S. Korea fires warning shots after North Korean drone seen

South Korean army soldiers gather to search for suspected North Korean leaflets in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. Later, the North allegedly responded with a rare leaflet campaign near the border.

It’s unsurprising that South Korea has been unable to change China’s calculus on the North Korea issues.

If confirmed, Kim, who CNN said was 60 and formerly of Fairfax, Va., would be the second Western citizen known to be held in North Korea.

The Korean Central News Agency and Korean Central Television announced the success of North Korea’s fourth nuclear test to the world with their usual aplomb and anti-America swagger, demonstrating once again how North Korea is just as entertaining as it is risky – and the bigger picture reveals why.

She stressed China’s past condemnations of North Korea’s military nuclear programme but added: “I am certain that China is very well aware if such a strong will isn’t followed by necessary steps, we will not be able to stop the North’s fifth and sixth nuclear tests and we can not guarantee true peace and stability on the Korean peninsula”. The shots did not hit the drone. South Korea and China have grown increasingly close in recent years.

“The global community’s countermeasures against North Korea’s last nuclear test must differ from the past”, Ms Park told an annual press conference.

In 2014, Seoul officials discovered what they called several North Korean drones that had flown across the border.

“The failed launch combined with testing from a barge shows that North Korea still has a long way to go to develop this system”, said the analysis by John Schilling, an aerospace engineer who is a specialist in satellite and launch vehicle propulsion systems.

South Korea, still technically at war with the North since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has for days been blaring propaganda through loudspeakers across the border.

The North Korean object turned around after the South fired the shots, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

She said North Korea’s “grave threat”…

Seoul’s nuclear negotiator Hwang Joon-Kook and his USA and Japanese counterparts – Sung Kim and Kimihiro Ishikane – held a trilateral meeting in a Seoul hotel to coordinate their response to Pyongyang’s self-proclaimed hydrogen bomb test last week.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted almost unanimously on Tuesday to pass legislation that would broaden unilateral sanctions that would empower the president to seize the assets of North Koreans involved in illicit activities and to sanction banks from other countries that do business with the Kim Jong Un government.

With China being North Korea’s biggest trading partner and a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, Park is urging Chinese President Xi Jinping to use his influence to rein in Kim. Park on Wednesday urged North Korea’s only major ally, China, to help punish P… But there have been signs that Beijing is getting increasingly frustrated at the North’s repeated provocations.

South Korean activists occasionally send anti-Pyongyang leaflets in balloons across the border.