South Korea fires warning shots at suspected North Korean drone near border

North Korea claimed it had tested a device on January 6, marking the country’s fourth nuclear test and first hydrogen bomb test, although some experts have cast doubt on whether it was indeed a true hydrogen bomb, claiming the explosion’s yield was too small for such a weapon.

Ms. Park spoke as the South’s chief nuclear negotiator met with his Japanese and US counterparts to coordinate their responses to the North. The diplomacy came as the US House of Representatives late on Tuesday approved new legislation seeking the extension of US sanctions against the North Korea’s leadership.

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

Ms. Park, in a televised speech followed by a rare news conference Wednesday, said China should prove its resolve not to tolerate nuclear proliferation in the region.

Diplomats at a United Nations Security Council emergency session last week pledged to pursue new sanctions swiftly.

South Korean army soldiers gather to search for suspected North Korean leaflets in Seoul.

“I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further”, she said.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye. A secondary boycott refers to sanctions according to domestic United States law against not only U.S. citizens and businesses but also foreign ones that do business with North Korea. She credits the broadcasts used past year, during a flare up in tensions over a land mine incident, for pressuring the North Korean leadership to seek a settlement and make concessions, including an apology for instigating the conflict.

She mentioned both the USA and China and highlighted her desire for sanctions against North Korea.

“The military responded with warning broadcasts and shots before the vehicle immediately returned to the North”, the JCS said in a brief release to the media.

In the wake of the nuclear test, the two Koreas have settled into a Cold War-era standoff.

The South Korean president also said that closing down the Kaesong industrial park, developed jointly by Seoul and Pyongyang, depends on the future actions of the North Korean leadership, Sputnik reported.

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.

Park defended the broadcasts as an “effective psychological measure” and said her government would push ahead with all efforts to inform North Koreans about “the truth” of their regime.

“In that society, I was happy and felt like we had become more militarily powerful”, said Oh, who is now 18 and fled to South Korea in July 2013, five months after the test.

“It was a process indispensable for carrying out the WPK’s line on simultaneously carrying out the economic construction and the building of nuclear force to cope with the United States ever-more undisguised hostile policy toward the DPRK”, the agency said.