SKorea seeks US strategic assets after bomb test

According to South Korean media, the broadcasts include K-pop – rap and dance music by the country’s well-known boy and girl bands – and talk about sensitive topics like human rights and lifestyles.

Mr Hammond, who is in Tokyo for talks with the Japanese government, said the global community should do what is needed to bring North Korea into line through sanctions, in return for restraint by its southern neighbour.

North Korea announced on Wednesday it carried out its fourth nuclear test since 2006, drawing threats of more sanctions, although United States and weapons experts doubted Pyongyang’s claim that the device was a hydrogen bomb.

However, the call had been delayed due to China’s “internal scheduling”, it said, citing an unidentified official.

South Korea has broadcast propaganda messages from loudspeakers towards North Korea in the past.

“Any escalation in this region, any over-reaction can easily lead to not only a conflict between South and North Korea, but drag China and the United States and Japan into a confrontation”, Cordesman said.

“It is simply rising to the bait”.

Given that the North views border propaganda as an act of war, Friday’s move would not have been a welcome gift to leader Kim Jong-un on his 33rd birthday.

Seoul has also raised South Korea’s cyber security alert level while Yonhap also reported that North Korea had boosted troop deployments and raised its surveillance of the South.

“It worked for a while in the past until we lifted those sanctions under the thought that North Korea might come back to the table”.

Late Friday, the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety said a small amount of radioactive elements was found in air samples collected from the peninsula’s eastern seas after the blast but the measured amount was too small to determine whether the North had really detonated a nuclear device.

Washington has said it was time to impose tougher measures on Pyongyang.

Of course, no sane nation wishes to see weapons of mass destruction proliferating, whether in North Korea, Israel, Iran or any other place on earth.

Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Washington that he spoke by phone Thursday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. “It is even easier to make it bigger”, the source said.

The underground explosion angered China, which was not given prior notice although it is North Korea’s main ally, pointing to a strain in their ties.

A group of protesters also called for a stop to anti-North broadcasts.

– Seismic stations in the U.S., Europe and South Korea detect an quake near an area where North Korea had conducted its three previous nuclear tests.

North Korea responded then by threatening a nuclear strike on the United States.

When animosities sharply rose in the spring of 2013 following North Korea’s third nuclear test, the U.S. took the unusual step of sending its most powerful warplanes – B-2 stealth bombers, F-22 stealth fighters and B-52 bombers – to drills with South Korea in a show of force.