N. Korea conducts hydrogen bomb test

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Seoul simulates attack on North’s nuke site

This undated picture released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sept 3, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (center), looking at a metal casing with two bulges at an undisclosed location. North Korea has developed a hydrogen bomb which can be loaded into the country’s new intercontinental ballistic missile, the official KCNA claimed on Sunday. Questions remain over whether nuclear-armed Pyongyang has successfully miniaturised its weapons, and whether it has a working H-bomb, but KCNA said that leader Kim Jong-Un had inspected such a device at the Nuclear Weapons Institute. (AFP)

SEOUL/WASHINGTON, Sept 4, (Agencies): North Korea on Sunday conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, which it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile, prompting the threat of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened. Speaking outside the White House after meeting with President Donald Trump and his national security team, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Trump asked to be briefed on all available military options. “Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming,” Mattis said. “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea,” Mattis said with Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at his side. “But as I said, we have many options to do so.” Trump earlier in the day refused to rule out military action and threatened to cut off trade with any country doing business with Pyongyang.

Asked while leaving a church service whether the United States would attack North Korea, Trump replied: “We’ll see.” Despite the tough talk, the immediate focus of the international response was expected to be on tougher economic sanctions against Pyongyang. The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet on Monday to discuss the nuclear test. Diplomats have said the council could now consider banning Pyongyang’s textile exports and the country’s national airline, stop supplies of oil to the government and military, prevent North Koreans from working abroad and add top officials to a blacklist to subject them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

Sanctions
US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday that he would put together a package of new sanctions to potentially cut off all trade with North Korea. “If countries want to do business with the United States, they obviously will be working with our allies and others to cut off North Korea economically,” Mnuchin told Fox News. North Korea, which carries out its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions, said on state television that the hydrogen bomb test ordered by leader Kim Jong Un had been a “perfect success.” The bomb was designed to be mounted on its newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, the North said. The test had registered with international seismic agencies as a man-made earthquake near a test site. Japanese and South Korean officials said the tremor was about 10 times more powerful than the one picked up after North Korea’s last nuclear test a year ago.

US stock futures fell 0.5 percent after trading reopened on Sunday evening. After weeks of profound tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program, the size and scope of the latest test set off a new round of diplomatic handwringing. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in China, agreed to “appropriately deal” with North Korea’s nuclear test, the Xinhua news agency reported. As North Korea’s sole major ally, China said it strongly condemned the nuclear test and urged Pyongyang to stop its “wrong” actions. In a series of early morning tweets, Trump appeared to rebuke ally South Korea, which faces an existential threat from North Korea’s nuclear program.

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Trump said in an early morning tweet. Trump appeared to be blaming South Korea for a policy it abandoned years ago of trying to soften North Korea’s posture through economic aid. South Korea’s new president, Moon Jae-in, has argued for continuing dialogue with its neighbor over its nuclear program, while also supporting international sanctions. Reports that the United States is considering pulling out of its trade deal with South Korea have also ratcheted up tensions with the country. A former senior State Department official criticized Trump for accusing South Korea of appeasement.

Threat
“It was unseemly, unhelpful, and divisive to gratuitously slap our major ally at the very moment when the threat from (North Korea) has reached a new height,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The US president has previously vowed to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons and said he would unleash “fire and fury” on the country if it threatened US territory. Roy Blunt, a Republican senator and a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, backed Trump’s fiery rhetoric on Sunday. “I think the president putting everything on the table is, is not a bad thing right now, both for North Korea, but maybe more importantly for China to be thinking about how consequential this behavior is,” Blunt said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Trump’s trade threat may be a way to pressure China, Pyongyang’s top trading partner, into doing more to contain its neighbor.

But Matthew Goodman, a trade expert at Washington’s Center for International and Strategic Studies, said Trump’s suggestion was not viable because it would mean the United States would cut off trade with countries such as France, India, and Mexico, along with China. “The notion of stopping ‘all trade’ with anyone who does business with North Korea is absurd,” Goodman said. Meanwhile, following US warnings to North Korea of a “massive military response,” South Korea fired missiles into the sea to simulate an attack on the North’s main nuclear test site on Monday, a day after North Korea detonated its largest-ever nuclear test explosion. South Korea’s Defense Ministry also said Monday that North Korea appeared to be planning a future missile launch, possibly of an ICBM, to show off its claimed ability to target the United States with nuclear weapons, though it was unclear when this might happen. The heated words from the United States and the military maneuvers in South Korea are becoming familiar responses to North Korea’s rapid, as-yet unchecked pursuit of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that can strike the United States. The most recent, and perhaps most dramatic, advance came Sunday in an underground test of what leader Kim Jong Un’s government claimed was a hydrogen bomb, the North’s sixth nuclear test since 2006.

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