US Navy watching North Korean situation closely

The Foreign Secretary said the North Koreans were baiting Seoul and its allies by claiming to have successfully tested their first hydrogen bomb.

“We can not continue business as usual”, Kerry told reporters at a State Department news conference as he refuted allegations that the USA had taken its eye off the lid in last few years from North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

Philip Hammond has urged South Korea to be “bigger” than its northern adversary and resist blasting propaganda across their border with loudspeakers.

Kaesong, where 124 South Korean firms operate and employ around 54,000 North Korean workers, serves as an important source of income for Pyongyang’s stagnant economy, while also offering cheap labor to businesses from the south.

North Korea conducted another nuclear test after recognizing how Iran was “gaming the system” in the nuclear deal pushed by U.S. President Barack Obama, an analyst said.

In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016 photo provided by the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, left, holds a emergency meeting at UN headquarters with senior advisors to discuss the latest test of a thermonuclear bomb by North Korea.

North Korea’s state media called the test a self-defense measure against a potential USA attack: “The (country’s) access to H-bomb of justice, standing against the US, the chieftain of aggression…is the legitimate right of a sovereign state for self-defense and a very just step no one can slander”. And it’s made much more hard in or above North Korea.

“They feel threatened, that’s also what I hear in my discussions with the North Koreans, since the end of the Korean War in the 1950s”, says Paul Tjia, director of GPI consultants in Rotterdam, who helps European busineses invest in North Korea.

Most eyes were on North Korea’s main ally, China, which condemned the test but gave no signal that it was ready to approve a significant tightening of sanctions on its recalcitrant neighbor.

Kerry said he and Wang agreed to work closely to determine what measures could be taken given increasing concern about the nuclear test. He said America has a “firm and continued commitment to regional security and global nonproliferation”.

A male announcer could be heard from South Korea telling North Koreans that their leader Kim Jong Un and his wife wear clothes costing thousands of dollars.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, what it calls its “treasured swords”, has only briefly and tenuously been demonstrated and at the time the outside world was sceptical that Pyongyang had really mastered this technology.

But even if the North exploded a boosted fission bomb, its explosive yield, estimated at six kilotons, showed the test was likely a failure, a South Korean defence official said Thursday.

“The nuclear test, together with the ICBM and SLBM tests, are a bridge that the North had to cross to get to the party congress”, An said, referring to earlier intercontinental and submarine-launched missile tests.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, North Korea froze its nuclear production, though it continued testing missiles until deterred by American pressure.

USA aircraft created to detect evidence of a nuclear test, such as radioactive particulate matter and blast-related noble gases, could be deployed from a US base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Albright said a hydrogen bomb typically produces hundreds, if not thousands, of kilotons of force. The B-2 is capable of secretly infiltrating North Korea territory undetected, while equipped with nuclear weapons.

There were no obvious signs of disruption in the northeastern city of Dandong that sits on the Yalu River directly across from North Korea’s Sinuiju.

It was unclear how more sanctions would deter North Korea, which has conducted four nuclear tests since 2006. North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to flawless a multistage, long-range missile to carry smaller versions of those bombs.