South Korea resumes anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts

Kim Jong Un had been in power less than a year when North Korea tested its third nuclear device in February 2013.

South Korea’s foreign ministry had asked for a phone call with Wang right after North Korea announced on Wednesday it had tested a hydrogen bomb, the South’s Yonhap News Agency said.

The broadcasts will draw a furious response from North Korea, which considers them an act of psychological warfare.

“The soldiers near the border come from all over North Korea, so they will spread what they’ve heard and trigger a change in North Korean society”.

Washington (CNN)U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry publicly took issue with China’s policy towards its neighbor North Korea on Thursday and defended the U.S. handling of the crisis sparked by Pyongyang’s nuclear test earlier this week. “We know that responding in this way is rising to the bait”.

Last August, the two countries traded artillery fire over the issue before striking a deal that ended the broadcasts and pledged other measures to ease tensions that had escalated sharply in the summer.

The UN Security Council agreed yesterday to roll out new measures to punish the North and vowed to begin work on a new UN draft resolution that would contain “further significant measures”. The test, which was allegedly a hydrogen bomb, was met with global outrage.

North Koreans are prohibited from listening to K-pop, but defectors have said their countrymen enjoy music and other elements of South Korea popular culture that are smuggled into the country on USB sticks and DVDs.

China has hosted six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions since the multilateral framework was launched in 2003.

“China will be very sensitive about any moves by Japan or South Korea to improve missile defenses”, said Zhang Baohui, a mainland nuclear security expert at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University.

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan, says the Navy is watching North Korea closely after the country conducted its fourth nuclear test. Officials refused to elaborate, but the assets likely are B-52 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters and nuclear-powered submarines.

Seismic waves created by the blast were nearly identical to those generated in North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2013, Jeffrey Park, a seismologist at Yale University, wrote in a post on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website, adding to scepticism about the hydrogen bomb claim.

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

There is considerable doubt over the veracity of Pyongyang’s assertion that Wednesday’s explosion was a full-fledged test of a hydrogen device, but it could mark an advance in the secretive state’s nuclear technology.