South Korea, US mull ‘strategic assets’ deployment

A standoff between the rival Koreas has deepened since last week’s test, the North’s fourth.

“It is the legitimate right of a sovereign state and a fair action that nobody can criticize”, the North’s Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying during a tour of the Armed Forces Ministry. North Korea, while accepting energy and food aid from China, has spurned Beijing’s efforts to drop its nuclear program and return to talks.

The US deployed a B-52 bomber on a low-level flight over its ally South Korea on Sunday, a show of force following North Korea’s nuclear test last week.

The US B-52 Stratofortress bomber, escorted by an F-16 fighter aircraft, took off from Andersen airbase in Guam and was escorted by one of Seoul’s F-15 fighters during its flight over the Osan airbase.

Seoul also said on Monday that it would restrict access to the jointly-run Kaesong industrial complex just north of the heavily militarised inter-Korean border to the “minimum necessary level” starting from Tuesday.

Interviewed on CNN, McDonough said the USA would work with South Korea, Japan, China and Russian Federation “to deeply isolate the North Koreans” and “squeeze” them until they lived up to prior commitments to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

While receiving global condemnation for the test, many commentators have doubted the veracity of Pyongyang’s nuclear claims. Many outside governments and experts question whether the blast was a powerful hydrogen test. The nuclear test last Wednesday was the fourth since 2006.

In retaliation for the nuclear test, South Korea’s military restarted blasting anti-DPRK propaganda messages from speakers at Friday noon across the border into the DPRK, which had called it an ” act of declaring war”. “Almost all of its socioeconomic activities will be paralyzed, from the transportation sector to the military sector; inflation will rise; prices will soar; social anxiety will cause riots; and North Korean society will face a collapse”.

Another official reportedly said that the sound coming from North Korea was “very weak”, but analysts had previously noted that Pyongyang’s primary concern would be to nullify the impact of South Korea’s messages north of the border.

This is despite South Korea and the United States both urging China, which wields considerable economic power over North Korea as its largest trade partner, to do more to rein in the Kim regime.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesperson Kim Min-seok.

“If China protests against our self-defensive military responses, the relation between China and South Korea will be frozen”.

There are fewer South Koreans at the park than usual, because South Korea began limiting entry to the area after the North announced a nuclear test on Wednesday.

Diplomats at a UN Security Council emergency session pledged to swiftly pursue new sanctions.

Kim praised the scientists, technicians and workers for contributing to what North Korea maintains was its first successful test of a hydrogen bomb, state media reported on Monday.