Korea say NKorea must pay high price for nuclear test

SOUTH KOREA says North Korea has launched an estimated 1 million propaganda leaflets by balloon into the South amid increased tensions between the rivals following the North’s recent nuclear test.

An official said on condition of anonymity on Monday in NY that United Nations planned to invite a group of North Korean diplomats to the disarmament-related program set for late January.

The irony wasn’t lost on Lee Min Bok when he spotted propaganda leaflets fluttering down in front of his home just south of the border dividing the Korean peninsula: it was airborne pamphlets flown the other way that convinced him to defect from the north more than two decades ago.

Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University for North Korean Studies, said the leafleting was largely a reactive gesture.

Seoul’s defence ministry said the North had been sending balloons loaded with leaflets on a near-daily basis, with some reaching the capital, as well as border areas.

North Korea claims to have developed a hydrogen bomb.

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

North Korea’s decision to conduct a fourth nuclear test in defiance of Chinese opposition shows the extent to which Kim Jong-un has taken Beijing’s extensive food and fuel support for granted.

Looking back at the 2009 nuclear test, it has been retrospectively argued by Evans Revere, writing in American Foreign Policy Interests, that the Kim regime’s second test was carried out to buttress nationalistic sentiment and pride around Pyongyang in the wake of the late Kim Jong-il’s debilitating stroke in the summer of 2008.

On January 8, two days after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon that it claims was a hydrogen bomb, South Korea began using banks of high-powered speakers to blare a mix of K-pop hits and anti-Kim regime commentary across the DMZ, the heavily fortified border that has divided the two countries since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Following the meeting, Blinken told reporters that China shares commitment and conviction in North Korea’s denuclearization.

The work of South Korean activists such as Lee is at the vanguard of the propaganda attacks on North Korea.

The survey found that the negative view was higher among younger respondents than older respondents, which is contrary to a widespread perception that younger South Koreans are more likely than older South Koreans to hold a favorable view of North Korea.