S. Korean military fires warning shots at DPRK drone in border area

The leaflets of different sizes and designs called for Seoul to stop its broadcasting of anti-Pyongyang messages in border areas with loudspeakers, which began last Friday as part of retaliatory measures to the DPRK’s claim of its first hydrogen bomb test a week ago.

In a meeting with his nuclear scientists in Pyongyang on Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said the talk of sanctions and movement of strategic weapons was “bringing dark clouds of a nuclear war” to the peninsula.

A nuclear capable U.S. B-52 flew close to North Korea over the weekend in a show of force meant to underline America’s alliance with the South. Uruguay’s UN Ambassador Elbio Rosselli, current president of the Security Council, said the UN Security Council was immediately launching work on the resolution detailing measures in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear test.

Shi Yinhong, professor of global relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said it is likely China would support any new United Nations sanctions against North Korea, but added it was hard to say if it would take any further unilateral action against Pyongyang. “North Korea is China’s great security asset”, he said. The country is irked by joint military maneuvers by South Korea and the USA and views them as direct threats against its security.

Meanwhile, South Korea fired warning shots after a North Korean drone was seen crossing the border, according to reports. South Korea accused North Korea of planting landmines that maimed two of its soldiers.

“For me, objective one in the diplomacy is how do we start creating change in Chinese policy to get them farther along”, Joseph DeThomas, a former ambassador and deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, told a Washington audience last week.

“North Korea used heavy video editing to cover over this fact”, Hanham said in an email.

By a almost unanimous vote of 418 to 2, the House of Representatives passed the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, which would heap additional financial pressure on the already-sanctioned hermit regime of leader Kim Jong-Un.

Beijing is seen as reluctant to clamp down on the North because of fears that a toppled government in Pyongyang would lead to millions of desperate North Koreans flooding across the border to China.

Experts from the U.S. and other countries have expressed doubts about the North’s claims that last week’s test was of a more powerful hydrogen bomb, as the blast was of about the same size as that from an atomic bomb test in 2013.

Ms Park said China, North Korea’s main ally and economic benefactor, would be critical in securing an effective Security Council resolution.