S. Korea fires warning shots after N. Korean drone seen

The B-52 was joined by South Korean F-15 and U.S. F-16 fighters and returned to its base in Guam after the flight, the US military said.

North Korea said last week it had tested a powerful hydrogen bomb but the United States and various experts doubt that, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of an atomic bomb, in 2013.

North Korea’s United Nations mission circulated a report from the country’s news agency saying the January 6 test wasn’t to “threaten” or “provoke” anyone but was indispensable to build a nuclear force “to cope with the US ever-more undisguised hostile policy” toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name. By comparing North Korea’s released footage with a successful R-27 launch, it is quite apparent that the KN-11 footage suggests a partially successful launch at best (successful ejection followed by a botched ignition).

Its findings contradict a North Korean statement in September past year that all facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex were working normally.

In an op-ed piece for The New York Times last week, Robert Gallucci, who led the USA delegation that negotiated a nuclear deal with North Korea in 1994, and Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University who participated in the nuclear talks with the North during the former Bush administration, argued that Washington should push for Beijing to scale back its economic support for Pyongyang. When Seoul Korea briefly resumed propaganda broadcasts in August after an 11-year break, Seoul says the two Koreas exchanged artillery fire.

A North Korean defector, Ma Young-ae, told Reuters on Tuesday that she had met Kim in the United States and he had told church gatherings he was a missionary helping North Koreans. North Korean drone flights across the border are rare but do occasionally happen across the world’s most heavily armed border.

Despite skepticism about their effectiveness, the South Korean government defends the broadcasts as an effective tool in psychological warfare. “Countries run by dictatorships even try to control human instincts”.

Notwithstanding Kim’s well-known ruthlessness, a key factor in his being able to hold onto power has been the development of medium- and long-range missile capability, which serves as both a defensive and offensive means to intimidate perceived enemies of the North Korean regime.

“It’s really hard to know what a proportional response to a nuclear test is, if you’re South Korea”, says Kretchun.

A nuclear-capable US B-52 bomber flew a highly-visible mission to the peninsula on Sunday, and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as B-2 stealth bombers and F-22 stealth fighter jets, are understood to be among the additional deployments being considered.

At a ceremony in which he honored the scientists who carried out last week’s controversial weapons test, Kim blamed the United States and its allies for “bringing dark clouds of a nuclear war” to the Korean Peninsula, according to his official website.