South Korea Resumes Propaganda Broadcasts Following North Korea's Hydrogen Bomb Test Claim
South Korea resumed its loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts against North Korea Friday after the latter claimed it has conducted a Hydrogen bomb test last Wednesday. Al Jazeera reported Friday that the propaganda broadcasts started at noon local time.
An official also said that the level of alert in areas near the locations of loudspeakers had already been intensified.
"We're putting out critical messages about Kim Jong Un's regime and its fourth nuclear test, saying North Korea's nuclear weapons development is putting its people in more difficult times economically," an unnamed military official said.
South Korea's plan to resume the loudspeaker propaganda was also announced by Wa Dae's National Security Office (NSO), as per Korea Herald Thursday.
"In defiance of the warnings of South Korea and the international community, North Korea announced its conducting of a fourth nuclear test. This is a direct violation of its commitments for the UN Security Council and the international community, and of the Aug. 25 (inter-Korean) agreement," NSO deputy chief Cho Tae Yong told reporters.
"Our military is fully prepared. We will sternly retaliate if North Korea launches a provocation," he added.
Meanwhile, a senior official at Seoul's Foreign Ministry said the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are expected to reinforce existing sanctions specified in four UNSC sanctions resolutions on North Korea. Said sanctions were implemented to castigate the country after conducting three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
"Although we are not a member state of the UNSC, we are in close consultations with the member states, given that we are the directly concerned party," the official said. "We plan to make our utmost efforts to ensure that stronger, substantive and very effective sanctions would come out."
On the other hand, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday. Kerry allegedly told Yi that China has to be prepared to obtain harder positions with North Korea.
"China had a particular approach that it wanted to make, that we agreed and respected to give them space to implement that," Kerry said, according to The Wall Street Journal Thursday. "In my conversation with the Chinese I made it very clear that has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual."
