Korea, US mull further strategic deployment after North test

Senior diplomats from Japan, the United States and South Korea will meet this weekend in Tokyo to discuss responses to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.

“The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets”, a South Korean spokesperson said Monday.

In retaliation, the ROK military resumed propaganda broadcasts against the DPRK and the United States flew a B-52 bomber over the ROK on Sunday to underscore its alliance with the ROK and isolate the DPRK.

North Korea’s leader has taken a victory tour to celebrate the country’s widely disputed claim of a hydrogen bomb test, seeking to rally pride in an explosion viewed with outrage by much of the world and boost his domestic political goals.

A ministry spokesman declined to give details, but the ministry had said last week that USA military assets to be deployed could include nuclear-powered submarines and F-22 stealth fighter jets. “North Korea’s nuclear test is a blatant violation of its global obligations”.

South Korea and the USA are scheduled to conduct annual joint training exercises at the end of February, Yonhap reported.

 North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un on Monday called on his scientists to improve the country’s nuclear arsenal, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

In addition, North Korea exported more than $1 billion in minerals a year ago, mostly coal, to China, its main trading partner, according to Reuters calculations based on Chinese export data.

South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye plans to make a speech to the nation on Wednesday in which she is expected to express strong will to respond to North Korea’s nuclear test, a presidential official said.

The commander of the 28,500 US troops in South Korea, General Curtis Scaparrotti, urged them to be vigilant.

The complex, where South Korean factories employ North Korean workers, is an important source of revenue for the impoverished North.

South Korea and Japan used a military hotline for the first time after North Korea’s test, South Korea’s defence ministry said, in a sign the North is pushing the two old rivals closer together.

During a photo session with hundreds of participants at the headquarters of the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang, the young ruler lauded them for “glorifying the long-held missions of his predecessors” by successfully carrying out what he said was a hydrogen bomb test? a claim that has become the subject of dispute among outside observers.