North Korea vows to boost weapons programmes after ‘evil’ UN sanctionslims

The respected 38 North website in the US raised its estimate for the yield from the explosion, which Pyongyang says was a hydrogen bomb small enough to fit onto a missile, to around 250 kilotons more than 16 times the size of the device that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.The detonation, Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear blast, prompted global condemnation and came after it carried out two intercontinental ballistic missile launches in July that appeared to bring much of the US into range. The UN Security Council unanimously imposed the eighth set of sanctions on the North on Monday, banning it from trading in textiles and restricting its oil imports, which US President Donald Trump said was a prelude to stronger measures.The resolution, passed after Washington toned down its original proposals to secure backing from China and Russia, came just one month af- ter the council banned exports of coal, lead and seafood in response to the ICBM launch. The North’s foreign ministry condemned the new measures “in the strongest terms”, calling them a “fullscale economic blockade” driven by the US and aimed at “suffocating” its state and people.It was “another illegal and evil ‘resolution on sanctions’ piloted by the US”, it said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. “The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will redouble the efforts to increase its strength to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and right to existence,” the ministry said, using the abbreviation for the North’s official name. But the South’s unification ministry described the statement as “the most low-key form of response from North Korea to UN Security Council resolutions”.