North Korea threatens to complete nuclear force
NORTH Korea said yesterday that it will move toward completing its nuclear force amid more sanctions U.S. and its allies impose, while it criticized U.N. sanctions resolution as a “hostile act” aimed to stifle average people’s lives in the country, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The latest sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council represent “the most vicious, unethical and inhumane act of hostility to physically exterminate the people of the DPRK, let alone its system and government,” a foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday, using the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a U.S.-drafted resolution a week ago mandating tougher new sanctions against Pyongyang that included banning textile imports and capping crude and petrol supply.
The U.S. flew four F-35B stealth fighter jets and two B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula on yesterday in a show of force after North Korea’s latest nuclear and missile tests, South Korea’s defense ministry said.
The flight was to “demonstrate the deterrence capability of the U.S.-South Korea alliance against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,” the ministry said in a statement. They were the first flights since the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 and staged an intermediate-range missile test over Japan last Friday, sending regional tensions soaring.
The U.S. jets trained together with four South Korean F-15K jet fighters before returning to their bases in Japan and Guam, Yonhap quoted the source as saying.
The previous such flights were on August 31. The U.S. military could not immediately confirm the latest flights.
The U.S. is ramping up pressure on the North, with its ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley warning that Pyongyang would be “destroyed” if it refused to end its “reckless” weapons drive.
Efforts to tame the increasingly belligerent North are set to dominate US President Donald Trump’s address to the U.N. General Assembly and his meetings with South Korean and Japanese leaders this week.
Tensions flared again when Kim JongUn’s regime tested what it termed a hydrogen bomb many times more powerful than its previous device.
The North also fired a ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific on Friday, responding to new U.N. sanctions over its atomic test with what appeared to be its longest-ever missile flight.
Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-In spoke by phone Saturday and vowed to exert “stronger pressure” on the North, with Moon’s office warning that further provocation would put it on a “path of collapse.”