclear state”, and will use its nuclear armament only to defend its sovereignty.

“Any escalation in this region, any over-reaction can easily lead to not only a conflict between South and North Korea, but drag China and the United States and Japan into a confrontation”, as well, Cordesman said. Seoul refused to elaborate about what USA military assets were under consideration, but they likely refer to B-52 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters and nuclear-powered submarines.

Hydrogen bombs release about 1,000 times the energy of a standard atomic bomb, according to Tatsujiro Suzuki, a professor at Nagasaki University’s Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.